Best-edited sequence of the year?
If you’re a director or editor, you must watch Manchester by the Sea (4 ½ stars on 0-5 scale), if only for a 15-minute segment in the middle of the film (the 49-minute to the 64-minute mark). I won’t ruin the surprise except to say it’s when we learn about the haunted past of the […]
Hidden truths?
Hidden Figures (1 ¾ stars on 0-5 scale), about the racial struggles of three extraordinary women, has been both a critical and commercial success. Directed by Theodore Melfi and based on the nonfiction book by Margot Lee Shetterly, the film tells the story of Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary […]
Making noise about ‘Silence’
Gather up all your patience and maturity, forget you live in the 21st century and prepare yourself for an unexpectedly profound and hypnotic cinematic experience: Go see Martin Scorsese’s Silence (4 ¼ stars). Some critics have called it an unstructured slog, and they are right. The nearly three-hour runtime feels every bit that long, and […]
Wherefore art thou, Peter Cushing?
If you read my review of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, you will recall that I labeled the digital re-creation of Peter Cushing (and a young Carrie Fisher) as terrific, in all senses of the word. The technology that made it possible is both amazing and frightening, considering the effect it will undoubtedly have […]