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Watched on Saturday May 31, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 31, 2025.

The finest film I've seen so far this year. My mouth hung open in astonishment at its originality, intentionality, and precision. Wow!

The real drama in this exquisite film explodes in understatement, making space for the personal experiences of the viewer to resonate, to breathe fully.

As Pete's story, I give it 4 stars. Dylan's story gets 2.5. The music is always a 5.

Watched on Monday March 31, 2025.

Watched on Monday March 31, 2025.

There is no traditional narrative here. But there certainly is a story. It's a story about healers and seekers of healing and how those roles intertwine. It's about how these people and the spaces in which they dwell are filled with comion and tenderness, heart-opening vulnerability and good intentions.

It's about listening more than judging. Imagining more than believing.

I don't know how many psychotherapists would agree with me, but what these six psychics do is not all that different from what I practice in my office each day. In order to understand the unknowns and longings that unsettle and confuse, we are all channeling something, both from within and outside ourselves.

Watched on Wednesday February 12, 2025.

Not as bad as I expected. I did fast-forward a few times (format allowed for 10 second intervals - not enough!). But kind of worth it for the acting by the wonderful Sebastian Stan. And Jeremy Strong managed to create some dimension for the character of Roy Cohn.

Watched on Thursday January 23, 2025.

So similar to The Substance. Both are dark comedies, Both associate with fairy tale themes. Both explore the impact of the external lens, the public eye, that is thrust upon us, sometimes aggressively, in every aspect of our lives. And they both end up revealing how it's the internal lens, that is, how we hold and see ourselves, that has the most significant power to destroy.

Maybe it's obvious, but the central character here is the camera lens, literally, and the human eye, metaphorically. Everything and everyone else could be considered an extra in this sometimes funny, sometimes gross, entertaining, but not very insightful film. The fact that Elizabeth never has to fork over any money for the injectible puts it in the fairy tale category. Although there's usually a price to be paid, no one has to settle up with hard cash for anything in fairy tales.

A fun watch with my son the night before he left our hometown for a months-long exploration of new worlds, new experiences. It was perfect. Funny, touching, warm, with incredible acting. In a strange way, it helped me say goodbye.

My first viewing ever, Christmas Eve 2024. After dinner, some piano playing by the toasty fire, and gift-opening, it was time for a movie. It was between La Chimera and Die Hard. My son suggested the latter and I'm so glad he did. Fun, funny, not riveting, just great entertainment, with the softest- spoken villain I ever encountered in film. Rickman was perfect.

So many missed opportunities for a deeper exploration of the subject. Kind of one-dimensional except the ending worked pretty well.

It begins and ends with her flower shop. Step outside and you may find a story that needed more tending.

Not for me. But it was fun to sit in an audience of enthusiastic fans.

With the typical doomed-romance film, first comes love, then comes grief. In We Live in Time, the two are intertwined from the very first scene. And thereafter, we are invited into a duet of sorts, one in which love and grief sometimes merge in unison, and other times shift into harmony, each taking turns with the melody.

The wonderful Andrew Garfield has spoken eloquently in interviews about love IN grief, regarding the death of his mother. How grief becomes a voice for unexpressed love. But here, we have love AND grief, so perfectly woven together, that what we take for granted about time, such as its endings. middles and, beginnings -- well those boundaries don't demand differentiation so much anymore to retain their meaning.

It’s as if being in love and being in grief are constructed from the very same materials-- vulnerability, pain, maybe a little madness, ghosts of the past, ghosts of a future altered. and longing. Especially, longing. The all-encoming desire for something ultimately unattainable.

Although Culkin and Eisenberg play their parts well enough, the most vibrant, heart-connecting character in this film is the historical landscape of Poland. From memorial statues in Warsaw to the Old Town center of Lublin to the climactic tour of Majdanek concentration camp, we are drawn to the power of these sites. Their resonance and depth not only leave the characters' arcs feeling static, they also diminish the story itself.
Profoundly illustrating this is a scene at Majdanek featuring a window that looks out at the Polish countryside. Each character, in brief close-up, steps in front of the glass, looking directly at the camera. But it's the plain window behind them, without a word said about it, that draws our attention, both literally and in metaphor, and the characters feel like props in contrast.

Terrible.

Watched on Sunday November 10, 2024.

It's easy to be critical of some of the parents and maybe even the values guiding this project (we've learned a lot about autism since 2007), but those kids really got to me. Their vulnerability, their earnestness, their individual essences -- engaging, fierce, sometimes anxious and distraught -- emerge so genuinely, even under the societal pressure to fit in. Wyatt, sitting on a swing, opining about how hard it is to make friends when you keep going into your own world, tore me apart. He, and the others, made me stay in my discomfort long enough to begin to understand.

This is my third horror film recently and none of them have been scary for me. At all. I wonder, as we get older, if our ability to suspend our disbelief, particularly regarding menacing narratives about imperiled survival, diminishes. The haunted house, the jump scare, the slasher behind the curtain, may feel more tactical and gimmicky when our own death, a reality of the ultimate kind, moves closer every day.

Watched on Thursday November 7, 2024.

Though not scary, it was earnest.

Watched on Sunday November 3, 2024.

