Richard Brody
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I am the movies editor for Goings On About Town and the author of “Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard.”
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Articles by Richard Brody
“Fatherland” Cleans Up the Rough Edges of History
Paweł Pawlikowski’s “Fatherland” offers an amiable eighty-two minutes of condensed history, centered on the septuagenarian novelist Thomas Mann’s trip, in the summer of 1949, to Germany—West and East—in order to receive each country’s Goethe Prize on the occasion of that great predecessor’s bicentenary. If Pawlikowski’s aim was to portray Mann (played by Hanns Zischler) as a terminal bore and a pompous ass, he succeeded brilliantly, even if he failed to suggest the reasons for his own animosity.
Spoiler Alert: Keeping Movies Under Wraps
The only moment in the film that comes to life through the synergistic passion of image and performance is a musical sequence starring Penélope Cruz as the mistress of ceremonies and the star—an imperious, wily, witty, and utterly free singer, dancer, personality, and comedian—in a cavernous, barnlike theatre where Civil War troops are entertained. Her performance steals the film. I’d gladly trade all the artificial realism of “The Invite” for her few glorious minutes of flamboyant artifice here.
The Vertiginous Revelations of “You Can See Everything”
Fielder and Oppenheim started filming thirty-four days before Holmes was due to report to prison. She’s living in a large but not lavish house with Evans and their two children, a toddler and an infant whom she’s still breast-feeding. Most of the discussions take place in casual domesticity: in the kitchen, in a bedroom, in the baby’s room, on a sofa, outdoors on a deck.
“The Social Reckoning” Leaves Out the Human Element
Jeff, for his part, is a smooth professional handler, providing Frances with a burner phone preloaded with his number. When Frances, frustrated by her bosses’ dismissal of her concerns, decides to feed Jeff documents, he says that he can’t physically handle any of her electronic devices—but she can leave them open and he can look.
The New York Film Festival, Week Two: Loose Talk, Bold Action
The New York Film Festival is a feast of many parts, but its divisions are mainly symbolic. Such major festivals as those in Cannes, Berlin, and Venice are competitive; they offer prizes and make a distinction between movies in the main competition and those in other sections. Thus, the value judgments in those programming decisions have practical effects.
“Verity” Is a Criminal Waste of Talent
Melodrama is perched on the edge of laughter because it’s intrinsically a parody of tragedy, an infusion of heroic grandeur into workaday lives. The laughter I hear (and sometimes even unleash) when I’m in a theatre watching a classic melodrama never seems, or feels, derisive but, rather, astonished. So it was, too, when I saw one of the more classically tailored of recent melodramas, “It Ends with Us,” from 2024, adapted from a novel by Colleen Hoover.
The New York Film Festival, Week One: Better Late Than Never
Bakhshi and Najdi’s collecting is inextricably bound up with their art. Both are painters. Although they paint separately, in different styles and ways—Haghighi delights in comparing their methods—they both create large, realistic yet phantasmagorical paintings using images gleaned from scrounged-up photo albums, and they both scavenge small-scale items for use in collages.
“NAZA” Puts Israel Face to Face With the War in Gaza
In this documentary, Israeli military and intelligence sources reveal systems, policies, and practices that have resulted in high numbers of civilian deaths and widespread destruction. In November, 2023, and April, 2024, the Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham wrote a pair of articles about the high number of civilian casualties in the attacks that Israel launched in Gaza in response to Hamas’s massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023.
“NAZA” Puts Israel Face to Face with the War in Gaza
One source, speaking of the high NAZA numbers assigned to many low-level Hamas targets, concludes that “you end up with all of Gaza.” Even without adding the word “genocide,” the source’s implication is clear. Another source, describing one instance of “Where’s Daddy?” targeting, explains that, when a particular target happened to leave his phone at home when he went out, the missile launched at his apartment killed his family but not him.
Lena Dunham’s “Famesick” Is a Cautionary Tale of Filmmakers Doing TV
Even before submitting the script for the pilot, Dunham was asked to write four episodes along with it. In September, the studio decided to make the pilot, and the shoot was scheduled for November.
New York Film Festival’s World of Cinema
Caleb Stein’s excellent new book, “Down by the Hudson,” comes weighted down with text. His exhibition of some of its contents at Palo, in the East Village, keeps the focus of our attention on his black-and-white photographs, which hold it with a sense of ease that never undermines their moody soulfulness. Stein’s subject is the life in and around a swimming hole near Poughkeepsie, where the bodies are young, stripped down, and mostly male.
