recent posts
- 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
- Now on Oscar’s Short List: Holding Liat, a Documentary about the Harrowing Wait for a Hostage Freed from Gaza
Category: Film
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“Man cannot live by Batman alone,” said Baz Luhrmann about making his film of Elvis, and yet the film feels like a wild ride at times. Its great achievement is the casting of Austin Butler who, handsome and talented singing many of the songs we know and love, manages to humanize this historic figure. Young…
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Among the many pleasures of the documentary-rich Tribeca Film Festival, Reinventing Mirazur is particularly yummy, the best word for a film about food. Or rather, the transformation of a multi-star Michelin restaurant in Menton, France during Covid. At center is a brilliant chef, the Argentinian Mauro Colagreco, named best in the world, who expected to…
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Brought to tears in telling the tale of her immigrant ancestry, Lady Gaga thanked the New York Film Critics Circle for recognizing her for Best Actress for her performance in House of Gucci. Big on heart, she was grateful to everyone from director Ridley Scott to her hairdresser and makeup artist, but mainly, she cited…
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Many revelers at this week’s Guild Hall winter gala remembered that before Covid locked everyone down, they were celebrating the premiere East Hampton cultural institution at its 2020 annual gala. And while much has changed in these two years—the venue was now the cavernous Cipriani 42nd Street—and, the 2022 honorees were Board Chair Marty Cohen…
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Her spindly legs over sky high heels, Renee Zellweger, both star and a producer on NBC’s series The Thing About Pam, commanded the stage at the Whitby Hotel this week after a screening of the first two episodes of the 6-part series. Based on a true-life crime podcast, already well known, about a 2011 murder in…
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First aware of Bridget Everett as a mother in Patti Cake$, an indie hit of 2017, I met her on two occasions: she was a flamboyant speaker at the Nantucket Film Festival that year receiving an award. Trust me, you never want to follow her onstage. Second, at the Athena Film Festival, she attended with…
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Life moves slowly. Loss. Grief. So much happens in Drive My Car, Japan’s entry for the Best International Film Academy Award, it is amazing that the movie is only two and a half hours long. That it has been named Best Film by the venerable NY and LA Film Critics can make you think, Parasite…
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The night before the HBO series she spawned reincarnated as And Just Like That at MoMA, Candace Bushnell signals, she has moved on. At the Daryl Roth Theater, she struts across a stage fitted with a hot pink couch and shelves lined with Manolos, recounting a stellar career as columnist, coming from Connecticut, modest suitcase…
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Hard to put a finger on what makes Edgar Wright’s latest movie, Last Night in Soho, so deeply affecting. Is it the fascination with Anya Taylor-Joy’s indelible performance? So good at grabbing the eye in The Queen’s Gambit, Taylor-Joy is mainly a phantom in this coming-of-age horror movie set in a sinister London in the…
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Australian actress Odessa Young exhibits poise beyond her years. At 23, the star of Mothering Sunday, screened at the recent Hamptons International Film Festival, commanded a leather sofa at the Maidstone Inn in East Hampton, ready to promote her film. With her was her co-star Josh O’Connor, Emmy winner for his role as Prince Charles…
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Pedro Almodovar’s Parallel Mothers Closes The New York Film Festival: Penelope Cruz is Spain’s Sophia Loren loves women. He also loves actors. He could not have been more passionate introducing the stars of his new movie, Parallel Mothers, closing night of the New York Film Festival: Penelope Cruz and Milena Smit. Beautiful women, one older,…
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The opening night film is tough, warned a programmer at the HIFF, the beloved festival in person after the pandemic shutdown last year. It’s Matthew Heineman, I said, knowing that this documentary filmmaker embedded with Mexico’s cartels in his film, Cartel Land; of course it is tough. If you can insinuate yourself with murderous drug…
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Who can forget Harvey Keitel’s full-frontal nudity in The Piano? How daring was Jane Campion’s female gaze in her 1993 feature! Now with her new film, The Power of the Dog, get ready for a well-hung Benedict Cumberbach. Based on Thomas Savage’s novel, The Power of the Dog, the film is shot in New Zealand,…
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Film at Lincoln Center had a grand plan for Todd Haynes’ new film, The Velvet Underground. They would bring extant founding members of the band John Cale, Maureen (Mo) Tucker, for a performance at the movie’s New York Film Festival opening. That, sadly, was not to be. The premiere, though, with a posh party at…
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The last James Bond feature to star Daniel Craig, No Time to Die, picks up where the last, Spectre, left off, with James succumbing to love, and a life with Madeleine, the irresistible Lea Seydoux. Off they go on a Rome adventure, carefree in James’ Aston Martin, with “all the time in the world,”—that line…
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How was Tony Soprano “made?” That’s the through line for the long-awaited prequel to HBO’s Sopranos series, The Many Saints of Newark. At a stellar premiere this week at the Beacon Theater, Robert DeNiro, who knows a thing or two about mobsters, along with Tribeca Film Festival partner Jane Rosenthal—greeted a packed, masked house of…
