May 1940: Hitler is riding roughshod across Europe, gobbling up territory like an insatiable monster. Norway, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Denmark have all fallen. Belgium, Holland, and France are falling. Britain is next. England’s current Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, wants to … Continue reading DARKEST HOUR
Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) lives for the 1960s. The clothes she wears, the music she listens to, even the movie posters on her bedroom wall scream Swingin’ Sixties. That’s when style mattered, when London was the center of the universe, and … Continue reading LAST NIGHT IN SOHO
Reporting from the Telluride Film Festival. Cyrano feels like it should work. A musical retelling of Edmond Rostand’s 19th-century play set on the isle of Sicily with comedy, action, and romance. Starring Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Ben Mendelsohn, and Kelvin Harrison … Continue reading CYRANO
Yesterday is a trifle of a movie: a light, sugary sweet confection that is delicious and satisfying. It’s kind of like an early era Beatles song: bouncy, energetic, and consumed by puppy dog love. Sure, The Beatles also wrote “Don’t … Continue reading YESTERDAY
The year is 1561, and Mary Stuart has returned to Scotland. Spending most of her childhood in France, Mary (Saoirse Ronan) has decided to come home and claim her throne, the very one her half-brother, James (James McArdle), has been … Continue reading MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS
There is a scene roughly halfway through Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1948 backstage masterpiece The Red Shoes where Ballet Russe impresario Lermontov comforts his understandably nervous principal dancer, Vicky Page. “Nothing matters by the music,” Lermontov assures her. He hums … Continue reading BABY DRIVER
The Danish Girl is easily director Tom Hooper’s most interesting movie, though that doesn’t say very much. Dramatizing the world’s first known gender reassignment surgery, Hooper explores the story from an intimate setting, concerning himself largely with the marital plight of … Continue reading THE DANISH GIRL
Chester MacFarland (Viggo Mortensen) is a sloppy swindler, a sloppy drunk, and even a sloppy murderer. He and his much younger wife, Colette (Kirsten Dunst), wander the ruins of the Acropolis when they catch the eye of Rydal (Oscar Isaac), … Continue reading THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY
Michael J. Cinema 