Joe Alwyn

The Brutalist

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Close-up of László smoking

The Brutalist did well at the Oscars, winning three (Best Actor, Music, Cinematography) from a total of ten nominations. It is the sort of film the Academy likes – it’s got class written all over it, from the fancy opening credits and the high-end VistaVision process (not used for more than 60 years), to its built-in intermission and tackling of a pertinent issue. To wit: immigrants get the job done, as Lin-Manuel Miranda put it in Hamilton. One immigrant, in this case, an architect who survives the death camps of Europe, arrives in proud and confident America as it’s enjoying its finest flowering and then, through a series of adventures with a moneyed American … Read more

Stars at Noon

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Daniel and Trish

Once upon a time Claire Denis didn’t make genre movies. She made film you might designate broadly as dramas, or as French dramas, but most specifically as Claire Denis movies, films often with a strong emphasis on unspoken attraction (see Beau Travail, her masterpiece). But in recent years that has changed. In films like Bastards, a Get Carter-style crime drama, or High Life, a densely imagined piece of sci-fi, or Let the Sun Shine In, an ironic romance, Denis has shown she’s happy to make genre movies, as long as it’s on her terms. Which brings us to Stars at Noon, a Graham Greene-style thriller set in a shady Central American country run … Read more