On Nov. 21, 2021, Jon Batiste found out that he had been nominated for 11 Grammys, ranging from Best Contemporary Classical Composition to Best Improvised Jazz Solo; his most recent work, the roots-to-R&B melting pot We Are, was up for the Best Album of the Year award. He was six …
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This column contains significant spoilers for the first two episodes of And Just Like That…, which are streaming now on HBO Max, as well as more general thoughts on the next two episodes, which will begin streaming over the next two Thursdays. “We can’t just stay who we were, right?” …
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His name is Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman), the kind of handle that suggests someone destined to be a private dick from the moment the doc slapped his pink keister. He’s not a detective, though. Not really. Nick deals in memories. In the retro-dystopic Miami that he calls home — the …
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Maybe you remember The Hitman’s Bodyguard. Maybe you don’t. We wouldn’t blame you if the details regarding this pulpy 2017 buddy comedy had faded from your memory banks like so much post-headshot pink mist. Ryan Reynolds is a disgraced bodyguard. Samuel L. Jackson is a hitman who’s supposed to testify …
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“You’ve won the hearts of many people who should have hated you, so many times,” Dave Burd’s manager Mike assures him. “Like who?” Dave wonders. Mike does not have a good answer, admitting that he only made the original comment because he’s high. The real Dave Burd — a.k.a. comic …
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Robert Connolly’s new film, The Dry, is a mystery at heart: An investigation into a small-town murder-suicide that inevitably kicks up the dust of other peoples’ secrets and picks the scabs on barely-healed wounds. Yet for all its depiction of police procedure and the ins and outs of investigation, it’s …
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Writer-director Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari comes with a sense of pedigree: His first film, Munyurangabo, about two Rwandan youth, made a huge splash after debuting at Cannes in 2007. His output has been admittedly spotty since then — an oddball character study here (Abigail Harm), a co-directed documentary there (I …
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Shane MacGowan does not look well. Then again, the former lead singer of the Pogues and one of our greatest living songwriters has not looked well for quite some time. The notion that he’s permanently, tipsily teetering on the edge of this mortal coil has been a part of MacGowan’s …
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Sheriff John Marshall is standing in front of his fellow AA members. “I’m not good with anger,” he says, and from the way this lawman is acting and the manner in which he’s addressing a number of folks offscreen, you know this is an understatement. He’s not good with controlling …
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The trick to crafting a don’t-miss film out of Charles Dickens’ 1850 novel David Copperfield is to get someone who isn’t afraid to be irreverent in the director’s chair. And, presto, here’s Armando Iannucci, the political satirist behind the profanity-filled delights of Veep, In the Loop and The Death of …
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