Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Look Into My Eyes’ Review: Emotional Rescue

      by

      This fascinating documentary that profiles seven New York City psychics is both profoundly sad and surprisingly hopeful.Before seeing “Look Into My Eyes,” Lana Wilson’s fascinating portrait of seven New York City psychics, I had vague expectations of a humorous overview of human gullibility. Or maybe a useful primer on how to identify the grifters from the gifted. What I did not expect was to emerge with not only a deeper understanding of this strange calling, but far greater empathy for those who seek out its practitioners.Because, make no mistake, this is a profoundly sad movie, one soaked in loss and the longing for human connection. Yet it is also surprisingly hopeful, as Wilson gently frames the psychic-client relationship as one of mutual benefit. In cramped apartments and spare rental spaces, her subjects listen as intently as any therapist to the troubles of strangers. But later, when we visit the psychics outside the sessions (most provide the service for free and have other jobs), we learn that the healing, when it occurs, goes both ways.Their candor, as they divulge why they chose to become mediums, is both touching and revelatory. Whether bruised by a devastating loss or a lack of community, they find solace in the metaphysical. One woman, a Christian, explains that attending her first seance “felt like church.” Another channels the resourcefulness learned during a horrific childhood with a drug-addicted parent. Notably, all are involved in some way with the visual and performing arts. This may be simply a consequence of the movie’s location, but Wilson, who knows her way around performers (she has made documentaries about Taylor Swift and Brooke Shields), seizes the moment.“Is it at all like improv?” she asks brightly, encouraging us to view the readings through a different lens. Throughout, the film’s gaze is tender and its tone respectful as Wilson — who experienced her first psychic reading the morning after Donald Trump became president — interjects rarely and never during a session. Like Orna Guralnik’s troubled clients in Showtime’s “Couples Therapy,” these brave supplicants willingly expose the demons they struggle to exorcise.Their stories are often poignant and sometimes traumatic, like the E.R. nurse who’s haunted by the memory of a child’s violent death. Yet whether it’s the Chinese adoptee wondering if her birth parents ever think of her, or the young man voicing a similar concern about his re-homed bearded dragon, most appear comforted by their psychic’s responses, be they intuitive or occult. Though it can’t be much fun to learn that your grandmother is still complaining about your husband from beyond the grave.I was especially moved by the woman who expressed deep distress over her Boston terrier’s refusal to walk on a leash.“She loves me, right?” she asks her psychic, wistfully. Maybe that’s the only thing any of us needs to know.Look Into My EyesRated R for heartbreaking stories and heartwarming connections. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Lover of Men’ Review: The Heart of President Lincoln

      by

      Subtitled “The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln,” the film gathers an array of historians to argue that Lincoln had romantic relationships with men.About a century ago, the poet and biographer Carl Sandburg remarked upon the “streaks of lavender” in Abraham Lincoln and a Southern gentleman named Joshua Speed. Aspiring beyond suggestion, Shaun Peterson’s “Lover of Men” mobilizes an impressive array of historians to argue that Lincoln had romantic relationships with men that affected his life deeply.Four men are at the heart of Peterson’s playfully titled film, most prominently Speed, who bunked with Lincoln for four years in Springfield, Ill., and mentored the lawyer and budding politician. Lincoln’s sleeping arrangements recur as evidence in the film, like how he shared the presidential bed with his bodyguard, David Derickson, when his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, was away. (Lincoln also bonded with Billy Greene, whom he met at a general store early in his career, and Elmer E. Ellsworth, who clerked in his law office and later died a Union war hero.)Suggestive phrases in letters to, from and about Lincoln reflect the ardor and closeness in these relationships, and his grief upon their dissolution. Peterson also floods the film with re-enactments to illustrate Lincoln’s time with Speed and others. There is value in imagining this etched-in-granite statesman in emotionally vulnerable private moments, but the scenes, sometimes in slow-motion, are distractingly hokey and undermine the movie.The documentary tends to linger on some assertions about sexuality in Lincoln’s era while papering over others. But the general effort of bringing to light (and potentially to history books) an underrepresented part of American experience remains vital beyond defining Lincoln’s identity.Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham LincolnNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 50 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Hoard’ Review: Dirty Romancing

