M uch like this year’s The Menu, Triangle of Sadness takes aim at the pinkies-out dilettantes who punish the world with their platinum-coated sense of entitlement. Despite this similarity, the two films are actually defined by their differences: Triangle is broader, bolder, and more sweepingly ambitious than its satirical cousin. That’s not to say it’s the better film.…
T o Leslie sent my thoughts back to a similar film, Hillbilly Elegy. In that middling, piddling, manipulative hooey, millionaire actors slap on prosthetics and moth-eaten flannel. For two hours, they bark at each other in flimsy redneck accents in a blatant attempt to chase down Oscars. It was hollow, predictable, poorly-written tripe, a fact made…
I managed a wine store for almost fifteen years, and I affectionately remember some of the pretentious wine reviews that hung from the shelves. My favorite was attached to a Spanish red, which boasted it had a “firm international structure.” Now, if anybody anywhere knows what in the holy honey-baked hell that means, I…
E ven amongst the crowded field of obligatory sequels, Glass Onion stands out, like a shimmering, whinnying unicorn. Writer-director Rian Johnson somehow replicates everything that made Knives Out a real hootenanny, while also steering that familiar story deep into left field. Once again, Johnson riffs on Agatha Christie, but he also builds a story that's hilarious,…
T he Banshees of Inisherin takes place in 1923, on a little Irish island where life seems to amble along, like a pleasant stroll on a country road. As civil war rages on the mainland, the townsfolk of Inisherin regard the flash and boom of artillery like a distant thunderstorm. Even the local gossip laments…
W hen Harry Met Sally... adheres to the classic rom-com spirituality, wherein nothing could ever happen by chance. Indeed, the film intersperses interviews with elderly couples, who gleefully recount the serendipity that kept them apart until they were meant to be together. Ironically, the story is built around two characters who spend most of the…
T hroughout the Vacation movies, Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) functions as a kind of cheerful, benevolent weapon of mass destruction. His ambition is simple, but noble: To act as catalyst for the greatest vacation, holiday gathering, or whatever ill-fated event the screenwriters have devised for him. His currency as a husband and father is measured solely…
W hen he directed Jaws in 1975, Steven Spielberg was hailed as a wunderkind and an overnight sensation. The truth is that Spielberg had been cranking out movies for most of his young life. As a precocious teenager, his amateur oeuvre was both irresistibly innocent and sweepingly ambitious: A spate of homemade Westerns and WWII battle epics…
I f they handed out a generic award for Best-Looking Movie of 2022, Ticket to Paradise would be on the noms list. As a squabbling, middle-aged couple, George Clooney and Julia Roberts are as photogenic as ever. Their daughter? Beautiful, as you would expect. The locations? You couldn't CGI something prettier. Hell, even the chittering, man-eating dolphins…
A s we meet Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett), somewhere in the deep of middle age, she's already a woman with nothing left to prove. When she sits for an interview at The New Yorker Festival (where Adam Gopnik plays himself), Tár's résumé is read aloud, and her accomplishments are stunning. She's an EGOT winner, and…