“The History of Concrete” Humanizes the Material World
Wilson’s chain of observations and anecdotes includes plenty of material that is eccentric or funny, yet little of it is there just for humor’s sake; through association and allusion, its significance is ultimately revealed.
In “The Sun Never Sets,” Joe Swanberg Strips Romance to Its Bones
This attention to dramatic framework is a logical extension of Swanberg’s prior body of work. All of his films are largely rooted in improvised performances—he creates stories, plots them out into scenes, and then grants the actors a large margin of freedom in inventing dialogue and stage business.
The Principled Cynicism of “By Any Means”
The prime dramatic mechanism of “By Any Means” is Wayne’s conversion—first grudging, then fervent—to Gregory’s methods. To start with, knowing the lay of the land, he guides their investigation but hesitates to set foot in segregated spaces, such as a gun shop where a weapon used against Vernon was sold. And he vehemently refuses to take part in the violence that’s Gregory’s method. But the physical threats ramp up.
The Principled Cynicism of “By Any Means”
The 8 Best New Movies and Shows to Stream This Weekend on Netflix, Apple and More The sophomore season of a hit Netflix gangster dramedy headlines this week’s streaming premieres. Elsewhere, Hulu has the second season of a sports …
“Days and Nights in the Forest” Emerges from the Shadows
All four are manifestly bourgeois, flashing their cash from the moment they arrive at the village where they are to stay. They blusteringly order a bedraggled local man named Lakha to accompany and serve them.
Shirley Clarke Lived Her Art to the Fullest
The publication of Laurence Kardish’s book “Shirley Clarke: The Passionate Life and Radical Works of an Exceptional Filmmaker” (University Press of Kentucky) is a major event, and one I’ve been impatient for. A seminal modernist, Clarke made startling, original films but completed only four features—three in the nineteen-sixties, one in the eighties—which doesn’t fill much time in a seventy-seven-year life. (She was born in 1919 and died in 1997.) What was she doing the rest of the time?
“Dreams in Nightmares” Turns the Art Life Political
To do this, Ford builds the drama with exhilarating freedom. As the title suggests, the film indeed opens with a dream, one that emerges from the nightmares of history. It’s presented as an impressionistic historical montage, of Black farmworkers and the land, with clips of Black history that include modern suburbs, and a woman—Z herself—who gazes out of a door into a sere expanse of land bordered by low mountains.
Could “Fast” Be, at Long Last, Rob Tregenza’s Breakout Film?
This summary does an injustice to the originality and the sophistication of Tregenza’s way with narrative form. The tale unfolds in many time frames—Sterling’s memory-fraught quest for speed, the troubles of her early adulthood, even echoes of chidhood—which intermingle freely on the screen. This technique puts key moments in a permanent present tense of suggestion, implication, and ambiguity.
The Modern R. & B. of Olivia Dean and Baby Rose
“I must admit, a stroke at thirty wasn’t in my five-year plan . . . or my ten-year plan or fifty-year plan,” the eponymous star of “Cat Cohen: Broad Strokes” deadpans in her new one-woman musical comedy, directed by Alex Timbers. The stroke, caused by a hole in her heart, is just one entry in the sprawling hypochondriacal catalogue raisonné that powers the show.
What Makes an Adaptation Good?
But, if the art of filmmaking is inseparable from that of adaptation, it’s because almost all feature films are made by way of a fundamental form of adaptation: that of a script. Whether it’s written by the director or by another screenwriter, whether a film is made under studio supervision or independently, most dramatic features start on the page, and every subsequent step in production is an effort to translate that text into images and sounds.
Wendy Wasserstein’s Prescient Play
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Wendy Wasserstein’s “An American Daughter” (revived, by La Femme Theatre Productions, at the Pershing Square Signature Center, now in previews) harks back to a more hopeful era. The play opened on Broadway in 1997, and it begins in the well-appointed Georgetown home of Lyssa Dent Hughes, a professor of public health and a fifth-generation descendant of Ulysses S. Grant.
By Rhoda Feng Verified, Richard Brody Verified, Vince Aletti, Sheldon Pearce Verified, Madeleine Wulfahrt, Rachel Syme Verified
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The New Yorker
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In “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” Desire and Terror Meet
From this straightforward setup, Schoenbrun unleashes an outpouring of imagination and invention that places the film on a level of intricacy and extravagance comparable to that of Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City” and Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” Scenes from across the “Camp Miasma” franchise play as films within the film, realized in elaborate detail.
