The Northman Cometh, and he’s got an axe to grind
Movie Review: The Northman
There’s not a lot of room for subtlety when most problems are solved by bludgeoning and dismemberment, but you can tell Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke and Alexander Skarsgard are desperate to bring every nuance possible to this broad-strokes study of our stubborn primitivism.
Jay Stone’s Top 10 movies of 2019
(Along with one honourable mention and one movie that every one else loved conspicuous by its absence)
By Jay Stone
Here are my favourite movies of 2019, in alphabetical order:
Honeyland: An amazing documentary, filmed in Macedonia, about a female beekeeper who lives with her ailing mother in rocky isolation, and harvests honey in a way compatible with her deep understanding of the life of bees. This hard-scrabble harmony is disrupted by a family of raucous nomads who move next door. The result is a galvanizing drama about society, greed, culture and, well, bees.
Gloria Bell: Sebastián Lelio’s remake of his own 2013 Spanish-language movie Gloria stars Julianne Moore as a divorcee who assuages her loneliness at dance clubs, and John Turturro as the constricted man who falls for her. The final scene, with the magnificent Moore dancing to the titular disco hit, is one of the great cinematic shouts of joy of the year.
Jojo Rabbit: New ...
Murders More Than it Can Chew Chew
Review: Murder on the Orient Express
Murder on the Orient Express remake pulls out of the station in fine style, only to get stuck in a blustery snow drift of Kenneth Branagh closeups and an avalanche of wasted A-list talent
The Florida Project on the edges of Disney
Movie Review: The Florida Project
A single mother and her precociously savvy daughter scratch out a living in a $38-a-night motel beside Disney World in this gritty look at American life near the bottom
