Nicole Kidman Tribute: Margot at the Wedding (2007)

by Eric Blume

With Margot at the Wedding, writer-director Noah Baumbach makes an Éric Rohmer film.  The character’s names are French, it’s lit like a French movie, cut like a French movie, and has the rhythms and languorousness of, specifically, a Rohmer movie.  But, and this may be a hot take:  Rohmer never made a film as textured and exquisite as the one Baumbach makes here.  Rohmer’s films often deal with an indecisive man-child choosing between two women:  there’s a lovely wistfulness about them, but they’re repetitive and limited in depth. 

Baumbach captures the Rohmer melancholia, but he fleshes out all the relationships in the film so they are deeply lived-in and layered. The film is all frayed edges, with unpredictable touches and uncomfortable complexities…

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Nicole Kidman Tribute: Bewitched (2005)

by Christopher James

Yes, I've come back here to defend another much-maligned Nicole Kidman comedy. I swear I love her dramatic roles too, but there's always something strange, special and unnerving about Kidman's comedy work, like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs and smile. 

Bewitched is Nora Ephron’s Ishtar - a big budget box office failure whose greatest crime is throwing too much against the wall. I’d always rather have a movie that tried to do too much outside of the norm, rather than something deeply middling. Bewitched is most interesting in the ways it swings and misses because Ephron and Kidman both give it their all, striking out gloriously. It’s as if the studio got one note (hire Will Ferrell) and decided to never check on the movie again. Their obviousness is our pleasure...

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Annecy 2024: A First Look at "The Wild Robot"

by Cláudio Alves

Photo by Marc Piasecki | © Getty Images for DreamWorks Animation

Paper airplanes fly through the air, zipping across the auditorium and above the audience. Some crash land on unsuspecting heads, while others sway wild into oblivion, lost in dark corners of the cinema. It's a merry sight, which only grows merrier when these crafts arrive at their intended destination – the stage – prompting applause from the crowd in good festival fashion. Within this hubbub of enthusiasm, a sense of community prevails, made more heartfelt by the presence of children among press folk, the families of filmmakers and animators excited to see how the world reacts to their work. Such was the scene at the Annecy Film Festival, as DreamWorks Animation came to celebrate its 30th anniversary and present The Wild Robot…

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Tribeca Review: Under a Microscope in “The Knife”

By Abe Friedtanzer 

It’s always intriguing to see what projects actors choose when they step behind the camera to direct for the first time. Nnamdi Asomugha has been working behind-the-scenes as an executive producer and producer since Beasts of No Nation, helping bring to life films he’s starring in like Crown Heights and Sylvie’s Love, the latter of which earned him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding TV Movie in 2021. For his debut venture as director, Asomugha has chosen a tense story of crime and policing in America, written by him in conjunction with Mark Duplass…

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Tribeca Review: Parallel Stories in “The Freshly Cut Grass”

By Abe Friedtanzer 

Most films tend to focus on one or several protagonists or feature a true ensemble where there’s no lead. It’s rare to find a film with two main characters who have absolutely nothing to do with each other, or at least don’t appear within the same narrative. Yet The Freshly Cut Grass does just that, following two intellectuals who are both not overly satisfied with their lives and begin to see the allure of something that feels distinctly fresh and unlike what they’ve felt in a long time…

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