      by

      A spiraling teenager and a tenderhearted garbage collector bond over debris in this stunningly unconventional drama.Mothering and madness, trash and trauma erect an empire of filth in “Hoard,” Luna Carmoon’s gut-punchingly original first feature. In scenes that can shift from warily unsettling to plainly disgusting, Carmoon rubs our noses in the dreadful consequences of maternal dysfunction.For Maria (a captivating Lily-Beau Leach), the grotty home in London that she shares with her mother, Cynthia (Hayley Squires), may be rank and rodent-rich, but it’s filled with magic and love. Together, they sing and play games among the fruits of their nightly rummage through neighborhood dumpsters. At school, though, Maria is too ripe and sleep deprived to make friends.“I’m ashamed of us,” she complains to her mother. Yet “Hoard” is no parable of poverty, as we see when the film leaps forward 10 years to the mid-1990s and Maria, now a vivacious 18-year-old and played by the remarkable Saura Lightfoot Leon, is warmly settled with a loving foster mother (Samantha Spiro). This hard-won stability is threatened when Maria meets Michael (Joseph Quinn), a garbage collector and former foster child who is approaching 30 and on the verge of marriage. Drawn to the scent of each other’s damage, they begin to play their own increasingly dangerous games.Though at times squirmingly unpleasant, “Hoard” is never a drag. The insolence of the filmmaking and the artlessness of the leads energize a plot of stunning recklessness and unexpected humor. Combining joy and tragedy, realism and surrealism, Carmoon — who completed the film before she was 25 — loiters defiantly on incidents of distressing rawness. To Maria, trash is her turn-on, her safety blanket and the keeper of her memories, and Lightfoot Leon plays her with unselfconscious abandon. Like the heroine of David Wnendt’s provocative second feature, “Wetlands,” Maria is an eager explorer in the realm of the senses. She may sometimes gross you out, but you won’t easily look away.HoardNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘I’ll Be Right There’ Review: Her Maternal Commitment is Apparent

      by

      Edie Falco plays a matriarch bending over backward for her grown children in this uneven character study.Early in Barbara Loden’s classic indie film “Wanda” (1971), the emotionally dysregulated title character hitches a ride to the courthouse to surrender custody of her children.It is perhaps with a wink and a nudge that the protagonist of “I’ll Be Right There” shares a name with Loden’s character; in this sappy ode to supermoms, just spending a day apart from her grown children is enough to give Wanda (Edie Falco) a conniption.Directed by Brendan Walsh, the movie opens on Wanda escorting her family members through a series of minor crises. She sits with her mother, Grace (Jeannie Berlin), as a doctor delivers health news. Her pregnant daughter, Sarah (Kayli Carter), expects hand-holding through an anxiety attack. And her ne’er-do-well son, Mark (Charlie Tahan), must be bailed out after a mishap lands him in jail.Set in rural New York, “I’ll Be Right There” aspires to show how, even in a family of adults, matriarchs can come to act as a chauffeur, benefactor, peacekeeper and security blanket all in one. But the movie’s bigger revelation is how these relationships sometimes slip into codependence. For Wanda, being needed by her mom and kids gives life a purpose that she otherwise struggles to find.The screenplay, by Jim Beggarly, is uneven, and many of the movie’s jokes are spoiled by a conservative strain that finds Sarah hellbent against giving birth out of wedlock and Grace making light of Wanda sleeping with a woman. Even as the gifted actresses trade jabs and punchlines gamely, the moments leave a sour taste.I’ll Be Right ThereNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Front Room’ Review: A Force Too Malevolent for This Movie

      by

      Kathryn Hunter is enjoyably creepy in this new horror film starring Brandy Norwood. Too bad the rest of the freakouts are predictable.The first time that Kathryn Hunter appears in the ho-hum horror movie “The Front Room,” her head is forebodingly obscured by a veil. She’s at the funeral of her husband, who, you suspect, probably left this mortal coil unwillingly. It’s too bad that he couldn’t stick around longer because if he had, the poor guy would have been able to watch Hunter — as a flamboyantly malicious force named Solange — rapidly get her weird on, inching into the shadows like a malevolent spider while weaving a progressively stickier, ickier web.Hunter greatly enlivens “The Front Room,” so it’s too bad she is mostly relegated to supporting duties in this tale. Its featured attraction is Belinda (Brandy Norwood), an anthropology professor who quits in a fit of pique shortly after the story opens. She has her reasons, more or less; she feels understandably aggrieved and undervalued at work, but given that she’s pregnant, and that she and her husband, Norman (Andrew Burnap), need the money, it’s clear common sense isn’t her strong suit. This first impression deepens into an irksome trait when she and Norman learn that Solange — his stepmother — will help them out if she can move in with them. Since they’re cash-hungry, they agree; woo-woo trouble ensues.The writer-director twin brothers Sam and Max Eggers, making their feature directorial debut, have a grasp of the genre’s fundamentals: They know how to stage an unwelcoming house, and how to play with light and shadow. But either they don’t know or don’t care how easy is it for viewers to lose interest in characters who, like Belinda and Norman, consistently make wrong choices. It brings out the sadist in you (or maybe it’s just me), especially when those wrong choices are so obviously a matter of narrative contrivance and weak character development. (“The Front Room” is loosely based on a short story of the same title by Susan Hill about a couple who, inspired by a sermon, charitably take in a widowed relative.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Goldman Case’ Review: Sticking to the Facts

