On the eve of her nuptials, a 32-year-old Orthodox Jewish woman named Michal (Noa Koler) faces the shocking announcement from her fiancรฉ, Gidi (Erez Drigues) that he’s not in love with her. But her devastation at the news is eclipsed only by her steadfast determination to get married, and she chooses to take an absurd […]
Movie Reviews
Posted inMovies
Film review: ‘Dead Men Tell No Tales’
The “Pirates of the Caribbean” series has run aground
Posted inMovies
Film review: ‘Obit’
Early on in “Obit” — the affectionate new documentary which gives viewers a look into the day-to-day experiences of the writers staffing the New York Times obituaries desk — one of the film’s subjects is asked if their work is depressing. After all, the job of an obituarist requires one to literally spend nearly every […]
Posted inMovies
Film review: ‘Alien Covenant’
Your feelings about the latest installment of the “Alien” franchise will depend largely on how you felt about “Prometheus.” The 2012 prequel marked Ridley Scott’s return to the science fiction series he established nearly 40 years ago. A direct sequel to that ambitious and polarizing blockbuster, “Alien: Covenant” splits the difference between continuing the earlier […]
Posted inMovies
Film review: ‘The Lovers’
An unhappily married couple finally decides to end things for good, only to find themselves unexpectedly falling back in love in “The Lovers,” Azazel Jacobs’ wry grownup romance about love, sex, and the difficulties of finding happiness at any age. Mary (Debra Winger) and Michael (Tracy Letts) seem to have checked out of their marriage […]
Posted inMovies
Film review: ‘Jeremiah Tower’
Food-loving cinephiles get a glimpse into the life of an enigmatic, celebrity chef in the documentary “Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent.” Arguably the most influential chef you’ve probably never heard of, director Lydia Tenaglia shows how Tower’s career shaped American cuisine as we know it today, even as the man himself remained something of a […]
Posted inMovies
Film review: ‘King Arthur’
The world doesn’t really need another retelling of Arthurian legend. But if we’ve got no choice in the matter, at least this one offers a scrappy, street-level epic seen through the hyperactive eyes of “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” director Guy Ritchie. At least that’s what I attempted to tell myself before heading into […]
Posted inMovies
Film review: ‘Norman’
Richard Gere stars as Norman Oppenheimer, the hero of Joseph Cedar’s mordantly funny fable “Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer.” Norman calls himself a businessman, but his real trade is making connections. Fueled by a desperate desire to be a success (or even better, to be seen as one), […]
Posted inMovies
Film recap: The 2017 Nitrate Picture Show
The George Eastman Museum last weekend hosted the third Nitrate Picture Show, its annual “festival of film preservation” paying tribute to the medium’s notoriously combustible early format. The weekend’s events included tours of the Eastman Museum’s vaults and projection booths, lectures from film scholars Hisashi Okajima and Alexander Horwath, workshops, and demonstrations, all centered on […]
Posted inMovies
Film review: ‘The Void’
The founders of Canadian genre-film collective Astron-6,Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski, turn their eyes to the realm of Lovecraftian horror with “The Void.” And while the directing duo load their film up with enough monsters and mutilation to populate an otherworldly hell dimension, their efforts are nearly undone by an undercooked story and muddled plotting. […]
Posted inMovies
Film review: ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.
2’s” willingness to do as it pleases turns out
to be the movie’s most appealing quality
Posted inMovies
Film review: ‘My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea’
Written and directed by comic artist Dash Shaw, “My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea” is a trippy, sometimes surreal animated comedy that follows what happens when a high school misfit discovers an administrative cover up hiding the fact that his school is dangerously not up to code. But no one heeds his warnings, […]
