A worthy companion to Max Lewkowicz’s Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles, the 2019 documentary that placed the origins of the 1964 Broadway play into historical context. Picking up where Lewkowicz left off, Daniel Raims’ expedition carries us from stage to cinema. The film version was directed by Norman Jewison who, …
Watching contract players Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan mechanically mate is as erotically unfulfilling as studying the reproductive habits of amoeba. The promising “Revenge of the Sub” subplot hinted at in the trailer takes up maybe five minutes of screen time. The rest is squandered on tortured Dornan promising he’ll …
Freed at last, as moviedom’s favorite boy-beats-girl franchise draws to a halting climax. Christian (Jamie Dornan) and Ana (Dakota Johnson) tie the knot, but audiences anticipating auto-eroticism are soon asphyxiated by 90 minutes of panoramic pans across exotic locales. Add to this a few yawn-generating softcore spankings before closing on …
A pair of mismatched, strikingly bland Hollywood ingenues (Dakota Johnson and Ryan Seacrest mimeo Jamie Dornan) drag audiences kicking and screaming through a crash course on alternative lifestyles. The title refers to the color your hair will turn while struggling to get through this endless, thinly-spread dollop of homogenized saltpeter. …
For a moment, Shira’s (Hadas Yaron) dream man stands opposite her, a rabbi’s son nervously using the tzitzit sticking out from beneath his vest to polish his specs. All this changes when her older sister dies in childbirth and their mother (Irit Sheleg), desperate to maintain control over her surviving …
Annette Bening stars as the sadly forgotten Hollywood bad girl, Gloria Grahame, an actress whose assertive sensuality lit up the screen in such memorable films as It's a Wonderful Life, The Big Heat, and The Bad and the Beautiful, for which she took home a deserved supporting-actress Oscar. Nobody looks …
Valued assistant or obsequious stooge? Tony Zierra’s documentary answers the question. On the surface, Leon Vitale was to Stanley Kubrick what Jilly Rizzo was to Frank Sinatra: a camp-following aide-de-camp, always eager to empty the boss’s ashtrays or gratefully accept another twenty lashes from his master’s flailing tongue. (According to …
We open with a quote from Primo Levi, an Auschwitz survivor, that couldn’t be more pertinent if it were spoken today: “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions.” …
Same carnage, different kids. This time the torture-porn embraces alternative forms of medicine such as acupuncture and laser surgery (if you have a thing about eyes, it’s best to close yours). There’s a terrific mounting sight gag (did you hear the one about the gymnast, a thumbtack, and a balance …
While on a short layover in Paris, American writer James Lord agrees to be subject of Alberto Giacometti’s titular swan-sketch. What stars as a short stay plays out into an extended yawn. Stanley Tucci steps behind the camera and transforms his original screenplay into something akin to a Fathom Event …
A post-apocalyptic amalgamation of Tom Hanks’ greatest hits (notably Turner and Hooch and Cast Away) lies at the heart of this wake up call to climate change deniers. (Perhaps the non-believers in the crowd might finally face reality if the message comes cloaked in sci-fi trappings and with the Walter …
Not knowing the box he bid on contained the negatives of an uncharted street photographer whose pictures would later become his own private money-spinner, geeky Chicago real estate agent John Maloof hit artistic and financial paydirt after essentially purchasing a stranger’s life at auction. Vivian Maier, an eccentric serial nanny …
Upon catching hubby in the arms of her best friend, snooty ‘Lady’ Sandra (Imelda Staunton) hops a train to bunk with the commoner sister (Celia Imrie) she hasn’t seen in years. A sideways glance at the poster was all it took before I began to wave away the stink of …
Lampedusa, located 70 kilometers off the African coast and 120 kilometers from Sicily, has become a landing point for over 400,000 African and Middle Eastern migrants, all believing they’ll find safe harbor somewhere in Europe. Having spent months filming on the island, director Gianfranco Rosi returns with this quietly observed …
They were the world's only volcanologist couple, and it was their mutual passion that ultimately brought about their demise. The love shared by Katia and Maurice Krafft wasn’t going to burn out of them, it was only going to get hotter. They saw a side of the planet few will …