Crisp Criticism - "Little Women", "Uncut Gems", "Bombshell", "Cats", "The Two Popes"

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Julien Faddoul

Little Women ***

Four sisters come of age in America in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Marvellous, feminist, baroque adaptation that is presented and edited thematically, rather than narratively, jumping back and forth through time, with an ingenious, Nabokovian-style ending. In doing this, Gerwig strengthens the severity of the situations and relationships from the Alcott novel, while still retaining the comfort and sweetness that made it so popular with readers. The one glitch hails from its Millennial cast, many of whom occasionally dip into clashing modern acting-styles, which proves jarring. Despite this, it is decidedly the best cinematic adaptation of this material to date.

wd – Greta Gerwig   (Based on the Novel by Louisa May Alcott)

ph – Yorick Le Saux

pd – Jess Gonchor

m – Alexandre Desplat

ed – Nick Houy

cos – Jacqueline Durran

p – Amy Pascal, Denise Di Novi, Robin Swicord

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Timothée Chalamet, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Meryl Streep, James Norton, Louis Garrel, Bob Odenkirk, Chris Cooper, Jayne Houdyshell, Tracy Letts

Crisp Criticism - "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker", "Jumanji: The Next Level", "Richard Jewell", "Klaus", "The Report", "Waves", "Atlantics", "Ash is Purest White", "I Lost My Body"

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Julien Faddoul

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

The surviving Resistance faces the First Order once more in the final chapter of the Skywalker saga.

The outcome of an anguished cultural democracy, clearly designed to appease a fanbase that wants to soak in nostalgia and nothing else. The result is an epic, garbled mess, playing as a series of box-checking salutes to previous installments, with characters spending most of their time recounting what just happened in the previous scene. This is movie-making with a giant tail wagging a tiny dog; with artlessness being less of an unfortunate consequence and more the proud, explicit ambition.

d – JJ Abrams

w – Chris Terrio, JJ Abrams, Derek Connolly, Colin Trevorrow

ph – Dan Mindel

pd – Rick Carter, Kevin Jenkins

m – John Williams

ed – Maryann Brandon, Stefan Grube

cos – Michael Kaplan

p – JJ Abrams, Kathleen Kennedy, Michelle Rejwan

Cast: Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Anthony Daniels, Naomi Ackie, Domhnall Gleeson, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Richard E. Grant, Lupita Nyong'o, Keri Russell, Joonas Suotamo, Kelly Marie Tran, Ian McDiarmid, Billy Dee Williams, Richard Bremmer, Dave Chapman, Jeff Garlin, Greg Grunberg, Brian Herring, Billie Lourd, Nasser Memarzia, Dominic Monaghan, Simon Paisley Day, Matt Smith, Jimmy Vee

Crisp Criticism - "Marriage Story", "Knives Out", "Queen & Slim", "Dark Waters", "A Million Little Pieces"

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Julien Faddoul

Marriage Story ***

A stage director and his actor wife struggle through a gruelling, coast-to-coast divorce.

Deft and often moving Baumbachian portrait of the unanticipated bitterness of divorce proceedings that works better when not teetering on the edge of caricature; it serves as a kind of companion piece to its director’s previous film The Squid and the Whale (2005).

wd – Noah Baumbach

ph – Robbie Ryan

pd – Jade Healy

m – Randy Newman

ed – Jennifer Lame

cos – Mark Bridges

p – David Heyman, Noah Baumbach

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, Merritt Wever, Mark O'Brien, Azhy Robertson, Brooke Bloom, Julie Hagerty, Wallace Shawn

Crisp Criticism - "I Heard You Paint Houses", "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood", "Ford v Ferrari", "Charlie’s Angels", "Pain and Glory", "Frozen II"

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Julien Faddoul

I Heard You Paint Houses ***

A mob hitman recalls his possible involvement with the slaying of Jimmy Hoffa.

Long, muted, deliberate crime film; a kind of compendium of its director’s major themes of avarice and jealousy, murder and guilt, loyalty and betrayal, identity and regret. It is a film about the rumination in between crimes, with searing set-pieces of uncharacteristic laconism, and immaculate performances from the three leading maestros (Pesci especially). One gets the sense that Scorsese is atoning for something, tearing the film from himself as an act of purgatory.

d – Martin Scorsese

w – Steve Zaillian   (Based on the Book by Charles Brandt)

ph – Rodrigo Prieto

pd – Bob Shaw

m – Robbie Robertson

ed – Thelma Schoonmaker

cos – Christopher Peterson, Sandy Powell

p – Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Irwin Winkler, Gerald Chamales, Gastón Pavlovich, Randall Emmett, Gabriele Israilovici

Cast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Ray Romano, Harvey Keitel, Jesse Plemons, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Kathrine Narducci, JC MacKenzie, Craig Vincent, Gary Basaraba, Jack Huston, Domenick Lombardozzi

A Martin Scorsese Retrospection (Feature films; 1973 - 2016)

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Julien Faddoul

Mean Streets (1973) ****

A small-time hood must choose between love, friendship and the chance to rise within the mob.

Impeccable, sordid melodrama with an almost matchless eye for realistic detail and natural performance, despite its low budget. The first film in which Scorsese announced himself as a major artist and discovered the subject matter that has served him so well.

d – Martin Scorsese

w – Martin Scorsese, Mardik Martin

ph – Kent Wakeford 

ed – Sid Levin

p – Jonathan T. Taplin

Cast: Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, David Proval, Amy Robinson, Richard Romanus

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) ***

A widow sets off with her young son from New Mexico to California in the hopes of a singing career.

