Film Reviews by Joanne Laurier
Tesla: The cognizable, knowable scientist and visionary
By Joanne Laurier, 15 October 2020
Written and directed by Michael Almereyda, Tesla is a drama about the life of Serbian-American engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), a remarkable figure. Ethan Hawke plays Tesla.
The Artist’s Wife: A portrait of the artist as an aging semi-entrepreneur
By Joanne Laurier, 12 October 2020
The Artist’s Wife looks at a successful painter’s life. The artistic personality continues to fascinate the public. But does the film shed much light on the phenomenon?
Radioactive: The pioneering efforts of physicist and chemist Marie Curie
By Joanne Laurier, 31 August 2020
Marie Curie (1867-1934) was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, and the first person and only woman to win it twice. Her life and work are the subject matter of Iranian-born French filmmaker Marjane Satrapi’s feature.
Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow: Two men in the wilderness face something more dangerous—big business
By Joanne Laurier, 19 August 2020
US filmmaker Kelly Reichardt’s new film, First Cow, set in the 1820s in the Pacific Northwest, deals with the origins of North American business—and the value of and the need for solidarity.
Seven Days in May (1964): When American filmmaking envisioned a military coup
By Joanne Laurier and David Walsh, 19 June 2020
Directed by John Frankenheimer and featuring Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster and Fredric March, the film envisions an attempt to overthrow constitutional rule in the US. Where do we stand 56 years later?
Baghdad Central on Hulu: Where is the outrage?
By Joanne Laurier, 10 June 2020
Baghdad Central, a six-part series on Hulu, is a crime drama set in the wake of the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The thievery in Bad Education: Capitalism “is the villain more than any one individual”
By Joanne Laurier, 11 May 2020
Bad Education on HBO concerns the largest embezzlement scandal in the public education system in US history, in Roslyn, Long Island, a crime that came to light in 2004.
The Innocence Files on Netflix: Freeing frame-up victims from prison
By Joanne Laurier, 27 April 2020
The production of and interest in the nine-part documentary are part of the growing opposition in the US both to the death penalty and to mass incarceration.
Colewell: The people and places in America that don’t count
By Joanne Laurier, 10 April 2020
Colewell follows Karen Allen as Nora, a postal clerk in a fictitious rural Pennsylvania town. The one-person post office is the center of her existence and has been for numerous decades.
Echo in the Canyon: The “California sound” of the mid-1960s
By Joanne Laurier, 24 February 2020
Echo in the Canyon, a documentary, celebrates the music and performers who came out of Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon neighborhood in the mid-1960s.
The King: A film drama (insufficiently) inspired by Shakespeare’s work
By Joanne Laurier, 14 February 2020
The King is a Netflix historical drama broadly tracing the life of Henry V (1386–1422), with a certain anti-war coloring.
Steven Soderbergh’s High Flying Bird: Sports and racial politics
By Joanne Laurier, 1 February 2020
Steven Soderbergh’s latest film High Flying Bird concerns itself with a fictional National Basketball Association (NBA) lockout, but is essentially an accommodation to identity politics.
Sam Mendes’ 1917: A technological step forward, several ideological and artistic steps back
By Joanne Laurier, 17 January 2020
1917, directed by British filmmaker Sam Mendes, recounts a fictionalized episode set during World War I. Failing to indict those responsible for the carnage or explore its context, the movie does not qualify as an anti-war film.
Atlantics: The cruel fate of African youth
By Joanne Laurier, 22 November 2019
An eerie, haunting film, Mati Diop’s Atlantics: A Ghost Love Story deals fantastically with Senegalese youth lost at sea as they undertake lengthy, dangerous trips to Europe for economic reasons—and those they leave behind.
Parasite: An unusual director with his antenna attuned to social class
The Lighthouse: A gothic horror film
By Joanne Laurier, 16 November 2019
Parasite is a dark comedy from South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho that concerns itself with income inequality and its implications. The Lighthouse is a pointless horror film set in the late 1800s in New England.
Jojo Rabbit: A misguided comedy about Nazis
Edward Norton’s neo-film noir, Motherless Brooklyn
By Joanne Laurier, 8 November 2019
Jojo Rabbit is a would-be satirical comedy about Nazi Germany. Set in 1957, Motherless Brooklyn follows a gumshoe protagonist with Tourette syndrome on the trail of crimes that lead directly to New York’s City Hall.
