On one of our many walks about town, where people know and approach Jeff Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere, we bumped into the one and only Owen Gleiberman of EW. He kind of talked a bit about Mike Leigh and why he doesn’t belong to any kind of cult that would have Leigh as its main leader. I had been wondering, therefore, what he was going to think about Cannes’...
In Contention’s Guy Lodge wrote a thoughtful, articulate review of Mike Leigh’s Another Year. My only gripe is, really, 31/2 stars? I think it’s a four star film. But I tend towards passionate enthusiasm. I admit this to be true about myself. Not good at being a critic: If ‚ÄúHappy-Go-Lucky‚Äù was a discursive thesis on the merits and challenges...
Soldiers. A serious man. A great leader. A man up in the air. 2009 is, once again, the Year of the Man. Precious and An Education are two that aren’t. Ordinary women rarely take up much screen time. Nonetheless, Oscars 2009 is defined most assuredly by singular men on a quest. And I have known the arms already, known them all– Arms that are braceleted...
The usually curmudgeonly Todd McCarthy has been won over by Invictus: Once again in his extraordinary late-career run, Eastwood surprises with his choice of subject matter, here joining a project Freeman had long hoped to realize. In fact, the filmmaker has frequently dealt with racial issues in a conspicuously even-handed manner, most notably in “Bird,” and...
Precious now has a 61 rating on Metacritic. This might matter more if the film hadn’t yet been screened and won two major awards heading into the race. Okay, so maybe Sundance isn’t a major award, but for this film it set up a precedent that is likely to continue. It has heat, it has momentum. It doesn’t have two New York critics from The New Yorker...