“Causeway” focuses on a (muted) road to recovery

by Eurocheese

Jennifer Lawrence has returned to the screen in Causeway, now streaming on Apple TV+. Lawrence plays a veteran recovering from an attack overseas. The film opens as she's working with a specialist (Tony winner Jayne Houdyshell, doing great work in a small role) to recover basic capabilities so she can return to “regular life.”  Once Lynsey (Lawrence) returns to her New Orleans home she has one clear goal in mind – return to active duty. Her mother (Tony nominee Linda Emond) spends her nights out drinking and forgets to pick Lynsey up when she arrives. There’s clearly a troubled history between them, but most of it is left unsaid – an ongoing tactic of the movie. Not wanting to be stuck at home, she gets a job cleaning pools. 

When Lynsey's truck has problems we meet the film's most interesting character, a shop owner named James (Brian Tyree Henry)...

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Veronica Lake @ 100: "I Married a Witch"

by Cláudio Alves

"I Married a Witch" | © United Artists

Silky blonde tresses fall over one eye, a face masked by spun gold accented with spidery lashes and a slash of scarlet lipstick. When struggling to promote Veronica Lake's first movies as a full-on movie star, that's the image distributors found, depurating her commercial value into a flat facsimile of her beauty. Whether it was Paramount's poster for Sullivan's Travels or the main art for United Artist's I Married a Witch, it seemed as if Lake was a head of hair first, an actress second. Legend says that once, during the filming of 1941's I Wanted Wings, the young woman kept struggling with a lock of hair falling over her right eye. For the wannabee starlet, it was an irritation. For the studio execs lusting over the teenager, it was the look of a silver screen goddess, instant movie magic. The rest, as they say, is history…

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Mahler's 5th - the secret destroyer in "Decision to Leave" and "Tár"

by Lynn Lee

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony is enjoying a bit of a renaissance these days, thanks to its prominent placement in not just one but two of the most fascinating films of the year, Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave and Todd Field’s Tár.  Not that it’s ever really been out of the public eye.  It’s been a staple of classical orchestras for decades, and its fourth movement – the dreamily romantic Adagietto, which cinephiles may recognize from Visconti’s Death in Venice – long ago reached a degree of mainstream popularity rarely accorded classical works.

Just because it’s a war horse, though, doesn’t mean it can’t be used in constantly different and surprising ways.  The Fifth – like all of Mahler’s symphonies, but perhaps even more so – contains multitudes...

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Doc Corner: 'Retrograde'

By Glenn Dunks

Retrograde is the best movie that Matthew Heineman has made. At least from those I have seen. I’ve been critical of this American director in the past for taking the somewhat lazy non-fiction critical expression “it plays like a real-life thriller” too literally, making movies like Cartel Land and City of Ghosts that put themselves above the subject. I never saw his dramatic feature A Private War with Rosamund Pike, but it didn’t surprise me that Heineman had made that leap.

This film, his third in as many years, thankfully takes something of a step back from what appeared to be his natural directorial instincts. For the most part, Retrograde is in service of its subjects and not the filmmaker.

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Chart Updates: Best Picture... and how much diversity will we get in Best Director?

by Nathaniel R

Sarah Polley on the set of "Women Talking". Photographed by Michael Gibson for Orion Releasing

So what's going to get a Best Picture and who will get a Best Director nomination? The possible combinations of 10 and 5 contenders, respectively, are many. While Best Picture could well find a mix that doesn't upset too many people (10 is a lot to work with) Best Director will likely be more fraught. So let's talk Best Director first...

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