A Seattle moviegoing lifestyle magazine
Luca Guadagnino has never shied away from heightened depictions of the pleasures or torments of the flesh. With his adaptation of Bones and All he confronts an entirely different sort of misunderstood passion and hunger in the form of a cannibal love story.
As an English nurse hired to witness a possible miracle in Ireland, Florence Pugh is a steely presence in The Wonder, Sebastián Lelio’s adaptation of the Emma Donoghue novel. A spiritual detective story of sorts emerges in a remote Irish village where a young girl appears to have survived for months without eating. A council of serious men — physicians, town elders, a priest — decide that a two week observation by two nurses taking eight hour shifts is the only way to determine whether the feat is divine intervention or some sort of hoax.
In many ways, She Said fits the mold of a classic investigative journalism thriller. Two reporters toil tirelessly against very powerful forces to nail down a story that will take down a very bad guy. Further, anyone with any awareness of the course of the last half-decade’s recognition of sexual misconduct in the workplace almost certainly knows what became of Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor’s efforts to bring the abuses of Harvey Weinstein to light in the pages of America’s newspaper of record. Knowing how something turns out, however, isn’t necessarily an obstacle to crafting a film this that revels in the process of getting the big story.
With his prestige television background, including an Emmy for Succession, director Mark Mylod has a keen eye for the foibles of the ridiculously rich and powerful. In his feature film debut that crackles with humor and wild surprises, he applies that perspective to concoct a wild and biting commentary on the dark undercurrents of and frivolities of the high-end food world and those who patronize it.
Ryan Coogler’s first Black Panther film was the first (and only) Marvel to crack the Oscar ceiling for a best picture nomination. The much-anticipated return to Wakanda reconciles with the sad reality of the real world: the 2020 death of Chadwick Boseman and Wakanda’s loss of its beloved king and protector.
A pervasive sadness lingers around the corners of Aftersun, Charlotte Wells’s deeply accomplished recollection of a father-daughter summer holiday in Turkey.
Martin McDonagh revisits 1920s Ireland with a stirring dark comedy of an abruptly severed friendship on a tiny island of sad boring men.
Saturday brought another tribute, this time to the legendary Cate Blanchett to coincide with the US premiere of Todd Field’s TÁR. We spend two hours and forty masterfully controlled minutes with the prodigious, highly-lauded, multiply-degreed conductor Lydia Tár.
The follies of the wealthy are on full display in two comedy premieres in Toronto. Rian Johnson returns to the Knives Out saga with Glass Onion’s debut and Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winner Triangle of Sadness made landfall on North American shores during TIFF 2022.
Oh boy. David O’ Russell’s zany star-packed Amsterdam is a movie with so much going for it that nevertheless makes itself incredibly challenging to recommend. I sympathize with those who will find it simultaneously too much and not enough, or recoil from the ambitious sentimentality that animates its many excesses. I also groaned as it’s machinery sputtered and strained to draw meaning from madness. Yet! From its chaotic energy — a hallmark of a director who’s a monster on set yet consistently attracts the industry’s highest levels of talent — spring no shortage of genuinely laugh-out-loud bits and gonzo performances. Like most of his work, it’s a big-hearted mess that many will hate, but some might be able to forgive in spite of itself.
