Criterion Review: The In-Laws
★★★★☆ Alan Arkin and Peter Falk send up their dramatic personae to great effect in Arthur Hiller’s 1979 The In-Laws, a wonderfully balanced and...
★★☆☆☆ “An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,” Percy Shelley once wrote in his sonnet England in 1819. He was firing his barbs at King George III but the words could just as well be used for any number of English monarchs including Henry VIII.
★★★★★ Turkish master director Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns to the Cannes Croisette with About Dry Grasses, a wonderful wintry meditation on male fragility and the way we often make our own hells and then deceive ourselves that we’re trapped.
★★★★☆ From sub-Saharan Africa to Afghanistan, Syria to Iraq and Iran, the climate crisis, drought, war, and oppression has created a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. It is treated as an ethical conundrum, but it isn’t. Either we wish to save those who are in danger of dying, or all our talk of human rights is just so much hot air. This is the core concern of Green Border.
★★★★☆ With Luca Guadagnino’s terrific Challengers, the acclaimed director of Call Me By Your Name brings us the sub-genre we never knew we needed: the erotic tennis thriller.
★★☆☆☆ Directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s “Abigail” mashes up crime caper and monster movie, but fails to deliver fear or humor. Spoilery trailers and unoriginal characters overshadow promising elements, resulting in a dull, lifeless experience lacking creativity and wit.
★★☆☆☆ Maïwenn’s French period drama Jeanne du Barry is the perfect opening salvo for the 76th Cannes Film Festival. It is as glitzy and gaudy as the festival itself, with its vacuous politics drowned out by the thunderous sound of it slapping its own back.
★★★★☆ Alan Arkin and Peter Falk send up their dramatic personae to great effect in Arthur Hiller’s 1979 The In-Laws, a wonderfully balanced and...
★★★☆☆ A ‘conversation piece’ is an informal family portrait painting, primarily from 18th century Britain. Such a genre of artwork forms a perfect inspiration...
★★★★☆ If you’re in the business of selling dog food, you’ll know that dog owners are in the habit of projecting their own personality...
★★★★☆ Rarely do we get treated to a moment so surprisingly amusing as the vision of Gérard Depardieu sporting a breezy, pineapple speckled button-up...
★★★☆☆ The monster is always a metaphor. Life, death, loss, grief, fears, desires. In Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Shallows, the extravagantly proportioned great white shark...
★★★☆☆ “I am Ingrid. This is my story.” Without any air of superiority these straightforward intentions rather understate the life less ordinary laid bare...
★★★★☆ For much of The Confession: Living the War on Terror its principle subject, Moazzam Begg – a British man suspected of terrorism, but...
★★☆☆☆ Where to Invade Next is a collage of Michael Moore’s favourite progressive ideas from across the globe. From generous state-mandated holidays in Italy...