Critic's Notebook

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"Nothing here but history," sang those astute cultural archeologists Steely Dan in "The Caves of Altamira," as the song's protagonist went looking for ancient figures on the wall of an underground cavern. Altamira and a few other famous prehistoric sites crop up in Robert Macfarlane's 2019 nonfiction book "Underland," which takes a bracingly broad and poetic approach to what lies below the surface of the Earth and finds that history is only the start of it. "Into the underland we have long placed that which we fear and wish to lose, and that which we love and wish to save," writes the author, invoking the mystical element that hangs over both his book and the documentary now made from it by Mr. Macfarlane and director Robert Petit, with the involvement of Darren Aronofsky as an executive producer. Venture below the surface of the world and things usually separate come close together: science and magic, past and future, oxygen and poison, plus the members of a documentary crew squeezed into alarmingly tight spaces.

Continue reading “Let There Be Rock” »

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Joachim Trier’s Cannes competition title “Sentimental Value” often feels like an attempt to recapture the success of his Oscar-nominated 2021 film, “The Worst Person in the World.” Not only do we have Renate Reinsve in the lead again, he also frames her with a medium shot right in the center of the screen all the damn time. This is so pronounced that one might actually overlook some of his progression in terms of visual composition.

Continue reading “Daddy Issues” »

Mandarin & Compagnie – Kallouche Cinema – Frakas Productions – France 3 Cinema

I wasn’t a fan of “Titane,” and much of my aversion could probably be attributed to its undeserved Palme d’or win. To my pleasant surprise, Julia Ducournau’s Cannes Film Festival competition follow-up, “Alpha,” is nothing like it. The film is far more artful and mature, which just goes to show that the New French Extremity filmmaker was merely lauded prematurely. Though elements of body horror seen in “Titane” and “Raw” are still very much present, the new film better qualifies as a ghost story and a coming-of-age tale set in the Twilight Zone.

Continue reading “Ghost of the Past” »

Festival de Cannes

“The Phoenician Scheme” is, for better or worse, an archetypal Wes Anderson movie. The Cannes Film Festival competition entry is, once again, a timeless motion storybook about affluent eccentrics that’s symmetrical, pastel and droll. While Mr. Anderson’s rigorous mise en scène is always to be admired, telling a tale like this in the techbro oligarchy era is a choice – sort of like the cinematic equivalent of let them eat cake.

Continue reading “Beyond the Dreams of Avarice” »

Schramm Film

Christian Petzold continues the exploration of his favorite theme – doubles – with “Miroirs No. 3.” Named after a Maurice Ravel composition, the film is apparently a modern Brothers Grimm fairytale per the German auteur during a post-screening Q&A at the film’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight world premiere. He’s surprisingly frazzled in person, polar opposite of the clinical precision his work projects. This is a story about doppelgängers, but with a twist.

Continue reading “Second Family” »

A24

I often catch myself saying “during the pandemic” in reference to the Covid-19 lockdown, knowing full well that the virus is far from eradicated. Though people hardly mask up anymore, there are still deaths from it in 2025. The lockdown apparently remains very much on the minds of some of the world’s top filmmakers, as we find out from a few of the Cannes Film Festival selections that seem to have been inspired by it either directly or indirectly. Ari Aster’s “Eddington,” which takes place in late May of 2020 in the eponymous town in New Mexico, is a case in point.

Continue reading “Long Covid” »

Paramount Pictures

This is going to date me, but Tom Cruise’s first stab at “Mission: Impossible” in 1996 was also my first review assignment for my college campus newspaper. Even though my editor went at it with a heavy hand, the result was still fairly amateurish. Thankfully, my most embarrassing writings were at the infancy of the internet and left no digital trace. In 2011, I critiqued the fourth entry in the series, “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” on this very site when it was still somewhat thriving. And here I am again, checking out the eighth installment at its Cannes Film Festival premiere and sashaying down the same red carpet as the cast and crew. But enough about me.

I am bringing all this up because Late Cruise has been mostly trafficking in nostalgia. Hollywood’s last movie star reminds us all of the good ol’ days when marquee names could make or break the box office, the days before Netflix and venture capitalists spoiled everything. “Top Gun: Maverick” was the template. Sure, it had “it” boys like Glen Powell, but the most memorable moment for boomers and Gen-X had to be Mr. Cruise’s reunion with an ailing Val Kilmer. “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” sort of does the same thing. It gathers the likes of Henry Czerny and Rolf Saxon from way, way back. There are even montages of earlier films peppered throughout.

Continue reading “Last Action Hero” »

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“Broke” is worth seeing just to watch Wyatt Russell slump against a wall, or stand next to someone, or hold out his hands to show he’s not a threat. He works with his hands, risks his life for a living and finds his joy in tiny moments of physical perfection. You see a lot of these men in the military or doing the kind of risky heavy work found on a farm. “Broke” reflects this way of moving through a focus on how its people express their feelings through doing instead of talking. It’s a fine story very well shown, not told.

Continue reading “Last Rodeo” »

IFC Films

“The Luckiest Man in America,” about a long-forgotten American gameshow scandal from the mid-’80s, has landed in an exhausting moment of American history. Audiences seeking escapism from the problems of the now might enjoy a few hours’ refuge in the much lighter problems of the past. Other than that, the main appeal of “The Luckiest Man in America” is wondering why it has been made at all. Is it about how the systems are rigged against the little guy? Is it about how, when the systems are rigged, cheating becomes an honorable thing?

Continue reading “Beating the Game” »

Mstyslav Chernov/Sundance Institute

The documentary “2000 Meters to Andriivka” takes its Sundance Film Festival audience back to the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive against invading Russian forces, an operation with mixed results now recorded in the books and which even at the time seemed likely to turn into grinding costly warfare. That description looks like a light euphemism while watching Mstyslav Chernov’s documentary, built around first-person footage from body-mounted cameras worn by Ukrainian soldiers and by Mr. Chernov, embedded in their brigade and coming under as much fire as the rest of them. The military goal is the strategic village of Andriivka, approached via a dead-straight strip of charred forest between two large and deeply cratered mine fields; not the last time that the film’s visuals have an aura of the fictional about them, the harshest battlefield a production designer could concoct. A Ukrainian soldier himself says it’s “like another planet.” But this is all humans at work.

Continue reading “Under Fire” »