Judy: Singer-actress Judy Garland’s sad fate brought to the screen
And Harriet: A film biography of abolitionist Harriet Tubman
By Joanne Laurier, 4 November 2019
Judy Garland was one of the most beloved entertainers in the US and internationally in the 20th century. Abolitionist Harriet Tubman’s remarkable life deserves a more profound treatment.
Toronto International Film Festival 2019: Part 5
Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundromat—on the Panama Papers—and The Goldfinch—the aftermath of a terror attack
Along with a valuable film adaptation of Jack London’s Martin Eden and The Traitor, a Mafia drama
By David Walsh, 28 September 2019
Soderbergh discards his generally non-committal stance in The Laundromat, offering a fairly withering critique of global corporate tax evasion and the financial elite generally.
Toronto International Film Festival 2019: Part 2
Love Child, Hearts and Bones, Atlantics: A Ghost Love Story—Some of the social traumas of our time
By Joanne Laurier, 18 September 2019
In different ways, filmmakers are trying to come to terms with certain harsh realities. Love Child, Hearts and Bones and Atlantics: A Ghost Love Story are sincere efforts.
Toronto International Film Festival 2019
An interview with director Eva Mulvad: “You can…come a bit closer to having a more rounded understanding of the world”
By Joanne Laurier, 18 September 2019
The WSWS spoke in Toronto to Eva Mulvad, Danish filmmaker and director of Love Child, about an Iranian refugee family in Turkey and its problems.
Brian Banks: A false rape accusation and its consequences
Also, Rosie and Angels Are Made of Light
By Joanne Laurier, 21 August 2019
Brian Banks is based on the true story of a black high school football star in Long Beach, California falsely accused of rape at the age of 16. Rosie deals with homelessness in Dublin and Angels Are Made of Light the war in Afghanistan.
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood: Quentin Tarantino’s non-conformist conformism
By Joanne Laurier, 31 July 2019
Tarantino’s latest film reimagines 1969 Los Angeles and the disintegration of the traditional studio system.
Wild Rose and Yesterday: A Scottish singer seeks country music fame and a world without the Beatles
By Joanne Laurier, 22 July 2019
Two recent British-made films delve into the field of popular music. Works about such a subject can be a means of getting at social life from an unusual and unorthodox point of view.
Rocketman (Elton John) and Pavarotti, about the operatic tenor: Two lives in music
By Joanne Laurier, 7 June 2019
Rocketman is a generally entertaining, fantastical tribute to the music of Elton John, one of the world’s most popular musical artists. Ron Howard has made a documentary about legendary Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti.
The Eyes of Orson Welles: A markedly political approach to the American filmmaker …
… and John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky (about John Lennon’s 1971 album Imagine )
By Joanne Laurier, 17 May 2019
A generally left-wing figure shaped by the Great Depression and the impact of the Russian Revolution, filmmaker Orson Welles (1915-1985) was artistically demanding and for the most part found Hollywood nightmarish.
Some films from the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival—Part 1
Paper Flags, Tehran: City of Love and Belmonte—Alienation, loneliness and other problems
By David Walsh, 26 April 2019
Paper Flags, Tehran: City of Love and Belmonte—three films from France, Iran and Uruguay, respectively—were screened at the recent San Francisco film festival.
The Widow: Kate Beckinsale’s journey into African danger
By Joanne Laurier, 18 March 2019
Amazon Video and British ITV’s new eight-episode series is a political thriller set primarily in the war-torn and impoverished Democratic Republic of Congo.
Cold War: Many unstated assumptions about politics and history
Also, Capernaum and Stan and Ollie…
By Joanne Laurier, 8 February 2019
Cold War, directed by Polish-born Pawel Pawlikowski, is a film about two artists caught up in Cold War culture and politics in the 1950s.
Bird Box and Hold the Dark: Looking at things in the face or not
By Joanne Laurier, 19 January 2019
Netflix began streaming Bird Box on December 21 and, a week later, reported that the film had the largest seven-day viewership, 45 million accounts, of any of its original productions.
Netflix’s The Innocent Man: The American injustice system
By Joanne Laurier, 5 January 2019
The six-episode documentary released in December is based on bestselling novelist John Grisham’s only non-fiction effort. The miniseries chronicles the wrongful incarceration of four men in the 1980s in Ada, Oklahoma.
Wildlife: American dreams and discouragement
And Can You Ever Forgive Me?