“Lost Chapters” Weaves Literary Mysteries Into Family Bonds
The home in Caracas to which Ena returns, for all the bright clarity of its rooms and the lush foliage of its grounds, is filled with ambient emotion, which crackles like an electrical charge. What generates the charge are the objects the place contains. Alvarado’s fervent attentiveness to spaces and their contents daringly places them on nearly equal dramatic footing with the characters who inhabit and use them.
Paul Thek’s Eclectic Art
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The art world loves a tie-in—a book or a movie that provides an occasion to “reframe” certain artists. In recent months, Andrew Durbin’s very fine biography “The Wonderful World That Almost Was: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek” has helped to promote two artists whom younger viewers in particular may have been only tangentially aware of. Paul Thek (1933-88) is the subject of two shows up now, at the (through July 25), and at Pace (through Aug. 14).
By Hilton Als Verified, Rhoda Feng Verified, Sheldon Pearce Verified, Richard Brody Verified, Amanda Petrusich Verified
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The New Yorker
Verified
Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” Leaves the Gods in the Outtakes
Nolan advances his vision, however crowd-pleasing and anachronistic, with vigorous confidence and unimpeachable clarity. The dialogue, terse and contemporary, puts his distinguished cast of actors in their comfort zone and turns ancient, iridescently complex figures crystalline and hard-edged.
“Remake” Confronts a Father’s Grief and a Filmmaker’s Responsibility
The ethical core of “Remake” is McElwee’s own cinematic practice, a subject that has come to the fore in previous films of his, when subjects—particularly family members—take issue with his recording private situations and making them public. In “Remake,” McElwee considers Adrian’s troubles in light of their relationship, both as father and son and as filmmaker and subject. He talks about the casual filmmaking he did with Adrian, done a bit at a time but adding up to a large amount of material.
Éric Rohmer’s Novel “Élisabeth” Is a Precocious Literary Triumph
The undercurrent of unsatisfied lust that runs through “Élisabeth” bursts to the fore when Michel, giving a high-school student named Jacqueline a lift, introduces himself under a false name and then unhesitatingly dares, as she later says, to “jump on top of” her. He touches her sexually—apparently not to her displeasure—but then keeps going, forcefully, after she clearly and repeatedly tells him to stop. The scene is far more sexually detailed than any in Rohmer’s films.
Éric Rohmer’s Novel “Élisabeth” Is a Precocious Literary Triumph
1 hour ago Bonnie Tyler, the singer best known for her hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” has died. She was 75. The Welsh singer, known for her raspy voice, also had big ‘70s and ‘80s hits with the songs “It’s a Heartache,” and “Holding Out for a Hero.” A message posted on Tyler’s official website on Thursday, …
“Couture,” Reviewed: Angelina Jolie Faces Trouble with Style
The compressed script and the snippety editing sometimes lead to unintended comedy, as in a scene where Maxine watches Christine, the seamstress, work. While sewing by hand, Christine accidentally pricks a finger with a needle, and Winocour shows a drop of blood blossoming on her fingertip—only to show her, an instant later, again sewing the white dress, without as much as blotting or bandaging the finger to protect the garment.
“Couture,” Reviewed: Angelina Jolie Faces Trouble with Style
7 hours ago James Ellroy tells us about his new book, ‘Red Sheet,’ and the real-life Hollywood fixer who inspired his characters. Plus, we pay a visit to Counterpoint Books & Records in Hollywood. For 45 years, in his novels, short stories and essays, James Ellroy has been creating the definitive under-history …
A Lonely Adolescent Summer, Set to “Bad Moon Rising”
Any time is a good time to grow up if you find what you love, but there was something special about coming to self-consciousness in the mid-sixties, amid the British Invasion and the rise of Motown.
In “Disclosure Day,” Steven Spielberg Steps Out from Behind the Curtain
Margaret is entirely aware of what she’s doing when she pulls off these empathetic maneuvers, but she remains oblivious to how she herself is being puppeteered—when she speaks Russian or Korean, when she clucks. There’s a link between these conscious and unconscious forms of mind control, and for Spielberg Margaret’s eventual coming to consciousness is a matter of fundamental morality. It’s also a self-regarding, self-challenging portrayal of his own art of moviemaking.
