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MAESTRO IS MAGNIFICENT 

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
4750

I don’t know where or how Bradley Cooper got the ambition to make this powerfully challenging film, or the fortitude to both direct and co-script it while playing the leading character, but it is clearly a labor of love. Many passion projects lose something on the way to the screen, but Maestro is an exception: a deeply felt, magisterial film that provides its leading man with a formidable showcase and a captivating role for his costar, Carey Mulligan.  Like many other baby boomers, I grew up watching Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts on television and retain a vivid memory of the charismatic conductor. My admiration for him grew as I became aware of his many accomplishments outside the world of conducting: writing the score for On the Town, Wonderful Town, Candide, and West Side Story, not to mention On the Waterfront. Watching this account of his life and times, I…

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MAY DECEMBER

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
2562

Todd Haynes would seem an ideal choice to direct a story inspired by the real-life case of schoolteacher Mary Kay LeTourneau, who made headlines in the 1990s when she raped a 12-year-old student, then married him and raised a family. It’s still an eye-opener after all this time, and certainly ripe for adaptation as a movie.  A sharp observer of women’s roles in society and suburban life, as evidenced in such films as Safe, Carol, the Douglas Sirk-inspired Far From Heaven and the miniseries Mildred Pierce, Haynes is right at home in this fictionalized narrative written by Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik. Natalie Portman plays a television star who arrives on the scene to spend time with Julianne Moore, whom she is about to portray in a movie. Most of…

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FALLEN LEAVES: A QUIET GEM

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
2940

I’m a relative latecomer to the charms of Aki Kaurismäki’s work, but I’ve become a proselytizer to make up for lost time. The Finnish writer-director who brought us Le Havre and The Other Side of Hope is backwith a thoroughly entertaining, completely unpredictable love story called Fallen Leaves. Kaurismäki’s sense of humor is infectious and unmistakably his own. Some people would call this kind of comedy “dry,” and I suppose that’s as good an adjective as any. Yet it made me laugh out loud. Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen perfectly portray two lonely, working-class people who carry on a fitful courtship. Their relationship, which gets off to an especially rocky start, isn’t pretty. They are completely believable; the director has guided them through his world with nary a misstep.  The…

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THE KILLER

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
4077

David Fincher’s films are often cold-blooded and I was wary of him adapting the graphic novel The Killer. Sure enough, this cheerless bit of 21st century pop existentialism is schematically laid out, following an assassin as he performs one hit after another. Fincher is also a master craftsman, and the film is meticulously well-made, drawing on the talents of cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, production designer Donald Graham Burt, and composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, among others. Andrew Kevin Walker’s screenplay is broken into chapters, a conceit which seldom works to any film’s advantage. Here, each one is named for the victim of the hired assassin, played by an emotionless Michael Fassbender, and the location of the kill (Paris, New Orleans, wherever). There is a sameness to the…

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PRISCILLA: A MINIMALIST BIOPIC

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
3558

I think I’ve just seen the first minimalist biopic ever made. Most movies about famous people’s lives come from the opposite direction, embellishing their feats, triumphs and failures. This one simply observes, almost without comment, the—uh—unusual relationship between Priscilla and Elvis Presley, from the time she was 14 years old to the day she walked out on the singing star. Writer-director Sofia Coppola has done her most crucial job well, casting Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla and Jacob Elordi as Elvis. Elordi adopts a good-enough impression of Elvis to enable us to accept him in the role, and relative newcomer Spaeny is credible as the subdued schoolgirl who tickles his fancy (for reasons we never really understand), to the point that he wins her parents’ approval…

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NYAD: AN EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE 

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
3276

Like many or most of you, I’ve watched Annette Bening and Jodie Foster give fine performances for years and years, but I got so wrapped up in NYAD –and their exceptional work—that I allowed myself to believe that they really were the women they were playing. That’s called suspension of disbelief, and it made viewing the movie a truly emotional experience for me. Directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi are documentary filmmakers (Free Solo, Return to Space) and mountain climbers, a felicitous choice to bring Julia Cox’s screenplay to life. They are also married, which gives them an understanding of relationships. There’s no substitute for life experience, and while Diana Nyad’s story is unlike theirs in many of its particulars, they clearly connected to…

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CHARLIE CHAPLIN VS. AMERICA: When Art, Sex and Politics Collided by Scott Eyman

Books Leonard Maltin
3877

CHARLIE CHAPLIN VS. AMERICA: When Art, Sex and Politics Collided by Scott Eyman (Simon & Schuster) At first glance this new book by premier film historian and biographer Eyman would seem to limit its coverage to the period of the 1940s—when Chaplin was burdened by a bogus paternity suit and accused of being a Communist—until his death on Christmas Day, 1977. But Eyman incorporates eye-opening details about Chaplin’s entire life and career throughout the narrative, making this one of the finest surveys of the man and the artist ever written. Like the author, I first fell in love with Chaplin as a boy after seeing him in Robert Youngson’s comedy compilations. I saved up to buy 8mm prints of his Mutual short subjects from Blackhawk…

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