Lisa Trifone
Oscar-Nominated Live Action and Animated Short Films Offer Somber Themes and Accomplished Filmmaking
Of the countless short films that are made in any given year, it’s always a bit of a mystery how the select few find their way to the film industry’s […]
Review: The Taste of Things Is a Soft, Sumptuous Celebration of French Culinary Culture
The Taste of Things is, by all accounts, a film tailor-made for me—and maybe you, too. A French period romance centered on the country’s rich culinary history starring the great […]
Review: Astounding and Grossly Captivating, The Zone of Interest Is Challenging, Frustrating and Essential Art
It may sound like an unlikely endorsement for a film, but stay with me here: The Zone of Interest will make you want to puke from discomfort and anxiety. Or […]
Review: Twenty Years Later, Mean Girls Adds Music but Remains as Quotable as Ever
Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes was published in 2002, a non-fiction guide for parents on the cliques and exclusionary behavior teen girls engage in during their formative high school […]
Review: Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard Star in Beautifully Crafted Relationship Drama Memory
This year has been a very good one for the kind of films I’m naturally drawn to, films without much flash or special effects but with real, authentic stories about […]
Review: Centered by Authentic, Devastating Performances, All Of Us Strangers Confronts Grief, Passion and Connection
There’s a magic to writer/director Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, the kind that sneaks up slowly at first before becoming so powerful it’s impossible to ignore its pull. A […]
Review: American Fiction Is a Smart Satire That Sends Up Race, Relationships and Literary Ambitions
I have not read Percival Everett’s Erasure, the book on which Cord Jefferson’s hilarious and sharp send-up of literary culture and the Black experience, American Fiction, is based. But if […]
Review: In Adapting Alice Walker’s Classic Novel (Again), the Latest The Color Purple Boasts an Impressive Cast If Chaotic Story
Since Alice Walker’s The Color Purple was first published in 1982, it has been adapted into a film (in 1985, directed by Steven Spielberg), a stage musical (in 2005, which […]
Review: Wonka Is a Warm-Hearted Prequel with Plenty of Humor, Sweetness and a Charming Chalamet
The first thing to know about Wonka, the latest film to revisit the Roald Dahl-created candyman and his antics, is that this version is the brainchild of co-writer and director […]
Review: In Maestro, a Beautifully Rendered Biopic, Director and Star Bradley Cooper Delivers Again
Bradley Cooper sure has come a long way since The Hangover, and we’re all the luckier for it. The one-time comic leading man has bold ambitions, and if his first […]
Review: Disney Makes a Wish in New Family Musical That Fails to Shine
There is a lot that doesn’t work in Disney Animation’s latest original effort, Wish, but the main culprit is a plot that never clicks into place. The stakes never really […]
Review: Colman Domingo Commands the Screen as Rustin, a Key Organizer of the March on Washington
I first encountered the bold, scene-stealing energy that is Colman Domingo in 2009, when I stumbled across Spike Lee’s filmed adaptation of Passing Strange, the stage musical about a young […]