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.
Park Chan-wook’s new film may come to us in the guise of a detective story, a police procedural, even a quasi-erotic thriller. But at its heart, Decision to Leave is really a romantic comedy.
On death-sentence testimonies in Blade Runner, Wings of Desire, and Nomadland.
Taken as a body of work, the Before trilogy asks us to consider the tension between its fantasy and naturalism, and the extent of our own ability to exert similar control over a lonely world that ushers us through life without concern for whether we’ve found any meaning in it.
No one really changes. But, Broadcast News asks, isn’t that kind of beautiful?
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.
Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark bites into the myth of American individualism and exceptionalism in Western movies by throwing vampires into the mix.
A movie as dense and deep as Adaptation offers a communal awakening, one that ideally leads to new insights on the human capacity for thought and emotion.
For months I’ve been thinking about sequels and second chances, about Paul Newman but also, increasingly, Tom Cruise.
L.A. Story is romantic, hopelessly. Our four lovestruck main characters fall in and out of their spells. The tone gets mushy. The freeway sign is embraced. The paradise could be believed.
It’s a tricky thing to blend highly stylized artifice with real emotion, and perhaps David Lynch's Wild at Heart doesn’t always get it right. The attempt, though, is pure rock ‘n roll.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid frustrates me like family.
