DIANE: A SLICE OF LIFE WORTH SAMPLING
Mary Kay Place is an asset to any movie she’s in, and in Diane she is the center of attention. In his narrative filmmaking debut, writer-director Kent Jones has built a story around her, based on observations of his…
‘DUMBO’ BEGS THE QUESTION: WHY?
Disney’s new live-action Dumbo isn’t awful….but it isn’t very good, either. Why waste so much money and talent on a film that is foredoomed to take second place to a classic? I know it’s all about making money, yet surely there…
YOURS TRULY, WALT DISNEY
With the recent passing of Dave Smith, the Walt Disney Company’s longtime archivist—a position he created for himself back in 1970—a flood of memories came to mind. Dave was unfailingly kind and generous to me and hundreds of other…
US: JORDAN PEELE’S COMPLEX TAKE ON HORROR
Get Out announced the arrival of an exciting and important new voice in American film: writer-director Jordan Peele. We already knew what a talented actor and comedic artist he was, but the originality of this trenchant social satire was something…
BINGE-ING ON ORSON WELLES’S ‘MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS’
When people say they are bingeing these days, it usually means watching one or more seasons of a TV series in marathon fashion. I’ve been doing the same thing with a single film: the Criterion Collection’s recent Blu-ray release…
‘THE AFTERMATH’ SQUANDERS ITS POTENTIAL
I find the period immediately following World War Two in Europe to be one of the most fascinating periods of the 20th century. It has inspired such great films as Fred Zinnemann’s The Search, Billy Wilder’s A Foreign Affair, and Carol Reed’s The…
THE MUSTANG REARS UP AND WON’T LET GO
Matthias Schoenaerts has a formidable screen presence. If you saw him in Bullhead (the Belgian film that put him on the map), Rust and Bone, or Far from the Madding Crowd, you know that I mean. The effect of his silent presence is put…
