Sensibly scaled portrait of the Greek soprano, captured well past her prime, when she was involved in a project of dubious artistic integrity, lip-syncing on film to an earlier recording of Carmen. Fanny Ardant, as dark and dramatic-looking as the real diva, conveys the appropriate amount of passion -- which …
Did George Van Tassel vanish after experimenting with a time machine of his own design? Jonathan Berman's documentary tries to find an answer.
Director Luca Guadagnino’s sunnily seductive ode to eros tells the story of a summer romance between 17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet, looking 15) and 24-year-old Oliver (Armie Hammer, looking 30). Or rather, it explores the dynamics between them, operating at a cool remove from its own frank depiction of desperate teenage …
Jack London’s semi-autobiographical The Call of the Wild, published in 1903, was based on an arduous year the author spent in the Yukon, looking to find a cure for Gold Rush fever — a time when a man’s best friend was his sled dog. The novel was told from the …
Harrison Ford stars opposite a computer generated dog... or is it a live-action dog working with a replicant? Time will tell.
Calvary presents the viewer with a very particular week in the life of a small-town priest in modern Ireland. Father James — played with thickened, toughened, but still lively and sharp-witted humanity by Brendan Gleeson — labors, as we all do, under a sentence of death. The difference in his …
The dream had been bobbing around in Torren Martyn and Aiyana Powell’s heads for a year or two. It seemed pretty simple: learn how to sail, then acquire a boat and head off on an adventure exploring waves in exotic locations.
It is not altogether easy to do such an uninteresting version of such an invincible story as the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot affair. One slight handicap here is the cast (Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero), none of whom can sing, but all of whom engage in some intense competition to exhibit the …
At the outset, cinematographer Kirsten Johnson asks us to consider this collection of footage she shot for various documentaries as her memoir, because while only a few actually depict her personal life (as mother to twins and as daughter of an Alzheimer’s sufferer), she says that “these are the images …
True story, mid-19th-century, about an upper-class Argentine debutante who runs off with a priest. After the tough-talking historical prologue, the misty soft-focus photography might be seen as ironic, but this is an interpretation harder to maintain when things get around to the remarkably smooth passion-consummation in a jouncing horse-drawn coach. …
Greta Garbo reminds you of a swan (she's all throat), and Robert Taylor reminds you of a clothes dummy (stiffly uncomplaining), in this enervated version of the Dumas fils play about a Parisian courtesan who sensuously savors every morsel of life on her way (cough) to an early demise. The …
Radley Metzger's deluxe, air-conditioned model of the durable romantic drama by Dumas fils (Metzger's second recruitment, after Carmen Baby, from the ranks of the classics), updated to the pop-art and jet-set era of sterilized, plastic, inflatable furniture and of sexual partners of similar description. Daniele Gaubert, Nino Castelnuovo.
Isabelle Adjani at the edge of madness again (edge of petulance for a long time before that). A feminist lesson in art history, giving us to understand that the gifted protégée and mistress of Auguste Rodin would have been recognized as a greater sculptor than he if only she had …
If the goal is to reheat a chestnut, the least a director can do is hold the material to the flame. That’s precisely how Francisco Varone’s debut feature manages to keep fresh this timeworn two-hander about a pair of mismatched souls placed in close confines and sent on a spiritual …