Emma Stone's performance is excellent, but Lily Gladstone's is like no other. Performances of conspicuous effort always win over quieter ones.
Richard Brody
46.4K posts
Richard Brody
@tnyfrontrow
I am the movies editor for Goings On About Town and the author of “Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard.”
- A cinephile who doesn't watch many films made before 2000 is an oxymoron.I think the fact that many cinephiles don’t bother watching films made before 2000, except for those in the Sight and Sound Top 250, and the arbitrary expectation of a “late-style masterpiece” will be disastrous for Brian De Palma’s legacy.
- In deepest honor and grateful memory of Gena Rowlands; may she be at peace. With no disrespect to any other actress, she was the most inventive and vital I've ever seen. The last closeup I'll see in my mind, the one that can stand for all others, is this one, from Faces:
- Should have won for Freaky Friday
- Gerwig made Barbie with artistic freedom and personal vision that's not interstitial or subtle but boldly manifest from beginning to end; selling out isn't entering the business (which she did), it's doing other than one's best, for the sake of money (which she didn't do).
- A word on the many reasons, practical and aesthetic and even political, why I'm holding onto physical media:
- What's especially disturbing about the many negative reviews of Megalopolis is the prevalent pejorative "mess" or "messy," as if scolding filmmakers for their ring binders; it's all the more symptomatic in light of the devitalized monotony of so many acclaimed art-house films.
- Even someone who'd never seen any of their movies could tell by looking at the photo that it's the guy with the shades and the cigar.Who is the best actor in the picture?
- I hope that agents are getting ready to include films' mandatory release in their clients' contracts with studios.Here’s Why ‘Coyote vs. Acme’ Is Worth More Dead Than Alive — and Yep, It’s Legal trib.al/ZeTr0kR
- In honor and memory of Kris Kristofferson, whose substantial art went unrecognized because he didn't fuss. He put one of the greatest movies of modern Hollywood on his shoulders and carried it, for nearly four hours, with enormous yet graceful power, and got only insults for it.
- I'm overwhelmed—moved and humbled by the kind, warm, and generous thoughts of friends and strangers here; movies are emotional, people get emotional about them, and invective comes with the turf; that piece in Gawker is innocuous, no problem at all; there's just one thing:...
- Saw the signatories and, for some, thought, Et tu? I'm appalled by the bad-faith distortions of Jonathan Glazer's remarks; he doesn't reject Judaism; he doesn't equate massacres in Gaza and in Israel with the Holocaust but finds them all rooted in dehumanization—and he's right...
- I hope there are no critics here giving up on any director. Every movie is born innocent and I've had wonderful surprises from filmmakers whose prior films I didn't like.Name an established director you gave up on, and the film that was your breaking point.
