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Problemista 2023
You will probably laugh the first time Alejandro (Julio Torres) walks though the frame in Problemista, seemingly bouncing off the ground before gliding across it, almost as if he were walking on eggshells—or paintings of them. (More on those in a bit.) Which makes sense, given that this aspiring toy designer from El Salvador who’s looking for a co-signer for his visa so that he can remain in the United States is very wary of angering the powers that be…
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Oppenheimer 2023
Think J.F.K. with a Malickian sense of propulsion. What’s not to like, then, if you’re hot for Oliver Stone’s batshit-crazy political thrillers of the ‘90s and not inclined to cry foul, or worse, at Malick’s shard-like world-building?
Well, it's exhausting, and it suggests an act of hubris in its above-all-else technically proficient construction. But it’s hard to resent a film that knows it’s better than most biopics given that most biopics are crapola. If it were madder than the mad…
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Whiplash 2014
"Exhilarating," "astounding," and "electrifying" reads the quotes on the film's poster, from agents of our culture of mean. Okay, I'll give it "electrifying." Miles Teller is a mean drummer, or maybe it's the jazzy cutting that tricks one into thinking so, but the implausible scenario is pretty low-down in how it tries to milk suspense from an unbridled spectacle of human cruelty. Not even sure Damien Chazelle believes his paltry justification for J.K. Simmons's worse-than-Gordon-Ramsay shtick. Maybe someone needs to throw a director's chair at his head so we can see if he's capable of drumming up a "Casablanca."