By Joanne Laurier, 13 December 2018
Set in 1960 in Great Falls, Montana, Wildlife is a relatively somber look at postwar American life. Can You Ever Forgive Me? focuses on an eccentric forger.
Maria by Callas: A documentary on the life of the famed opera singer
By Joanne Laurier, 8 December 2018
Tom Volf’s Maria by Callas, about the legendary Greek-American opera soprano, has opened in the US.
Green Book and At Eternity’s Gate: Overcoming racism and painter Vincent van Gogh’s final years
By Joanne Laurier, 29 November 2018
Set in 1962, Green Book is a heartfelt film about the relationship between a famed black pianist and his white, working class chauffeur. In At Eternity’s Gate, artist Julian Schnabel treats the last period in the life of legendary Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh.
House of Cards Season 6: The King is dead, long live the Queen!
By Joanne Laurier, 10 November 2018
The sixth and final season of House of Cards is now streaming on Netflix. The firing of lead actor Kevin Spacey along with the #MeToo and anti-Russia campaigns have had a considerable impact on the series.
Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s A Season in France: The human cost of the refugee crisis
By Joanne Laurier, 24 October 2018
Having assured his kids they will be welcomed in France, Abbas, a refugee from the Central African Republic, encounters the opposite: a horrible web of bureaucracy and personal abasement.
Paul Greengrass’s 22 July: Neo-fascist mass murder in Norway
By Joanne Laurier, 18 October 2018
The Netflix fiction feature 22 July recreates the attacks in Norway on July 22, 2011, perpetrated by neo-Nazi Anders Breivik, during which he murdered 77 people, including 69 youth.
Toronto International Film Festival 2018: Part 6
The Trial and Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz—An early Stalinist frame-up on film and the Nuremberg tribunal against the Nazis
By Joanne Laurier, 16 October 2018
Sergei Loznitsa’s documentary The Trial treats the so-called Industrial Party Trial in the USSR in 1930. The last surviving Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946) prosecutor is the subject of Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz .
Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind: “It’s too late to be sane. Too late.”
By Joanne Laurier, 21 August 2018
Robin Williams (1951–2014) was an exceptional comic whose ability to create personalities and move among them seemed at times almost supernatural. He contained within himself an apparently infinite number of human types.
Survivors Guide to Prison: The American nightmare
By Joanne Laurier, 22 June 2018
This documentary exposé of the US prison and criminal justice system includes a host of celebrities commenting on the phenomenon of mass incarceration.
Fifty years since the release of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey
By Joanne Laurier, 13 June 2018
2001: A Space Odyssey attempts to encompass four million years of human evolution, from prehuman man-apes in Africa, through to 21st-century space travelers.
Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard: The cruelty of the motion picture business
By Joanne Laurier, 18 May 2018
The story of a struggling Hollywood screenwriter and his deadly encounter with a delusional silent film star.
1945: The horrors of the Holocaust in Hungary
By Joanne Laurier, 11 May 2018
It soon comes to light that certain townspeople had a hand in the deportation of Jews from the Hungarian village to concentration camps and benefited in the confiscation of their property.
Tully, A Quiet Place, You Were Never Really Here: Every poor film is poor in its own way
By Joanne Laurier, 7 May 2018
It’s not clear that good movies resemble one another, but recent history certainly suggests there are many different ways in which films can be weak.
Vertigo: Sixty years since the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s disturbing classic
By Joanne Laurier, 30 March 2018
Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Vertigo, endures as one of the most troubling American films of the postwar period.
Wonder Wheel: Woody Allen’s latest film—and the campaign to drive him out of the film industry
By Joanne Laurier, 17 March 2018
Woody Allen’s newest film, Wonder Wheel, set in the 1950s, involves four characters whose unhappy lives become entwined in Coney Island—New York’s iconic amusement park.
Steven Spielberg’s The Post: To reveal government secrets and lies or not?
By Joanne Laurier, 17 January 2018
The new film recounts the internal struggle at the Washington Post over whether or not to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
All the Money in the World—above all, the “expunging” of Kevin Spacey—and The Shape of Water
By Joanne Laurier, 5 January 2018
Probably the most important thing about Ridley Scott’s new film, an account of the 1973 kidnapping of J. Paul Getty III, is the decision to erase Spacey’s performance. The Shape of Water is a charming “fairy tale,” with anti-authoritarian overtones.
Short films considered for Academy Award nominations: Emmett Till, a Jack London story and an isolated child
By Joanne Laurier, 3 January 2018
Ten films have been voted onto the Academy Award short list in the “Best Short Film (Live Action)” category.