      by

      An electrifying courtroom drama based on a real 1976 case calls the very nature of equality and justice into question.Few settings are as omnipresent in screen entertainment as the courtroom. The halls of justice, the argumentation of lawyers, dramatic backroom dealings, the telling facial expressions of the jury — all of it makes for very good drama. (And sometimes comedy, too.)Why? There are obvious hooks: salacious crimes, shocking lies, sudden gasps when a hidden revelation turns the case on its head. But there’s also something epic, almost mythic, about what goes on in a courtroom. Questions as old as Hammurabi or Moses, as ancient as civilization itself, are hashed out: good and evil, guilt and innocence, justice and fairness. Furthermore, modern presumptions of equality, democracy and objectivity face challenges. And that space, increasingly, is where the modern courtroom drama lives.American courtrooms are so familiar, thanks to Hollywood’s ubiquity, that it’s bracing to get plunked down into the minutiae of another legal system. The last few years have given moviegoers an unusually heady dose of French courtrooms. In 2022, Mati Diop’s searing “Saint Omer,” based on the real case of a woman accused of killing her infant, confronted the ways race, class and gender skew and degrade justice. Last year, Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” electrified audiences with its courtroom scenes, which probed the knowability of the inner workings of a marriage.Now there’s Cédric Kahn’s “The Goldman Case,” nearly all of which takes place during the second trial of Pierre Goldman in 1976. It’s a true story: Goldman (played by an electrifying Arieh Worthalter) had been charged with four armed robberies years earlier, one of which resulted in the death of two pharmacists. Sentenced to life imprisonment, Goldman and his legal team appealed his case — some of it, anyhow. While he freely admitted to the robberies, he maintained that he was not involved in the killings. In 1975, he wrote a memoir entitled “Obscure Memories of a Polish Jew Born in France,” making him an icon among French leftists, and a month later the appeals court canceled the initial ruling.Set almost entirely within the courtroom, “The Goldman Case” is not a Hollywood-style heart-pumping work. But it’s plenty thrilling. Kahn, whose previous films include the 2004 thriller “Red Lights,” wrote the “Goldman” screenplay with Nathalie Hertzberg, who used newspaper articles and meticulous research to reconstruct what happened in the courtroom. The pair imbues the result with urgent, stirring drama even though it is, for the most part, just people standing at microphones, talking. And shouting. And looking outraged. Because of Goldman’s celebrity, his supporters crowd the room and punctuate proceedings with yelps of derision or support, whatever feels called for.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Venice Film Festival Looks: Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt And More

      by

      No amount of star power can truly outshine the beauty of La Serenissima, the ancient republic better known as the city of Venice. But the Venice Film Festival, with its parade of A-listers arriving for movie premieres in water taxis, comes close.Typically held not long after the fall couture shows in Paris, the Venice Film Festival benefits, in pure fashion terms, from being a showcase of the newest garments from some designers. How these elaborate, often form-fitting, confections are transferred so rapidly from Parisian runways to Venetian red carpets hardly matters to looky-loos with their eyes perennially pressed to the glass of fashion.This year’s festival, running from Aug. 28 until Saturday, has not just been an exhibition for new designs, but also of vintage pieces. Some looked as fresh as ever. Garments old and new are among these 15 looks, which will be hard to forget for reasons good and bad (but mostly good).Taylor Russell: Most Modern Retro!Louisa Gouliamaki/ReutersThe actress radiated an icy elegance in a Loewe gown reminiscent of the creations of Jean Louis, a designer who had the lock on high glamour during the golden age of Hollywood studios.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘My First Film’ Review: Arriving Where You Started

      by

      Zia Anger’s movie about her first movie is full of nested layers, but mostly it’s a meditation on how, and why, we create.A cursor appears on a blank screen, blinking, waiting. And then text appears: “This probably shouldn’t be a film … but it is.”A purposefully ironic admission for a movie called “My First Film,” but a great way to set the tone for what follows. In 2018, the filmmaker Zia Anger sat before an audience at a Brooklyn venue, pulling up video clips on her computer from a project entitled “Always All Ways, Anne Marie” that she’d shot and then abandoned years earlier, combining them with spoken and typed words. The presentation morphed into a live performance that Anger toured called “My First Film,” which then further evolved into a digital performance during a pandemic-locked world.I’d seen various iterations of “My First Film,” but the new feature film version, also directed by Anger (and written with Billy Feldman), still came as a surprise to me. It’s as personal and experimental as the live presentations, but mixes fiction (or perhaps autofiction) into the recipe, producing something that looks and acts a little more like a traditional movie. “My First Film” stars Odessa Young as Vita, a Zia stand-in, who is telling us the story of the making of her first film, also entitled “Always All Ways, Anne Marie.” The screenplay of that movie was about a young woman caring for her ailing father. She gets pregnant and leaves home in search of her mother, who had abandoned her.The “Always All Ways, Anne Marie” story is a version of Vita’s reality, just as Vita’s story is a version of Anger’s. But it’s also different, and Vita wonders aloud, in a way that feels appropriate to a 25-year-old first-time filmmaker with dreams of artistic authenticity, about whether it still gets at her emotional truth. Vita wasn’t abandoned by her mother — in fact, she had two mothers, and they raised her together, and she felt loved and supported throughout her childhood. Various other pieces of Vita’s real life refract through “Always All Ways, Anne Marie,” while her narration about drama on set and off give the story of “My First Film” shape.Everything in “My First Film” doubles back on itself, which can make it feel repetitive at times. If you’ve never been a young person harboring dreams of creative genius, it might start to feel a little forced, a little twee. Even if you have, impatience lurks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More