I’ve restarted this review four times because I can’t quite figure out how to marshal my thoughts on Cecilia Aldarondo’s "Memories of a Penitent Heart." Some documentaries strike you because they focus on interesting topics like wars, science, or bizarre people. Some are necessary historical documents, capturing footage of transformative moments that changed the course of humanity. "Memories of a Penitent Heart" claims to be neither.
Michael Shannon doesn’t really look like Elvis Presley. For one thing, his face is shaped all wrong, his cheeks are too long and deeply creased. If it weren’t for the crazy haircut, the suits, and the sunglasses one would never think that Shannon was supposed to be The King. But then, neither does Kevin Spacey look like Present Richard Nixon. And yet through the sheer strength of their performances they completely inhabit these two men. Shannon
It’s always the films about death which end up being […]
In all seventy-six minutes of Benjamin Ree’s new documentary “Magnus” I’m not sure if I can remember ever seeing Magnus Carlsen, the world’s highest ranked chess player, ever smiling during a game. He smiles plenty when he wins, but that’s not the same. During the games his eyes scrunch up and his face tightens into a mask of marbled concentration. The happiest we ever see him is when he tears himself away from the obsession that
For a man who takes great pride in being a writer of crime fiction, architect Walter Stackhouse (Patrick Wilson) sure acts like a blithering idiot when he get embroiled in an actual murder investigation. It’s quite astonishing, really; he doesn’t do one thing right. When his mentally unbalanced and suicidal wife winds up dead beneath a rural overpass—the same overpass where another high-profile murder victim was recently discovered—he
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