Anthony Dickenson/Studiocanal
Danny Boyle’s “Ink,” opening at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, offers what may be the most incisive screen portrait yet of Rupert Murdoch — not necessarily because it reveals anything new about the man, but because it understands the peculiar mixture of grievance, ambition, opportunism, and showmanship that has sustained his media empire. The predominantly European-backed production occasionally feels like Hollywood keeping its distance from a mogul whose influence remains difficult to ignore. Yet Mr. Murdoch, played by Guy Pearce in a stroke of inspired casting that reportedly has the mogul’s own approval, is not even the film’s most frightening figure. That distinction belongs to Jack O’Connell’s Larry Lamb, the northern editor of the Daily Mail in Manchester, whom Mr. Murdoch tapped to run the newly acquired Sun in October 1969. Mr. Murdoch may have provided the money and the vision; Lamb supplied the appetite.
Continue reading “If It Bleeds, It Leads” »
Parisa Taghizadeh/Searchlight Pictures
MOVIE REVIEW
All of Us Strangers (2023)
It’s human nature to want to be loved, but it is unfortunately also human nature to reject that which seems repulsive to you. This can make life very hard for us homosexuals, who are often rejected by our birth families simply because of who we are. The greatest achievement of Western culture in this critic’s lifetime is seeing gay people be allowed to move from the margins into a blasé part of mainstream society, so average and ordinary that it’s often beneath comment. But that’s not to say this tolerance, which is not the same thing as acceptance, is consistent. And it’s also very important to remember this can’t be applied retrospectively. Older relatives are famous for not being understanding of the younger members of their families regardless of their sexuality, and as an adult you can spend a long time down a rabbit hole wondering if the relatives you loved and lost as a child would have loved you now.
Continue reading “I See Dead People” »
Michael Gibson/Orion Releasing
MOVIE REVIEW
Women Talking (2022)
The subject of “Women Talking,” the phenomenal new movie from Sarah Polley which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, is so bleak it’s hard to talk about. We are in Canada in 2010 – the unwelcome presence of a census truck blasting “Daydream Believer” as it drives through the rural farming community goes to necessary trouble to establish this – but we could be up to 200 years ago. The women all wear modest hand-sewn dresses, with caps over their hair. There’s no technology in their farmhouses and the men are all gone. Why are the men gone? To bail one of them out of jail. Why is he in jail? Because Salome (an outstanding Claire Foy) attacked him with a scythe and he was arrested for his own protection. And why did meek farmwife Salome attack a man with a scythe? Because all the female members of the community were, over months, repeatedly dosed with animal tranquilizer (a knockout spray) and while unconscious raped by the men of the community. All of the female members of the community. All of them. Including Salome, and Salome’s four year old daughter.
Continue reading “The Handmaids’ Tale” »
Jaap Buitendijk/Amazon Studios
MOVIE REVIEW
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021)
Benedict Cumberbatch turns up his eccentricity to 11 in “The Electrical Life of Louis Wain,” as the titular Victorian era artist whose claim to fame is drawing cats for The Illustrated London News. He was apparently also into electricity and patents, which the film glosses over despite the titular reference – but it shows enough here to remind us of the time Mr. Cumberbatch played Thomas Edison in “The Current War: Director’s Cut.”
Continue reading “Cat’s Cradle” »
