Michael Stuhlbarg

Cut Bank

by
Derby Milton

Look at the talent in Cut Bank – John Malkovich, Bruce Dern, Michael Stuhlbarg, Oliver Platt, Liam Hemsworth, Teresa Palmer. And Billy Bob Thornton. Clearly great things were intended. But maybe 2014 was just too early for a revival of the gonzo Tarantino movie of yore. Ten years later movies like Cut Bank were all over the place. Worth checking out, it’s likeable, well done and showcases Malkovich acting for a change, rather than turning in an “and featuring John Malkovich” performance, as a backwoods sheriff trying to get to the bottom of the murder of universally loved mailman Georgie Wits (Dern). The incident was captured on camera, just by chance, by two … Read more

Shirley

by
Shirley and Rose talking

Shirley is your madwoman’s breakfast, a seething mass of dramatic tropes held together by a distinctly 1940s Freudian thriller atmosphere and populated by characters from a hall of mirrors. Elisabeth Moss plays real-life novelist Shirley Jackson (even Moss is cagey about how close her Shirley is to the original), the febrile, blunt-speaking, possibly clairvoyant novelist living on campus with her bumptious professor husband Stanley, played at full dervish by the ever-superb Michael Stuhlbarg. Into their lives come young lecturer Fred (Logan Lerman in another vanilla male role) and his wide-eyed newly pregnant wife Rose (Odessa Young, the actual focus of the film), just for a day or so while the new arrivals get … Read more