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- Audra McDonald and “Original Nepo Baby” Gwyneth Paltrow: Honorees at the NYWFT Muse Awards 23 March 2026
- Zach Bryan Buys the On the Road Scroll/ Happy Birthday, Jack Kerouac!
- William S. Burroughs/ Nova ’78 at MoMA/ Remembering James Grauerholz
- Jacob Elordi in Wuthering Heights: Monster Mash
- Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent: A Cool Brazilian Gets an Oscar Nod
Category: Film
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Bruce Springsteen’s voice sets the tone for Alex Gibney’s riveting documentary portrait of Frank Sinatra: All or Nothing at All. “The Boss” says, I first heard him when my mom and I used to hunt down my dad in New Jersey saloons. Hear that? His mother would say. That’s Frank Sinatra. Even Stevie van Zandt,…
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“How’s my German?,” asked British actor Allan Corduner who plays Gustav Bloch-Bauer in the film Woman in Gold. He’s Maria Altmann’s father, in flashback to pre-war and Nazi occupied Vienna, when she was a young woman who managed to escape. Helen Mirren plays Maria’s older version, and they had only one scene together, when Maria,…
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Seymour Bernstein at 88 is such a loveable man, and so talented an interpreter of classical music, it is easy to fall in love with him. But that’s not why Ethan Hawke was so inspired at meeting him at a dinner party, so much that he knew he wanted to spend more time with Seymour…
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What makes French films, eh, French? The facile answer: a focus on love: married, obsessive, at first sight. In its 20th season the popular Rendez Vous at Lincoln Center, shows a penchant for action adventure—and, serial killers. What happened to the frothy comedies and romantic musicals of the past? Benoit Jacquot’s 3 Hearts opened…
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This is a boom time for Albert Maysles: his iconic Grey Gardens (1975) in a restored print is screening at Film Forum, and available from Criterion. A new documentary, Iris, about style legend Iris Apfel, a hit at the 2014 New York Film Festival will be released in late April. But then again, in the…
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If you are Jewish, you want your son to be a doctor. But think again. Ziggy Gruber, the “deli man” among several featured in Erik Greenberg Anjou’s new documentary, Deli Man, will do just fine. Trained for cordon bleu at the Culinary Institute, the young Ziggy was so attached to his grandparents, he went into…
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J. K. Simmons’ music teacher from hell may earn him an Oscar, but he is also having an unanticipated nightmare effect on anyone who has had rigorous training, no matter what the field. We’ve seen movies about cordon bleu culinary school. Can cooking school really be as severe as the blood-letting in Whiplash? Last week…
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Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, one of the bard’s problem plays with its themes of wrong-headed leadership and outright cruelty, may not seem a likely source for a ballet, but choreographer Christopher Wheeldon thought otherwise. In the play, King Leontes’ (Edward Watson) jealous rage leads to the deaths of his young son, his wife Hermoine (Lauren…
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The injustice of women trapped in unhappy marriages by husbands who refuse to let them go has long been acknowledged in religious Jewish communities. If a woman cannot get a “gett,” she is not officially divorced, and therefore is not free to remarry, continue with conventional domestic life, perhaps remarrying. Shlomi Elkabetz, director of the…
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The irrepressible Rosie O’Donnell could not help herself. Coaxed to do stand up on the not funny subject of her heart attack by HBO’s Sheila Nevins, the television star created a routine that is more than the heartfelt in its title, “Rosie O’Donnell: A Heartfelt Standup,” it’s a PSA for women, a wake-up call to…
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What an impressive record of documentaries on the subject of addiction! Then again, what an impressive record of documentaries! Last week, Phoenix House honored President of HBO’s Documentary Films Sheila Nevins at Cipriani 42nd Street. With Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones by her side, Nevins had a ringside seat watching the reel of her green-lit…
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How many assistants does it take to cut a watermelon? One of 52, if you ask master conjurer Ricky Jay who wowed the crowd at The Paley Center for Media last Thursday night. He has starred in a show, “Ricky Jay and his 52 Assistants” for years, expertly fanning his deck at nightclubs around the…
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No surprise: the Museum of Modern Art has extended its exhibition of Matisse’s cut outs as a result of popular demand. The same happened when the show featuring the master’s late in life career debuted in London’s Tate. But viewers in 350 American cities as of this week do not have to travel to get…
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Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, stars of The Imitation Game, were still in the U.K.—he shooting an episode of Sherlock Holmes– but everyone else from Morten Tyldum’s riveting movie about Alan Turing attended this final celebration in an exhilarating campaign season at the Christine and Stephen Schwartzman residence on Park Avenue Wednesday night. Michael Bloomberg, Eric Schmidt,…
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Bracing an icy rain, Harry Belafonte, Gay Talese, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Ruben Santiago Hudson, Phylicia Rashad, Gayle King, Tamron Hall, and many others filled the grand ballroom of the Metropolitan Club on Tuesday for a luncheon honoring Ava DuVernay for her movie Selma. The journey was worth it. Backed by an ensemble of ten musicians,…
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The New York Film Critics Circle announce their film honors early, so you know just who you are going to see at their annual awards dinner: with Boyhood taking top honors, the team was a distinct presence at Tao Downtown, with Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, the star, Ellar Coltrane, and director Richard Linklater. The NYFCC’s…
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It’s a cliché of the season to list award favorites, but it is also a thrill to be able to recommend so many good films: at this moment the pundit’s favorites are Boyhood, Birdman and Selma, with additional mention of Unbroken and The Theory of Everything. In a rich year, many films deserve our attention:
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The idea of Important differs from Best: for American Sniper, Selma, and Unbroken, Best is beside the point. Each film is enormously engaging, highly recommended, and grounded in history on a large canvas. While many reviewers are concerned with the qualities that push films into the awards race, and all three deserve the Oscar nod…
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Remember in Pretty Woman when Richard Gere asks Julia Roberts what happens after the prince rescues Cinderella? Not missing a beat, she says, she rescues him right back. In Top Five, Rosario Dawson’s Chelsea Brown tells Chris Rock’s Andre Allen, Cinderella does what every woman who knows what she wants does: she leaves something behind.…
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Bewildered by many choices made in the new Mark Wahlberg film, The Gambler, a remake based on his quasi-autobiographical script with a nod to Dostoyevsky’s short story, James Toback was not quiet about his dismay that the new filmmakers, director Rupert Wyatt and screenwriter William Monahan, did not make a sequel to his movie, rather…
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