Tim Jackson
Cormac McCarthy’s rambling but brilliant screenplay is given vigorous direction by Ridley Scott, whose elegant visual style captures the tense downward spiral of the film’s doomed characters.
With 12 YEARS A SLAVE, Steve McQueen, the brilliant British director of HUNGER and SHAME, has probably created the first masterpiece of the new black cinema.
Teaming up allows Bridge Rep, as a new company, to do a much, much bigger show than we might ordinarily be able to do: we can offer our audiences a large ensemble piece like The Libertine, which would be beyond our reach otherwise.
Why does John Merrick get a room in the London Hospital for the rest of his life? Because he’s charming and he’s witty, while the pinheads next door to him didn’t fare that well.
Musician Levon Helm’s folksy ideas about life, the anecdotes he shares, his reverence for American music and for the friends and comrades who gather around him, are inspirational.
Lindsay Lohan is prostituting herself to a dreary vision of a Tinseltown shorn of even flickers of glory. And I like that.
The understated soundtrack by Texas musician Daniel Hart and the ominous cinematography of Bradford Young complement director David Lowrey’s keen sense of pacing.
In this brilliantly written play, Kenneth Lonergan finds both the humor and angst in the moral muddle generated by the Reagan Revolution.
Jobs is not an awful movie so much as an awkward one — it falls short of its intent, which I assume is to dramatize the tenacity of genius.
Overall, Elysium is an entertaining distraction posing as a meaningful global allegory.
Music Commentary: Brian Wilson’s Legacy Thrives — 2026 Reissues Reviewed