11 posts tagged ‘Culture / The Front Row’
The Empty Ambition of “The Brutalist”
The New Yorker,
Brady Corbet’s epic takes on weighty themes, but fails to infuse its characters with the stuff of life.
Francis Ford Coppola’s “One from the Heart” Is Exactly What Its Title Says
Critically panned in 1982 and now released in revised form, this Las Vegas tale is a sublimely stylized work that is also highly personal.
James Baldwin’s Anguished Prescience in “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”
Reflecting on the civil-rights era in the nineteen-eighties, the author sounds like our contemporary.
A Sense of Mystery and Wonder in a New “Color Purple”
Blitz Bazawule’s second feature catches the novel and musical’s extremes of sorrow and joy, love and memory.
The Empty Magic of “Wonka”
The prequel to the Roald Dahl classic has little interest in the art and industry of its hero—or in the untapped talents of its star, Timothée Chalamet.
Frederick Wiseman Reveals the Mighty Substance of Culinary Luxury
The nonagenarian’s new film, “Menus-Plaisirs—Les Troisgros,” examines the social and aesthetic context of a world-famous three-star restaurant.
“Saltburn” Is a “Brideshead” for the Incel Age
Emerald Fennell’s class satire is diabolically clever, but there is a void at its center.
Siskel, Ebert, and the Secret of Criticism
The duo’s onscreen sparring, far from being a sideshow, foregrounded the inextricably personal nature of reviewing.