Review: Sofia Coppola's "On the Rocks"

By Lynn Lee

What happens to a poor little rich girl when she grows up?

That question has fueled Sofia Coppola’s career, both to her benefit and to her dismissal by those who find her voice out of tune with the times.  I’m not one of the latter, so I sometimes feel oddly defensive about enjoying her films.  Although she’s far from the only writer or director to focus on the interior lives of wealthy white people, there’s something about her work that provokes a particularly insidious disdain in a way that Downton Abbey or Wes Anderson, say, does not.  Gender is an obvious factor in that difference, plus the shadow of her father and the advantages she’s assumed to have derived from him, as well as the limitations on her perspective of her own privilege.  Impatient viewers chafe at her characters’ seeming lack of chafing or rattling of the bars of their gilded cages, which Coppola presents less like cages than delicately tinted soap bubbles, their inhabitants’ discontents and subversions more often internalized than explicitly articulated.

Coppola’s latest feature, On the Rocks, plays in many ways like a wryly self-aware response to her critics...

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"Klaus" is (half) a masterpiece...

Our resident animation expert will be looking at several of the movies vying for a nomination in Best Animated Feature. First up, a Christmas movie.

by Tim Brayton

The new animated feature Klaus is being pulled in a lot of directions. It's the directorial debut of Sergio Pablos, a former Disney animator who splits time between Hollywood projects (as screenwriter, he created the Despicable Me franchise) and nurturing his own company, SPA Studios, based in his hometown of Madrid. It's also the first animated feature produced by Netflix, which has been making sure to emphasize that fact in all of its marketing efforts. And it's not just any old Netflix production: this is part of the streaming service's increasingly deep bench of Christmas-themed movies.

It's hard not to think about this while one is watching the movie. Depending on how you approach it, Klaus is either a masterpiece, or a frankly irritating collection of tin-eared dialogue, odd casting choices, and dated clichés of kids' movie screenwriting...

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Sundance: "The Sound of Silence"

Abe Fried-Tanzer reporting from Sundance

There is a lot of noise in New York City. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single person who disagrees with that statement. Suggesting that there is meaning to be found within the multitude of sounds emanating at all volumes and all times of the day and night is more of a stretch. That’s the premise of Michael Tyburski’s The Sound of Silence, playing as part of the U.S. Dramatic Competition at Sundance.

Peter Sarsgaard stars as a 'house tuner,' also named Peter, who helps people achieve an aural balance in their homes that will translate to harmony and tranquility in other aspects of their lives...

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Critics Choice Documentary Winners 2018

In an unusually successful year for documentaries in terms of audience interest, two of the biggest hits, Won't You Be My Neighbor? ($22.6 million) and Free Solo ($7.3 million and climbing) now have yet more to crow about. They each won three prizes at the 3rd annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards last night. Though they both appear to be likely future Oscar nominees you just never know with the documentary branch. 

The winners in each of the Critics Choice doc categories are listed after the jump... 

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Cast This: "9 to 5" Reboot

by Murtada

It seems like this is the time for reboots and remakes. Every film or TV show we’ve ever loved is getting another go. So why not the classic female workplace revenge comedy 9 to 5? It’s not like things are going great for women in the workplace 38 years on from the original,  as the last few months have shown.

Patricia Resnick, the writer of the 1980 version, is teaming up with Rashida Jones to pen this one...

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