✓ “Anora” “The Brutalist” “A Complete Unknown” “Conclave” “Dune: Part Two” “Emilia Pérez” “I’m Still Here” “Nickel Boys” “The Substance” “Wicked” After a few years where the best picture winner was practically ordained from the start of the season, at least this race has given us some twists and turns. First, there was the saga … Read more
I can’t swear to it, but I have a suspicion that Woody Harrelson signed on to star in the deep-sea adventure “Last Breath” only when assured he wouldn’t have to submerge so much as a toenail in water. As Duncan Allcock, the leader of a three-man dive team on a perilous North Sea mission, Harrelson … Read more
I’m not sure how much attention to ascribe to this, but given that Zoe is Greek for “life,” the title of “My Dead Friend Zoe” feels a bit wry. Directed by Kyle Hausmann-Stokes from a screenplay he wrote with A.J. Bermudez, it’s a competently performed drama about an Army veteran named Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green) who … Read more
When Ione Skye was in middle school in the early 1980s, a group of popular, mean girls she calls “the Aprils” brought her — shy, bookish, not yet famous — into their intimidating fold. She was surprised they even knew her name. “Part of me wanted to punch the girls’ smug faces,” she writes in … Read more
Conan O’Brien is not a cynic — at least not when it comes to the Oscars, which he is hosting for the first time on Sunday. The Emmy-winning comedian, podcaster, traveler and movie buff is genuinely excited — “I get to do this!” he enthused — but also thoroughly worried. “It’s the thing I wake … Read more
A teenager rescues and defends an infant creature whose species the surrounding adults have condemned as vicious and predatory. Another adolescent battles injury and other hurdles in a quest for basketball stardom. A small child in Mexico contracts polio but finds solace in the world of art. And an 11-year-old Kurdish immigrant arrives in Berlin, … Read more
The French film industry was hardly the only force spurring the barricades, Molotov cocktails and worker strikes that were synonymous with Paris in May 1968. But the French government’s attempt to fire the head of the Cinémathèque Française earlier that year supplied crucial kindling. And while the Cannes Film Festival managed to open amid the … Read more
Democracy is broken, they say. The wants of the electorate are contradictory and rooted in base emotions rather than rational thought. Viable alternatives are nonexistent, so we treat the ensuing insanity as a spectator sport, posting impotently as the world burns. I could be talking about electoral politics, but in this instance I am actually … Read more
Anderson likes to be makeup free; away from work, so does her character. Shelly loves being a showgirl — “feeling beautiful, that is powerful” — but when she puts on her costume, she’s cosplaying an old-fashioned ideal of femininity. Onstage, she plays a fantasy. When she’s offstage, Shelly is a person with a life, everyday … Read more