Best films of 2017, and other matters
By David Walsh and Joanne Laurier, 30 December 2017
It is impossible to discuss the best films of the year without considering some big social and cultural issues.
Downsizing: Alexander Payne’s take on climate change, overpopulation, social inequality … and more
By Joanne Laurier, 23 December 2017
Payne’s latest work is a science-fiction satire that proposes to solve the earth’s ecological and other problems by “downsizing,” or physically shrinking, human beings.
Mudbound and life in post-World War II Mississippi: Dreaming “in brown”
… and a word on James Franco’s The Disaster Artist
By Joanne Laurier, 15 December 2017
Dee Rees’s Mudbound centers on two families, one black and one white, in rural Mississippi, immediately following World War II.The Disaster Artist is a decidedly slight effort.
The Man Who Invented Christmas: Charles Dickens and the writing of A Christmas Carol
By Joanne Laurier, 8 December 2017
Directed by Bharat Nalluri, the film is a biographical fantasy that brings a reinvention of A Christmas Carol (1843), with Dickens as a central character, to the screen.
75 years since the release of Hollywood classic Casablanca
“And what if you track down these men and kill them? ... Even Nazis can’t kill that fast”
By Joanne Laurier, 22 November 2017
Michael Curtiz’s 1942 beloved melodrama, Casablanca, celebrating its 75th anniversary, was recently shown in select cinemas nationwide in the US.
Thank You for Your Service: How many victims are there of America’s ongoing wars?
By Joanne Laurier, 9 November 2017
Jason Hall’s directorial debut, Thank You for Your Service, is a drama about three soldiers returning from the Iraq War and their difficulties adjusting to civilian life.
Flint: How much of the social crime does the film present?
Lifetime movie on the water disaster will air October 28
By Joanne Laurier, 27 October 2017
The film, directed by Bruce Beresford, was inspired by the ongoing Flint water crisis and bases itself more immediately on a February 2016 Time magazine report, “The Poisoning of an American City.”
Toronto International Film Festival: Part 6
A Season in France, Catch the Wind, Arrhythmia, Sweet Country: The refugee crisis, social disintegration in Russia…
By Joanne Laurier, 11 October 2017
The never-ending wars in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa have driven millions to seek what they perceive to be more stable conditions in Western Europe.
Barbet Schroeder’s Amnesia: The trauma of German history
By Joanne Laurier, 7 August 2017
Set in the early 1990s, Amnesia is an exploration of German historical memory and the impact of the legacy of Nazism on sections of the middle class after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit: Mind-numbing violence and racial politics
By Joanne Laurier, 28 July 2017
Bigelow’s film is a fictionalized account of an incident that occurred during the July 1967 rebellion in Detroit, the cold-blooded murder of three young black men by police at the Algiers Motel.
Beatriz at Dinner: Not the sort of resistance that amounts to much
By Joanne Laurier, 12 July 2017
Directed by Miguel Arteta (Cedar Rapids) and featuring Salma Hayek and John Lithgow, the new film promotes a New Age-type opposition to a Trump-like figure.
Netflix series Dear White People: Self-pity in the service of social climbing
By Joanne Laurier, 24 May 2017
The first season of the new Netflix 10-part series, Dear White People, an expansion of Justin Simien’s 2014 movie, concerns a group of black students at a fictional, predominantly white, Ivy League college.
San Francisco International Film Festival—Part 4
Dziga Vertov’s The Man with a Movie Camera: One of the films you must see!
By David Walsh and Joanne Laurier, 6 May 2017
A highlight of the recent San Francisco film festival was the screening of Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov’s masterpiece, The Man with a Movie Camera (1929), at the historic Castro Theatre.
National Bird, about drone warfare, currently available on PBS “Independent Lens”
By Joanne Laurier, 5 May 2017
Sonia Kennebeck’s disturbing documentary, National Bird, can be viewed until May 16 on PBS’s “Independent Lens” web site.
San Francisco International Film Festival—Part 2
Muhi—Generally Temporary, or, a real concern for human suffering
By Joanne Laurier, 29 April 2017
The film focuses on a young Palestinian boy from Gaza, whose arms and legs have been amputated and who remains in limbo in an Israeli hospital.
The Zookeeper’s Wife: Life and heroism in wartime Warsaw
By Joanne Laurier, 5 April 2017
The Zookeeper’s Wife recounts the true story of the rescue of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi invasion of Poland that began in 1939.
