There’s an inspired moment about halfway through Dome Karukoski’s Tolkien where a young J. R. R. Tolkien (Nicholas Hoult) takes his future wife Edith Bratt (Lily Collins) to tea in a lavish restaurant, one shellacked with the suffocating pomp of…
Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice Tribeca Movie Review: A hollow exploration of a wondrous career
The first half of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice is a maddening, frustrating sit, portraying Ronstadt—the woman who would go multiplatinum several times, win ten Grammy Awards, and master numerous genres as wide-ranging…
Tribeca 2019: ‘Framing John DeLorean’ is an Experimental Take on an American Original
2019 has seen no shortage of documentaries about the rise and self-destruction of so-called American geniuses. Two of the highest profile docs so far this year were Hulu and Netflix’s dueling films about the 2017 Fyre Festival, both of which…
Film Review: ‘At the Heart of Gold’ is a Necessary Autopsy and a Grim Warning
[Warning: This review contains descriptions of sexual assault] One of the most shocking revelations in Erin Lee Carr’s documentary At the Heart of Gold, a chilling expose of the 2016-2017 USA gymnastics sex scandal where team doctor Larry Nassar was…
Tribeca 2019 Review: ‘For They Know Not What They Do’
Daniel Karslake’s extraordinary new documentary, named after the final words of Jesus, is a four-part examination of one of the most shameful and contentious parts of modern Christian theology: institutionalized homophobia. Through its 91 minutes, Karslake guides his audience through…
Jordan Peele’s Us is a Well-Intentioned Misfire
[This review contains some spoilers] One can scarcely imagine the pressure on Jordan Peele when the time came to begin shooting his sophomore feature film Us following the enormous success of his debut feature. But the film is here now,…
The Juniper Tree (4K) Movie Review: A Starkly Dream, Revivified
Among the pantheon of toe-chopping, head-slicing stepmothers in the Brothers Grimm’s fairy-tale canon, few are as starkly cruel and vicious as the one in The Juniper Tree. Here, an abusive stepmother decapitates her stepson, frames her daughter for the crime,…
