Toward the end of C’mon C’mon Joaquin Phoenix’s uncle Johnny asks his nephew: “Are you laughing or are you crying? I can’t tell.” As is the case with most of his filmography, viewers of Mike Mills’s brilliant new film would almost certainly answer with a very enthusiastic “both”.

With House of Gucci, Ridley Scott brings us another story of powerful men, tremendous wealth, and a fashion institution facing decrepitude, all shaken up by one ambitious woman. Without getting into questions of accuracy, it’s an incredibly wild ride powered by the heat of showy performances by a cast crowded with A-listers. It’s a film that’s way too big for just one review, so on the event of it’s wide release, we tried to break down our feelings about it with a little roundtable.

When we first encounter Andrew Garfield as Jonathan Larson — on a small unadorned stage, hunched behind a piano, in the throes of performing his one-man musical — someone unfamiliar with the real composer/playwright could be forgiven that the actor was overplaying his theatricality. The trademark pile of overgrown curly hair. The twitchy, broad, lightning-quick expressions that play to the last row. A voice and attitude bursting with a self-assuredness to cover a deep longing to be adored. If you don’t buy it right away, grainy video playing over the end credits will confirm to those with no memories of their own of the 1990s that rather than an exaggeration, Garfield’s portrayal is uncannily accurate. It’s an amazingly rich and well studied performance that anchors a movie musical that’s a love letter to a time, place, and an artist with enduring influence.

Passing (2020 | USA | 98 minutes | Rebecca Hall) Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga bring incredible interiority to Rebecca C. Hall’s …

The title card calls Spencer a “haunted fable inspired by a true life tragedy”, but director Pablo Larraín films it like a straight-up psychological horror movie. It’s all low angles, alienating empty spaces, and a conspicuous number of dead pheasants.

In a film landscape where every year’s box office charts are dominated by continuations, spin-offs, and reboots of existing intellectual properties, it shouldn’t be too surprising to see a sequel storm into the fall movie season to make a splash. Sure, there’s another big Marvel (by an Oscar-winning auteur no less) bombasting its way into multiplexes this weekend. That’s no shock. But the curious delight, however, is in A24’s clever counterprogramming: moving ahead the release date for Joanna Hogg’s sequel-of-sorts to her intricately-observed 2019 memoir, the Souvenir. 

interlinked series of short stories set in the precious milieu of sometimes-indulgent longform journalism. At this point, you know who he is and who you are. If you’ve loved his previous films (as I do), but have wished that he could fit more stories, styles, and quirks into his filmmaking than you probably already have a lifetime subscription and will savor this elegiac visual magazine like a special holiday issue. If not, the thought of an overstuffed package that’s both adoring & gently skewering of the craft, might leave you refusing even a trial issue.

A24’s trailer for Lamb is quite possibly one of the best short films of the year. It’s two minutes of electricity in a bottle. Valdimar Jóhannsson’s actual 107 minute film didn’t stand a chance.

“We have all the time in the world”, Daniel Craig’s James Bond purrs to Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) as they zip along a spectacular winding Southern Italian coastal highway in his latest tricked-out Aston Martin. Although the title of this installation of what became an interconnected franchise is No Time To Die, no Bond is forever. Following the lead of his 007’s retirement from MI6, Craig’s intention to get out of the big screen spy game were well known, so this one marks a long goodbye that’s largely successful for the Bond of it all, even if the story gets overly knotty in trying to give everyone a sendoff. 

David Chase spent six glorious seasons creating the world of Tony Soprano in weekly installments on HBO. From start to cut-to-black finish, it felt like complete and fully realized world. Yet, we live in an entertainment ecosystem where established intellectual property is king and our hunger for content is perpetual. So, it’s back to the well of New Jersey crime families we go with a new film whose poster’s tagline “Who Made Tony Soprano” is three times larger than its actual title.