Lyrical and left-wing film
Nicholas Ray’s They Live by Night (1948): “They’re thieves, just like us”
By Joanne Laurier, 29 March 2017
A viewing of Nicholas Ray’s iconic 1948 film They Live by Night is a refreshing antidote to the current trivia, social indifference and identity politics.
Revolution: New Art for a New World—A careless, unserious treatment of Russian Revolutionary art
By Joanne Laurier and David Walsh, 17 March 2017
British filmmaker Margy Kinmonth is out of her depth in her documentary about Russian avant-garde art.
Zhang Yimou’s The Great Wall: Issues bound up with a major Chinese film production
By Joanne Laurier, 23 February 2017
Set in ancient China, Zhang Yimou’s new work is a visually arresting, large-scale action film undermined by its general cartoonishness.
Pedro Almodóvar’s Julieta: A mother and daughter … and what else?
By Joanne Laurier, 16 February 2017
Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film, Julieta, is a family melodrama that seeks to explore themes of guilt, alienation and absence, but with very limited results.
The generally lackluster Gold and 20th Century Women
By Joanne Laurier, 1 February 2017
Set in the 1980s, Gold is a fictionalized account of a notorious mining fraud. 20th Century Women is a trite “coming of age” piece located in 1979 California.
Best films of 2016
By David Walsh and Joanne Laurier, 31 December 2016
Although technologies have sped up and made possible many things, they cannot by themselves overcome the gap between reality and its artistic assimilation and representation.
Manchester by the Sea: The suffering of an ordinary man
By Joanne Laurier, 10 December 2016
Kenneth Lonergan’s film is a humane examination of the suffering of an ordinary man, whose terrible personal tragedy has emotionally crippled him.
The “madness” of war dimly understood in Hacksaw Ridge and the world set right by aliens in Arrival
By Joanne Laurier, 17 November 2016
Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge is about the first and only conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor in World War II. Arrival is a feeble science fiction parable from Denis Villeneuve.
Loving: “Tell the court I love my wife…”
By Joanne Laurier, 5 November 2016
Jeff Nichols’ film is a fictional recreation of the landmark case in Virginia in the 1950s and 1960s, which ultimately led to the striking down of state laws banning interracial marriage in the US.
Denial and the assault on historical truth
By Joanne Laurier, 22 October 2016
A fictional account of American academic and author Deborah Lipstadt’s legal battle with British Holocaust denier David Irving in 2000 in London.
The Dressmaker, The Girl on the Train: The “return of the native” and other issues
By Joanne Laurier, 15 October 2016
In The Dressmaker, the art of beautifying the human body is the weapon of choice to vanquish intolerance and ignorance. The Girl on the Train is a murder mystery centered around a New York City suburb.
Clint Eastwood’s Sully: The “Miracle on the Hudson” dramatized
By Joanne Laurier, 28 September 2016
Eastwood directs a fictional version of the January 2009 incident in which pilot Chesley Sullenberger landed a commuter jet in the Hudson River, saving the lives of 155 passengers and crew.
Oliver Stone’s Snowden: The NSA is “running a dragnet on the whole world”
By Joanne Laurier and David Walsh, 20 September 2016
Veteran American filmmaker Oliver Stone has made a movie about National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden.
A film version of Philip Roth’s Indignation: Young lives overshadowed by war
By Joanne Laurier, 2 September 2016
The new movie, Indignation, is a relatively faithful adaptation of Philip Roth’s 2008 novel, which examines war, religion and repression in post-war America.
Café Society: Woody Allen’s love letter to the wealthy and famous
By Joanne Laurier, 12 August 2016
The film, set in the 1930s, takes its title from legendary clubs in Manhattan that welcomed black and white artists and performers. Unfortunately, the film is the opposite of everything those clubs stood for.
Captain Fantastic: An anti-establishment superhero?
By Joanne Laurier, 30 July 2016
Writer-director Matt Ross’s film is a semi-anarchistic tale about a family’s “off-the-grid” existence in the Pacific Northwest.
Alf Sjöberg’s Miss Julie (1951) and G. W. Pabst’s The Threepenny Opera (1931): Films worth noting … and seeing
By Joanne Laurier, 23 June 2016
Swedish filmmaker Alf Sjöberg’s Miss Julie is based on the play by August Strindberg. Austrian filmmaker G.W. Pabst’s film The Threepenny Opera is an intricate movie version of the legendary Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill work.
