Uncut Gems traffics in the upscale loot sold and loaned in the Diamond District. A bejeweled furby necklace and a pendant of Michael Jackson pinned to a cross are fan favorites in a claustrophobic rain of riches. But a rare black opal trumps the pile. Howard (Adam Sandler), a jeweler with debt gnawing at his heels, lifts one off the black market from the Ethiopian Jews who discovered them, and sees it delivered to his show floor inside a vacuum-sealed cooler of fish. As the gambit in some of his biggest bets yet, the opal might just clear his life’s […]

Marriage Story depicts the love two people can find in separation. It is not a rekindling, it is stepping back to respect the boundaries you crossed in your strangling embrace. The original love hardens. It dies and returns as something like an actual reverence. At this distance, you might actually be able to see each other again. If the separating lovers in question, Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), can learn to walk away from each other with nothing more than that knowing glance—“I accept that we will not be together. It is sad, but you are great. I […]

Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, based on hitman Frank Sheeran’s (Robert De Niro) account of the murder of Teamster luminary Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), talks back to its characters’ memories as much as it does the director’s past films. It’s Sheeran’s perspective told from Scorsese’s, executed by his go-to cinematographer since The Wolf of Wall Street, Rodrigo Prieto. Sheeran confessed to murdering Hoffa, the dear friend he served as bodyguard. But Hoffa’s true cause of death is still subject to speculation, as are details of Sheeran’s recollection. “Some people are mulling over what’s accurate and what’s not accurate, and I don’t […]

Pedro Costa will not separate films from how they are made. We cannot escape that “how” from what we are seeing on screen, so we must make films the hard way. It is not enough for us to get them made: We must know our technicians closely, see that they are compensated fairly, ensure that our project is optimized for our tools and that those tools only operate at their zenith. Ease, Costa warns, is the sure sign of a “trap,” that, if succumbed to, will expose one’s work to “bullshit,” a word he does not use lightly. If we […]

Eulogized debuts draw ravenous, patient cynics, who stalk the scent of a fledgling’s success to their second movie, hoping their foe might slip. Robert Eggers, a name of contention after headlines announced he would remake Nosferatu (TBD) before his Sundance debut The Witch was released theatrically for audiences to decide if he were worthy themselves, has made his second move.  The Lighthouse, a sophomore effort especially susceptible to readied blows, has made it back with critics on the festival circuit and will now see appraisal from the mainstream on its theatrical bout. But the film expels farts and sailor vulgarity, an […]

Bong Joon Ho may have shifted his subject from genetically engineered super pigs (Okja) and setting from a speeding, class-stratified train (Snowpiercer), but it’d be wrong to assign his Palme d’Or winning Parasite to a new league of subtlety. That’s not a knock — vulgarity is the name of the game for this “Korean New Wave,” in which Bong, and now Parasite, have an evolving role. Bong’s metaphors have shrunk in size for his latest, but they’ve increased in number, becoming part of a loud, meta, and self-parodying dialogue. Ki-woo (Choi Woo-Shik), the son in Parasite‘s working-class family, interacts with […]

I first saw The Death Of Dick Long at a press screening at Technicolor Postworks. It is the second feature film from one of Swiss Army Man’s co-directors, Daniel Scheinert, whose kooky debut portends the mercurial sensibilities of Dick Long, a cotton state comedy of errors with a hushed twist. The film’s gaffer, Daniel April, the sought after lightsmith of New York indie film, still hadn’t seen the film, so I invited him to attend A24’s special screening at the Alamo Drafthouse in Downtown Brooklyn, featuring free wine and popcorn, the common bribes. April had just gotten off the set […]

Transcribing a verbal interview can calcify its fluidity. Congealed to text, the spontaneity of a subject’s ongoing efforts to articulate their process is reduced, encouraging readers to mistake the record as definitive. Some interviewees ponder the permanence of their words anxiously and fear fumbling, saying what they don’t mean, or what they might not in a month or a year. But composer Mica Levi’s (Marjorie Prime, Jackie, Under The Skin) oral replies retain their suppleness on the page. Her understanding of her score for Alejandro Landes’ Monos, about a group of teenage commandos flummoxing their military responsibilities atop a mountain […]

Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood’s production designer Barbara Ling built the lurid worlds of the most perverted Batman movies: Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, where Uma Thurman (as Poison Ivy) strips out of a pink gorilla suit while golden Tarzans in table cloths swing from vines and lay belly down to form a human path for her to walk on. I’d be lying if I told you D.P Stephen Goldblatt’s close ups of Batman and Robin’s rubber derrieres and armor nipples haven’t been secured into an easily accessible shelf at the top of my memories, which […]

“I’m not an editor… I’m not a director. I’m also not an actress.” But Cindy Silver is the mother, teacher, and compliant subject of her son, writer and director Nathan Silver (Stinking Heaven, Thirst Street), who asks his mother to act in nearly all of his films. In his new docuseries Cutting My Mother, playing Anthology Film Archives today beside Exit Elena (also featuring Cindy), he asks more of her than he ever has before. He asks her to direct her own film. [Silver’s short, Solo, plays at the Anthology as part of the program.] As a child, Nathan drew […]