The Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar is a glorious, hilarious tribute to the Golden Age of Hollywood. With its very own Esther Williams (Scarlett Johansson), Carmen Miranda (Veronica Osorio), and Gene Kelly (Channing Tatum), it’s got all the stock characters and genres of classic cinema. Even Roger Deakins’ 35mm cinematography mimics old movies, framing the action head-on as if filming a stage.
Film Reviews
Here you will find every film review we've written. These include: festival films, new releases, and older films.
Rams: Sheep farming is deadly serious business
Grimur Hakonarson’s Rams is part dark comedy, part family drama about two elderly brothers who haven’t spoken in years. The gorgeous Icelandic landscape provides the backdrop to this story about sheep farming and family reconciliation.
Sonita and Sand Storm at Sundance: when the patriarchy looks like your mother
Both films explore how empowered women function within a patriarchal society. They pose the question, can you defeat the patriarchy simply by exercising agency?
NUTS! and foreveryone.net: The visionary and the charlatan
The Sundance documentaries foreveryone.net and NUTS! each chronicle the scientific achievements and self-mythologizing of two very different men.
45 Years of marriage on thin ice
In 45 Years, Andrew Haigh uses sound and very precise framing to develop a complex, cinematic story of a long-term relationship. Read our book about Andrew Haigh’s Lean on Pete.
Kurzel’s Macbeth emphasizes tone over text
Kurzel takes his cues from the text, but he expresses his ideas about the text through images and sounds — the whistling wind, the clashing swords, and the ghostly hooded figures — rather than through the dialogue. The verse, in Kurzel’s hands, is barely even identifiable as poetry. But what is Shakespeare without the unforgettable language?