Monthly Archives: December 2023

Every trailer gets more and more of the scale of this epic across. This one offers up more of the Chalamet/Zendaya love story (Watch your back, Tom Holland). And “More COWbell.” Just saw Chalamet’s “Wonka,” and seriously — if he … Continue reading →

It was all supposed to be “utopian.” High-rise apartment towers, surrounded by trees — and other apartment towers — would provide affordable housing, convenience, population density that makes mass transit and other service deliveries “efficient” and could create instant “community.” … Continue reading →

Hayao Miyazaki, the great Japanese animator whose name is synonymous with the anime art form, told the world he was retiring with the 2013 film “The Wind Rises.” That’s a fascinating, mostly historical World War II story about the idealistic … Continue reading →

You don’t have to be a teacher to be triggered by the tense and suspenseful drama “The Teacher’s Lounge,” Germany’s most worthy contender for a Best International Feature Oscar nomination. A gripping story of idealism battered by bruising reality, high-handed … Continue reading →

It stands to reason that a nation of “tinkerers,” motoring enthusiasts and hobbyists would be the birthplace of classic, vintage or “veteran” car restoration and collecting. A culture celebrated for its fix-it-yourself ingenuity and preserve-the-past mania would of course find … Continue reading →

Claudia Piñeiro’s novel “Elena Knows” comes to the screen as a convuluted and mournful affair, a moody murder mystery whose solution seems too obvious too soon to truly come off. Gabriela Larralde’s script transforms the compact single-day search for answers … Continue reading →

A wasting death, a trip to celebrate a life, and to recover from “Good Grief.” Levy tries something sensitive and not at all funny for his writing and directing and starring debut. Jan. 5 on Netflix.

“Cuarancena” may not be the most bourgeois comedy ever to come out of the Dominican Republic. But I’ve seen a few, and I’m guessing it is, and I mean that in the most flattering way. A high-toned dark comedy that … Continue reading →

There’s something to the notion that bomb-battered and nearly bled-out Britain had more to celebrate than most after the end of World War II. That explains the time-delayed explosion of wry, giddy comedies that poured out before they’d ended rationing … Continue reading →

There was something familiar in the tropes, tricks, twists and gimmicks in 2014’s Korean thriller “A Hard Day.” A cop, in trouble and dashing about trying to cover his tracks in a corruption scandal, running over a pedestrian in his … Continue reading →