Film Reviews
Welcome to FilmFestSalon! Read our reviews on domestic films, foreign films and the classics.
Film: “Drive My Car”
“Drive my Car”, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, and co-written with Tukamaso Oe, is an adaptation of a story by Murakami. It won the screenwriting prize at Cannes, 2021, but no prize, interestingly, for acting or direction. We first meet Kafuko, a theater director in his forties, played by Hidetoshi Nishijima, in bed with his wife,…
Film: “Bacurau”
Though two and a quarter hours long, “Bacurau” has enough thrills, violence, suspense and rich human spectacle to reward our attention. But, what we take away mostly is a single-minded and original vision of human conflict at the most primal level. Co-written and co-directed by two Brazilian filmmakers, Kleber Mendonca Filho (“Aquarius”, 2016) and Juliano…
Film: “Don’t Look Up”
Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” is sometimes kinda fun, sometimes awful, but it leaves you in a good enough frame of mind to accept its somewhat benign and warm view of human nature. And I respect it for making that pov extremely difficult for the audience to accept, especially after what they’ve seen. At the…
Film: “Titane”
“Titane“, the new film from French provocateuse, Julia Ducournau, is in a genre that has been called body horror, and that certainly fits. In this case, the horror is centered on sex itself. Ducournau seems to feel that sex isn’t, and maybe never can be fun. But that doesn’t’t mean it can’t be sexy. And the…
Film: “The Souvenir, Part II”
Joanna Hogg has given us a sequel to her 2019 “A Souvenir”, and it’s a head-scratcher. But the positive of that includes “intriguing”, “tantalizing” and “wittily playful”, along with the negative of “frustrating” and “confusing”. Critical response has been even more positive than for the first part, which will no doubt help to finance other…
Film: “Last Night In Soho”
I had been anticipating Edgar Wright’s “Last Night in Soho” for months. My film tastes were formed in th ’60’s, and I was eager to see the take on the era from a current auteur. Having seen it, I know it was a personal work for him. With the assistance of co-scripter Krysty Wilson-Cairns, he…
An Open Letter to Kristina O’Neill
Dear Kristina, I was just looking through your latest Wall Street Journal magazine – the Men’s style issue with Tom Brady on the cover – and was enjoying it immensely, as I have all of them. It may be your best, or maybe just close, but my reaction was different this time. I see it…
Film: “The Green Knight”
“The Green Knight”, an adaptation of the anonymous Arthurian romance, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, should be characterized in the genre of “interesting failure”, although, giving credit, the “interesting” part didn’t kick in until after the film was over. Watching it, at least for most of the second half, was a snooze. To be…
Film: “Annette”
Directed by Leos Carax, “Annette” is an unusually straightforward story, simple in outline, that relies on its filmmaker’s command of the most advanced techniques to capture, and hold, our attention. And one other thing: all of the characters sing their dialogue. It was conceived as a rock-opera by the British brothers duo Sparks –…
Digression: Andrew Cuomo
Sorry, but this is reality, not film. This is less about Cuomo than it is about what passes for journalism today. After his resignation, the narrative is struggling to evolve into something that reporters and editors can be more…comfortable with. So they are picking up on the “Me-Too” meme, about his sex-mad, discriminatory and abusive…