Claire Simon's Our Body is not only a fascinating look into the modern healthcare system, but is also, as with any documentary worth its weight, a peek into the ordinariness of extraordinary things.
PositionSenior Editor
JoinedMay 27, 2017
Articles60
Fran Hoepfner is a Senior Editor at Bright Wall/Dark Room and has been contributing to the magazine since 2013. She recently completed her MFA in fiction at Rutgers in Newark, and launched Fran Magazine, in early 2022.
Oppenheimer, like its namesake J. Robert Oppenheimer, is a noble failure—but I've continued to revisit it in my mind’s eye, wondering if it worked on me or if it was merely evocative—and to what degree “evocativeness” is a measure of quality.
Where Asteroid City shines, where it is made masterpiece, is in its brief flashes of joy: a good picture, a milkshake, a song and dance, one more martini. Here is a life not perfect—soldiers wielding guns, no personal space, endless boredom—made enviable by one thing only: each other.
You get what you bring into Past Lives, a lush and dreamy new film and the directorial debut of playwright Celine Song—a story of love and loss and reconnection between childhood sweethearts across a quarter-century and two continents.
George Cukor's Holiday was neither the first nor last Hepburn and Grant pairing, but here it feels as if they're inventing a new type of relationship—one marked not only by fizzling flirtation or witty repartee, but also deeply infused with loss.
Terence Davies' Benediction is not a puzzle, nor does it court confusion. Instead, it explains how Siegfried Sassoon’s life, whether he wants it or not, is a blessing.
In weaker, lesser, dumber hands, Design for Living is a movie about three horny morons; in Lubitsch’s, all three characters spark and sparkle, an abundance of wit powering them through reckless indecisions.
That so many of the films at the New York Film Festival this year focused on ugly and stressful subjects feels not like a demerit, but rather a catharsis—a healing that can only be done in a dark room, surrounded by others.
No book or film is perfect, far from it, but Maurice gets close. It grasps for an ideal, and often, that pursuit is just as worthy.
We meet Newman's character at a disadvantage in The Sting, but because this is Paul Newman, and we know Paul Newman, it’s more than evident that The Paul Newman Show is about to begin.
The magic trick of Joanna Hogg’s film is not so much that The Souvenir Part II is funnier or stranger or better than its predecessor: it’s that Part II redefines both films as another form of memoir entirely.
As I walked up the steps to the Walter Reade theater, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of triumph, my first day back on campus. Everyone was there! In line, tired, clutching cheap coffee and festival badges. Some people got haircuts. Even the grumps were buzzing, happy to finally have some place to be.
