Nick Pinkerton on Pablo Larraín’s Jackie

Filmmaker Pablo Larraín’s international reputation rests on a decade-long run of films prodding at the bugaboos haunting the collective historical imagination of his native Chile. Despite a proclivity for some formal unorthodoxies—shooting on vintage videotape in order to evoke the milieu of late 1980s television in No (2012), for example—Larraín …

Stephen Whitty on Ron Clements and John Musker’s Moana

She is of royal blood. She has an overprotective father. She has an animal sidekick—two, actually—and a personal dream she needs to fulfill, no matter how many people tell her she can’t. Yeah, she’s a Disney princess, all right. Except Moana is the daughter of a Polynesian chieftain. And her …

Matt Zoller Seitz on Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea

Manchester by the Sea, about a self-punishing, depressive loner (Casey Affleck) who slowly comes back to life after enduring a series of brutal losses, is the funniest movie about grief ever made. But that’s far from the only remarkable thing about it. This film by playwright turned filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan …

Bilge Ebiri on Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival

One day, Denis Villeneuve will make a truly great movie. This is, apparently, a controversial opinion. Many out there feel strongly that the Canadian filmmaker has been leaping from triumph to triumph in recent years—with Sicario, Prisoners, and Enemy under his belt—while some consider him a pretentious, emotionally manipulative charlatan. …

The week in movies: ‘Labyrinth of Lies,’ ‘Mississippi Grind’ and more

HollywoodandFine.com Depending on which source you believe, there are between one and two dozen — yes, you read that right, dozen — films opening this Friday in New York. Here is a brief look at a half-dozen of them: ‘Labyrinth of Lies’: This German film tells an uncomfortable story about …

‘Learning to Drive’: Life lessons

HollywoodandFine.com We take our mentors where we find them in life, though it’s not always apparent who’s teaching who. That’s the case in “Learning to Drive,” a comic drama by Isabel Coixet that offers beautifully matched performances by Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley. They are strangers drawn together by coincidence …

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