Nightmare Alley is like a gigantic, room-sized painting of a film noir. Big, beautiful, and flat. It’s gorgeous to look at, and the cast is all top drawer, but the film is too long and dry as dust. You can stream it on HBO Max.
Kajillionaire stars Evan Rachel Wood as the lonely, socially inept daughter in an offbeat and unusual family of grifters. Miranda July wrote and directed this comedy. It’s available for rent on Prime Video and VOD.
It’s fair to say I’m enthusiastic about The Shape of Water. This fantastical love story was beautiful and unique.
Liberal Arts is a charming indie written and directed by Josh Radnor. It looks like a straightforward love story in the trailer below, but it’s not exactly that. It’s a love story, but there’s no sex, hardly any kissing, and lots of moral choice involved in deciding who to love. Liberal Arts is also a story about where we belong …
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, is a wonderful book – it won the Pulitzer. Olive is a stern New Englander, an aging former school teacher, and one of the best characters to ever inhabit the pages of a book. I cannot think of anyone more perfect to play her than Frances McDormand. If I were envisioning any actor to play Olive …