Watched on Tuesday August 27, 2024.

A still life oil painting come to life -- every sense heightened, deepened, expanded. Who knew the heart could hold so much before bursting.

Based on the trailer, I expected a gentle, philosophical, heart-warming tale about learning to let go of those we love most, the journey guided by a wise, raspy-voiced macaw. I expected something like poetry but, instead, got an old-time fable closer to the original Grimm brothers' stories than Disney's.

It took me a few minutes to jump on board, not only suspending my disbelief, but my sense of direction as well, my standards of what's right and wrong, and my understanding of the peculiar relationship between kindness and pain. Just had to toss it all up in the air and go with however it landed.

It's messy. And probably misses in places. But Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Lola Petticrew make it work in that 'ugly-crying kind of beauty' way that lets us learn something old for the first time again.

Based on a true story, there are some delightful moments. It doesn't quite hold up all the way through but worth the 1 hour 40 minutes because of the cast. I will see anything with Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley.

I saw this beauty twice in a theater: first time, 1989, with my nine year old son; second time, 2024, with my 44 year old son, part of a book g event for his book, Baseball: The Movie. Sitting with the ghosts of the past in the present is the very essence of the film itself. Just the best!

Watched on Monday May 27, 2024.

Maybe it's not perfect but when Rebecca Miller calls upon an opera composer, a tug boat captain, an OCD psychiatrist, and a French bulldog to enact a story, it's bound to be warm and wacky and entertaining.

Watched on Sunday April 21, 2024.

This is what grief can do: a few weeks after my partner of 20 years suddenly died, he appeared in a dream. He was piloting a single-seat airplane. I shouted up to him as he circled over, “Can’t you come back? Please try." He called down,” I think there’s a way. Let me check out how it works up here. I think I can do it.” I woke up so happy and for months afterward, I more than half-expected to hear his key in the front door. That sliver of a secret hope kept me going and held me back.

Birth is narrated by grief. It's a narrator everyone knows intimately. Suspension of disbelief is at the core of any film, any storytelling, so it's an effective realm in which to explore the push and pull of "could be's","maybe's", and "if only's" no matter how surreal and impossible. It's a bumpy, twisted road from denial to acceptance in the stages of deep loss, and Jonathan Glazer and cast not only highlight the route, they also invite you to the solemn cortege.

Watched on Friday April 12, 2024.

The title is an invitation, an invitation offered by Death and delivered by inhumanity and savagery, to enter a place of Truth. A place, that even when you don't look, even when you don't turn back to see what has been destroyed, you still see it all. The boy sees it all, so does the girl, and so does the film viewer, and we all age lifetimes, both toward the past and toward the future, and none of us will ever forget.

Paula Beer is the magic of any film she graces. In this one, how can there be such an authentic lightness of being in the midst of such a menacing force that takes root in the very first scene.

But that very lightness of being, sensed before we even meet her, is the cornerstone of every relational dynamic that emerges. It takes hold, works its way into our skin like a meditation on human connection -- from friendship to sexuality to work-life to shrouded hurts and hopes.

It's a lightness that is both silent and resounding in an earth-shattering pitch. It is gloriously defiant in its certainty and power. And perhaps the wonder is -- might it be the only thing that can endure, even somehow thrive, in the devouring might of the inferno.

Learning how to love again, and, perhaps more importantly, learning how to be loved after loss is as fragile as gossamer lace. The protagonist, Adam, a screenwriter, creates and edits his way into a life where intimacy can grow.

Watched on Wednesday March 20, 2024.

Better than meh, but there's no wonder in the magic, no mystery or enchantment in Chalamet's Wonka. The new songs are forgettable. Even the confections don't look particularly tasty. While Mel Stuart's 1971 production was an invitation into the world of imagination, Paul King displays a lot of colorful items for you to browse through or over. There is no beckoning. No allure. Perhaps a spin-off of Hugh Grant's Oompa Loompa might be a narrative worth developing.

Disappointing, even for a treill movie. I was on board with Peter Graves as Jim Phelps in 1967 because the show was so surprising and smart. It's lost all that now and I found myself fast-forwarding through the car chase scenes and fights on tops of trains. Some good stunts but pretty sure I'll on Part 2.

Such an endearing film, creating a community of characters so real that if we don't know them, we wish we did, at least by the end. They are full of surprises but not the dramatic, popping out of nowhere kind. They offer very human surprises existing just outside the expected and that's what makes them so authentic. There's no bad guy. No outsider. There's just a family. a community of imperfect folks and the film teaches us to understand and feel comion for them. It was such a relief to feel my own quick judgments and preconceived notions dissolve, one by one, as I inhabited the home and town of the Flaherty family.

And the film did nothing to diminish the intensity of my ardor for Giamatti.

Probably not a great film but it is sad and tender and O'Toole always brings magic to a story.

If only Congress could work like this -- a group of powerful people putting aside their egos, strongly held opinions, and insecurities for a greater purpose.

I was teetering on the edge for several years, but after this one, my crush on Paul Giamatti is official. No backing out now.

Watched on Sunday February 4, 2024.

Watched on Saturday February 3, 2024.

Watched on Saturday February 3, 2024.