All in all, Color Out of Space is only OK.
Film Review: 2020 Oscar-Nominated Short Films — No More Than Adequate
Who can explain why two of the five nominees are set in Tunisia? Or why several of them seem like student films?
Book Review: Rereading Walker Percy’s “The Moviegoer”
It’s Walker Percy’s subversive strategy to stick us with a decided non-hero and have us gradually appreciate his non-participatory status.
Film Review: “Joker” — Here Come the Killer Clowns
Screenwriter-director Todd Phillips knows well what he is doing in the calculated way he escalates the bloodshed in Joker.
Film Review: A Rundown from the San Sebastian International Film Festival
How is this festival kept off the map from my US colleagues?
Film Review: “Love, Antosha” — A Poignant Tribute to Actor Anton Yelchin
This tender documentary makes an airtight case that cinema has lost a very special person.
Book Review: “The Earth Dies Streaming” — Insistent Originality
I happily read The Earth Dies Streaming through, all 433 pages of acute, often brilliant writing. And also often funny as hell.
Film Review: “Echo in the Canyon” — LA’s Land of the Giants
Echo in the Canyon is a sublimely moving documentary celebration of a nonpareil moment when, a half century ago, the Southern California scene boasted giants of music.
Film Review: Report from the 2019 Provincetown Film Festival
The P-Town Fest was the site of several first-rate documentaries.
Film Review: “The Souvenir” — Fear of Melodrama
Joanna Hogg refuses by aesthetic principle to put a lot of inflection into her scenes, steering them away from melodrama and even heated drama. As a result, some episodes are half-baked, sketchy, and flat.