Love & Friendship: An early Jane Austen work adapted
By Joanne Laurier, 8 June 2016
In England in 1790, Lady Susan Vernon, widowed and penniless, schemes to reverse her fortunes.
San Francisco International Film Festival—Part 4
Maggie’s Plan, Frank & Lola, along with Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932)
By Joanne Laurier, 20 May 2016
Some not very good new films—and better old ones.
Money Monster: Who are the criminals?
By Joanne Laurier, 18 May 2016
Money Monster is the latest film to depict the consequences of the 2008 financial crash and the criminal manipulations of the financial elite.
San Francisco International Film Festival—Part 2
The Return, about released prisoners, and other social dramas (or comedies)
By Joanne Laurier, 13 May 2016
In a number of the films screened at the festival, their creators were evidently overwhelmed by the disintegrating social structures in some of the most impoverished parts of the world.
Elvis & Nixon, A Hologram for the King: Trivializing culture, history
By Joanne Laurier, 6 May 2016
Two ostensible comedies, Elvis & Nixon and A Hologram for the King, drain their stories of their most important social and historical content.
Midnight Special: “Shining the light” on unfreedom in America
By Joanne Laurier, 15 April 2016
Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special is a disturbing science fiction thriller that conveys deep anxiety about the state of the world.
Eye in the Sky: The liberal war on terror
By Joanne Laurier, 31 March 2016
Eye in the Sky is a political-military thriller in which British and American officials weigh the consequences of a drone strike in Nairobi, Kenya.
Atom Egoyan’s Remember: A Nazi criminal hunted…
By Joanne Laurier, 25 March 2016
Two Auschwitz concentration camp survivors plot to kill the SS guard who murdered their families in Atom Egoyan’s latest film, Remember, a psychological drama.
Two poor films on the Afghanistan war—Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and A War—and Jonás Cuarón’s Desierto
By Joanne Laurier, 5 March 2016
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a semi-comic treatment of the tragic Afghan conflict; A War from Denmark is ostensibly a more serious effort. Desierto takes up the war against Mexican immigrants.
The Coen Brothers’ Hail Caesar!: The “Passion” of a film studio troubleshooter
By Joanne Laurier, 9 February 2016
Hail Caesar!, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, is a comedy about Hollywood set in the early 1950s.
Drone, a Norwegian-made documentary: “We just made orphans out of all these children”
By Joanne Laurier, 29 January 2016
The documentary brings together opponents of the CIA drone program and includes interviews with two former US Air Force drone pilots.
Charlie Kaufman’s often charming, moving Anomalisa (and Michael Moore’s feeble Where to Invade Next)
By Joanne Laurier, 23 January 2016
Anomalisa is an adult animated film created with stop-motion puppetry centering around an angst-ridden, self-help author. Where to Invade Next is a non-comment on Washington’s never-ending wars.
The Revenant: Are we all savages? (And Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth )
By Joanne Laurier, 16 January 2016
The Revenant is a sensationalized account of the life of American fur trapper Hugh Glass, who famously survived a mauling by a bear. Youth is a banal meditation on aging.
Carol and The Danish Girl: Real problems, but the danger of exclusivism
By Joanne Laurier, 8 January 2016
The two films address significant subjects that could potentially shed light on society and its moral and psychological condition.
The Big Short: The criminality of Wall Street and the crash of 2008
By Joanne Laurier, 31 December 2015
Adam McKay’s new film The Big Short is a hard-hitting comedy-drama about the 2008 financial meltdown.
Best films of 2015
By David Walsh and Joanne Laurier, 31 December 2015
The most interesting films we saw in 2015, both those that played in a movie theater in the US and those not yet distributed.
Brooklyn: Irish immigration through rose-colored glasses
By Joanne Laurier, 10 December 2015
Brooklyn focuses on a young Irish girl who emigrates to America in the early 1950s and struggles with homesickness and adjusting to an alien environment.
Spotlight: A telling exposé of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church
By Joanne Laurier, 3 December 2015
Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight is a taut, quasi-political thriller that chronicles the Boston Globe’s 2002 exposure of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the Boston area.
The Wrecking Crew: The “secret star-making machine” of 1960s pop music
By Joanne Laurier, 14 November 2015
Denny Tedesco’s lively documentary is a heartfelt tribute to a group of studio musicians in Los Angeles, nicknamed the Wrecking Crew, who were behind some of the biggest hits of the 1960s.
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