Surprisingly old-fashioned in its themes, this is a superb and endearing slice of Americana of the times, with excellent writing and performances.

d – Martin Scorsese

w – Robert Getchell

ph – Kent L. Wakeford

pd – Toby Carr Rafelson

ed – Marcia Lucas

p – Audrey Maas, David Susskind

Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Alfred Lutter, Kris Kristofferson, Billy Green Bush, Diane Ladd, Harvey Kietel, Lelia Goldoni, Jodie Foster

Crisp Criticism - "Jojo Rabbit", "Harriet", "The King", "Last Christmas", "Midway", "Doctor Sleep", "Motherless Brooklyn", "Terminator: Dark Fate", "Dolemite is My Name" Retrospection - "The Long Day Closes" (1992)

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Julien Faddoul

Jojo Rabbit *

A young boy in Hitler's army finds out his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their home.

Nazism as seen through rose-tinted, Dadaist, infantile glasses. Accusations of back-door ratification are unreasonable; the problem is Waititi (who is half-Jewish, incidentally) is completely indecisive in both tone and satirical viewpoint and the film just isn’t funny or insightful enough, despite a fairly impressive juvenile performance at the centre. One gets the sense that what he was going for was something akin to The Great Dictator (1940) or To Be or Not to Be (1942). 

wd – Taika Waititi   (Based on the Novel by Christine Leunens)

ph – Mihai Malaimare Jr

pd – Ra Vincent

m – Michael Giacchino

ed – Tom Eagles

cos – Mayes C. Rubeo

p – Carthew Neal, Chelsea Winstanley, Taika Waititi  

Cast: Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie, Scarlett Johansson, Taika Waititi, Sam Rockwell, Rebel Wilson, Alfie Allen, Stephen Merchant, Archie Yates

Crisp Criticism - "Parasite", "The Laundromat", "Lucy in the Sky", "The Lighthouse", "Zombieland: Double Tap" Retrospection - "A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929)"

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Julien Faddoul

Parasite ***

All unemployed, a poor Korean family takes a peculiar interest in a wealthy and glamorous one for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.

Exemplary, unpredictable, witty satire on class struggles, social mobility and “solidarity forever”, with riveting Hitchcockian staging and excellent performances. Like all Bong films, it is at times heavy-handed, but this is his most thoughtful and arresting film to date.

d – Bong Joon Ho

w – Bong Joon Ho, Jin Won Han

ph – Hong Kyung-pyo

pd – Lee Ha-jun

m – Jaeil Jung

ed – Jinmo Yang

cos – Choi Se-yeon 

p – Bong Joon Ho, Jang Young-Hwan, Moon Yang-kwon, Kwak Sin-ae

Cast: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam, Lee Jung-eun, Chang Hyae-jin, Park Myung-hoon, Jung Ji-so, Jung Hyeon-jun

Crisp Criticism - "Joker", "Gemini Man", "Transit", "Brittany Runs a Marathon", "Adam" Retrospection - My Man Godfrey (1936)

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Julien Faddoul

Joker

During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in New York Ci-- I mean Gotham City.

A con, and a fairly hostile one at that. A film with the sole purpose of sucking up to both enlightened liberals and those of whom that have not experienced an adulthood that didn’t involve the canonizing of infantile comic book characters, but did involve the vital character studies by Martin Scorsese from the 70s and 80s; surreptitiously and shamefully trying to blur the lines between the two groups. Phoenix gives a committed but ultimately mannered and unconvincing performance. This is the kind of rubbish that hustlers can pull when an audience is so starved for basic craftsmanship and is so unaware of anything that might have been prominent before the age and climate that they live within.

d – Todd Phillips

w – Todd Phillips, Scott Silver   (Based on the Characters Created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson

ph – Lawrence Sher

pd – Mark Friedberg

m – Hildur Guðnadóttir

ed – Jeff Groth

cos – Mark Bridges

p – Todd Phillips, Bradley Cooper, Emma Tillinger Koskoff

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Shea Whigham, Bill Camp, Glenn Fleshler, Leigh Gill, Josh Pais, Marc Maron, Sondra James, Murphy Guyer, Douglas Hodge, Dante Pereira-Olson, Brian Tyree Henry, Sharon Washington

Crisp Criticism - "Ad Astra", "Abominable", "Hustlers", "Rambo: Last Blood", "The Goldfinch", "Judy" Retrospection - Andrei Rublev (1966)

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Julien Faddoul

Ad Astra **

An astronaut travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his father and unravel a mystery that threatens the survival of the planet.

Stunningly constructed in the manner typical of the director, the narrative essentially follows the same trajectory as Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness (or, if you will, Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.) But as is often the hitch with Gray, the thematic rhetoric is glib – the relationship between fathers and sons being indicative of humanity’s primary purpose to connect with one another – with a lack of characterization and an over-reliance on voice-over.

d – James Gray

w – James Gray, Ethan Gross

ph – Hoyte Van Hoytema

pd – Kevin Thompson

m – Max Richter

ed – John Axelrad, Lee Haugen

cos – Albert Wolsky

p – Dede Gardner, James Gray, Anthony Katagas, Jeremy Kleiner, Arnon Milchan, Yariv Milchan, Brad Pitt, Rodrigo Teixeira

Cast: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Donald Sutherland, Liv Tyler, Kimberly Elise, Loren Dean, Donnie Keshawarz