Cinema

In January of 2019, Chinonye Chukwu made history as the first black woman to win the Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. Dramatic Competition of the Sundance Film Festival. “Clemency,” which Chukwu also wrote, is only the filmmaker’s second feature, but it unfolds with the confidence of a veteran at the helm. A harrowing, close-quarters examination of the human cost of capital punishment, the film is anchored by Alfre Woodard’s sensational performance as prison warden Bernadine…

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Nearly one year ago, Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov’s stunning documentary “Honeyland” collected a trio of awards following its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Those accolades, including special jury recognition for both cinematography and “Impact for Change,” as well as a Grand Jury Prize, were the first indicators of the film’s critical potential. The recent announcement of an Oscar nomination marks the conclusion of a successful journey that features…

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The death on March 29, 2019 of Agnes Varda concluded a career perpetually in bloom. The legendary artist and filmmaker, unmistakable in later years under her wonderfully cartoonish yet delightfully chic two-tone coiffure, was 90 years old but operated agelessly. Working to the end with future projects in queue, Varda shares directorial credit on swan song and retrospective “Varda by Agnes” with Didier Rouget. The pair of one-hour episodes combine clips with new images and selections…

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Filmmaker Sophia Takal’s reimagining of Bob Clark’s 1974 slasher classic “Black Christmas” improves on a tepid 2006 remake by Glen Morgan without finding the weird alchemy of the original. Sharing screenplay duties with April Wolfe, Takal may not have managed a definitive version, but she should be credited with constructing a genre entry interested in the feminist exploration and expression of ideas that reach beyond superficial blood and gore exploitation. Playing with…

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Greta Gerwig continues to exercise her command of cinematic storytelling with “Little Women,” a perfectly wrapped and beribboned Christmas gift as welcome as a steaming cup of cocoa after a frosty skate around the local frozen pond. Proving wrong many skeptics who initially questioned her choice of post-”Lady Bird” material, Gerwig deftly adjusts the contents of Louisa May Alcott’s much-loved, oft-filmed tale through a skillful chronological reorganization that allows her to…

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By Greg Carlson
gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Jennifer Kent’s “The Nightingale” will not attract the same cult following or breadth of widespread fan devotion as “The Babadook,” but her latest marks significant progress in the filmmaker’s command of story and cinematic language. Harrowing, painful, and -- for those viewers who walked out of festival screenings -- unrelentingly bleak, “The Nightingale” draws from a number of inspired sources in Kent’s original tale of Irish…

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The politics of race in contemporary America inform the text and subtext of “Queen & Slim,” a vivid feature debut from music video director Melina Matsoukas. Described so often in “The Player”-style shorthand as “Bonnie and Clyde meets Black Lives Matter” that the tag unfairly deflates some of the character-based nuance surrounding the love-on-the-run tragedy of the central duo, Matsoukas’ stylish road movie should be destined for cult status as an object of cool. Unlike…

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Of the three feature films directed by Marielle Heller, all of which are based in one way or another on biographical source material, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” is the least successful. But that opinion doesn’t mean her newest work is a bust; the movie’s curiosity about the blurry lines between childhood innocence and grown-up cynicism rhymes with similar themes in “The Diary of a Teenage Girl.” And the exploration of authenticity and role-playing, central to…

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“Parasite” will be the top-grossing foreign-language film at the 2019 American box office, and deservedly so. Joon-ho Bong’s most satisfying and accomplished movie since “Mother” in 2009, “Parasite” is the first Korean film to win the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or. A perfectly-tuned, midnight-black fairy tale of two families -- one wealthy, one struggling -- Bong’s story treats poverty, class, and class warfare in parallel brushstrokes to the literal…

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Nearly forty years after Stanley Kubrick’s classic horror film conjured thousands of nightmares, director Mike Flanagan wakes up the belated sequel “Doctor Sleep,” the strongest work of his promising career. Smartly striking a balance between the iconic status of Kubrick’s sound and vision and the Stephen King signatures that spread out to connect many people, places, and things — as seen, for example, in Andy Muschietti’s sprawling telling of “It” — Flanagan threads the…

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