Romance Films
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Cold War (R)
Paweł Pawlikowski’s austerely beautiful Cold War begins with villagers performing a folk song about a man standing at his lover’s door, begging her to “open up.” This sense of longing courses through the film: to watch Cold War is to feel oneself hovering on the threshold of something mysterious, inaccessible, and slow to open itself […]
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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (PG)
Half-Blood Prince is the first, and perhaps only, Harry Potter film to feel like it isn’t trying to be a good “Harry Potter film” and just does its best at being a good film. The seventh film has a similar tone, and Azkaban encapsulates what it is to be a Harry Potter film the best, but my point stands. In the sixth cinematic installment of the franchise, Harry Potter and his friends are ordinary British teens placed in extraordinary circumstances, but instead of focusing on the circumstances, the film chooses to focus on the teens – and is much better off because of it.
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Let the Right One In (R)
Early in Let the Right One In, a young bully asks his victim, “What are you looking at?” Soon we find the victim, a dispassionate boy named Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant), fantasizing about turning the question back on his tormentor. His rehearsed vengeance is overheard by the vampire Eli (Lina Leandersson), and well into her courtship […]
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Moonstruck (PG)
A romantic comedy starring Nicholas Cage and Cher has no business being this good. That tends to be the sentiment, anyhow. But it is this good, and so are they. Cher is lovely as a woman whose frank outlook on life can’t hide a romantic streak. Cage’s mania is expertly channeled, giving him exuberant ideals to proclaim […]
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The Shape of Water (R)
Note To Readers: This review contains a frank investigation of a perverse film, and necessarily must describe some its perverse content and ideas. Given the film’s import and influence, the editor commends this review to readers who are old enough to have seen it. Younger readers who have not seen the film will not likely benefit from […]
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Phantom Thread (R)
Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the very best American filmmakers working today, and quite possibly the most interesting. His mastery of the craft is nearly unparalleled, placing him on that elusive, immortal plane where the likes of the Coen brothers, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg currently reside. Yet what sets him apart, even among such esteemed company, is how perplexingly eclectic he is.
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The Lady from Shanghai (Not Rated)
Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai begins with the sea, roiling and foaming beneath the opening credits. Many films noir are laden with existential anxieties; indeed, fatalism and cynicism are as commonplace in the genre as stylized lighting, bantering innuendoes, and convoluted crimes.
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Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (PG-13)
Recently, FilmFisher editor Joshua Gibbs wrote a piece defending film critics against a common accusation: “This film was just plain fun. Why don’t you snobby film critics get it?” I stand by Gibbs’ argument in that piece, and would like to make an addendum: it is difficult to make a film that is truly fun. […]
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Paper Towns: The Teen Whisperer Mumbles (PG-13)
I know only of John Green what Hollywood has told me, which means Paper Towns is but my second venture into the mind of “the Teen Whisperer,” as Margot Talbot once referred to him in The New Yorker. As with The Fault in Our Stars, the characters in Paper Towns are self-reflective and hungry, but […]
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Belle (PG)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen-era dramas attract large and devoted audiences. Add to the mix a real-life heroine who is the daughter of a British aristocrat and African slave, and the potential for tear-jerking, romantic moments grows exponentially. If only Belle, directed by Ghanaian Amma Asante, had a clever script or […]
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The Fault In Our Stars (PG-13)
The memento mori (“remember you will die”) is a significant part of Puritan spirituality as well as the monastic life. The benefits of reminding yourself that you will die is written into numerous ascetic prayers and the “Dialog Between Christ, A Youth and the Devil” which concludes The New England Primer both draw heavily on […]
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Stalingrad (R)
When we were discussing Stalingrad, a friend referred to it as “Saving Comrade Katya.” To an extent, his comparison to Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan works. Both are violent films set in turning points of World War II, both focus on a small group of soldiers, and both attempt to depict the war’s brutality while maintaining […]
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What If… (PG)
In Nancy Meyers’ What Women Want, Mel Gibson played a male chauvinist who was miraculously granted the ability to hear the thoughts of women as though those thoughts were being expressed verbally. Gibson was Nick Marshall, ad exec and lady killer, who never gave a second thought to what women wanted, but took what he […]
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How I Live Now (R)
When I was still quite young, no more than ten or eleven, little excited my soul more than the sound of a fire alarm going off at school. We would exit the building quickly and stand in the parking lot, surveying the school. Someone would claim they saw smoke, and we would all say we […]
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Labor Day (PG-13)
If the development of an artist’s career did in fact advance logically, Jason Reitman’s next film would be a new version of Peter Pan wryly punctuated by voice-over commentary from an older, slightly worldlier Wendy Darling. All of his major films (excepting 2007’s Juno) have a markedly boyish tone to them, and the nature of […]
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Winter’s Tale (PG-13)
In his adaptation of Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale, Akiva Goldsman shows himself the true student of longtime collaborator Ron Howard, whom he has for many years served as principal screenwriter. What unites these two men is evidently a shared attraction to stories driven more by emotional force than any question of great moral interest. Any […]