In “Disclosure Day,” Steven Spielberg Steps Out from Behind the Curtain
In pictures: The Palace of Versailles, Macron's beloved soft power tool French President Emmanuel Macron plays host to President Donald Trump at a lavish dinner Wednesday night at the Palace of Versailles to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence. This is the fourth time the French leader has chosen Louis XIV’s sumptuous palace as a venue to entertain …
“Mudville,” Reviewed: An Atlanta Filmmaker’s Expansive D.I.Y. Family Drama
The other day, I suddenly remembered a film I’d seen and admired ten years ago, “The Arbalest,” which, as a juror at the 2016 South by Southwest festival, I’d supported for the Grand Prize. Now I wondered whether it was streaming (answer: yes) and whether its director, Adam Pinney, had made another film. A quick search revealed that he’d not only made one, called “Mudville,” but that it had premièred a few weeks before, at the Atlanta Film Festival, near his home town of Lilburn, Georgia.
A Wondrous Array of Boundary Pushers at SummerStage
This year, City Parks Foundation SummerStage celebrates its landmark fortieth anniversary by bringing a wide and wondrous array of free shows to more than a dozen parks across the five boroughs, including Central Park. With the festival already in full swing, many of the most exciting acts are yet to come.
“The Little Sister,” Reviewed: an Intellectual Yet Passionate Coming-Out Drama
The movie spans about a year, in the course of which Fatima passes her baccalaureate exam (with honors) and begins commuting to university in Paris. In a philosophy class, the professor offers a lecture on the concept of emancipation, as exemplified in the work of the sixteenth-century writer La Boétie. Fatima, who’s of Algerian descent, is a practicing Muslim; she’s seen praying several times throughout the film, and when her faith is shaken by romantic turmoil, she consults an imam.
Cowboy Heaven, in MOMA’s Westerns Series
The series “Universal Westerns,” at MOMA through July 3, reveals the fruitful cinematic idiosyncrasies that Universal Pictures, founded in 1912, fostered in its heyday. John Ford, the supreme director of the Western, got his start there, at age twenty-four; in his first feature, “Straight Shooting” (screening June 6 and June 16), from 1917, his artistic personality is already on sharp display.
“Power Ballad,” Reviewed: A Bromantic Conflict Over a Hit Song
Unbeknownst to Rick, the track, a love song, is a phenomenon, with millions of streams. It becomes a No. 1 hit, and everyone—including Aja and Rachel—is crooning along to it everywhere. Rick is, in effect, secretly a world-famous songwriter, and, though he’s happy that Danny has managed to reinvent himself, he is resentful that he hasn’t got the acclaim, the money, or the career that writing a hit song should bring.
The Revolutionary Force of Sonny Rollins
The album is called “A Night at The ‘Village Vanguard’ ”; it features Rollins in a trio, with only bass and drums, no piano, the effect of which is to maximize the saxophonist’s solo time and to omit the pianist’s habitual chordal signposting during his solos.
The Revolutionary Force of Sonny Rollins
Middle East Now How schools are using AI and VR to train nurses vermontpublic.org • 28m Watch 56:45 PBS News Hour September 9, 2024 - PBS News Hour full episode September 9, 2024 - PBS News Hour full episode Episode: S2024 E254 | … Pro Wrestling 11 hours ago Arturo Sandoval Is Sounding Good stereogum.com - Phil Freeman • 11h Sonny Rollins has died at 95.
Summer Culture Preview
Ballet Stars, Dance Parties In summertime, the city develops a new personality: open, relaxed, even, at times, outdoorsy. Each year, the plaza at Lincoln Center goes through a vernal transformation, its formal granite parterre converted to a busy dance floor with twinkling lights, part of the center’s Summer for the City programming. Free nightly dance parties happen there from June 10 to Aug. 8 (often with headphones, so as not to disturb performances at the nearby theatres).
“I Love Boosters,” Reviewed: A Socialist-Surrealist Shoplifting Fantasy
As an aspiring designer herself, Corvette has a complex relationship with Christie: infuriated though she may be by Christie’s racist and classist condescension, Corvette also considers her a creative idol. Corvette lives in an abandoned fried-chicken restaurant that she has converted into a studio, where she passionately turns out samples and designs.
Goings On Newsletter
New Yorker subscribers get an exclusive curated reading list, plus unlimited access to our seasonal previews and more. If you’re not already a subscriber, join us today » In today’s newsletter, a dreamy new LP from aja monet. Plus: • How romantasy seduces its readers • Rostam Batmanglij likes to push our idea of what a pop song can be • The hollow trickery of “The Wizard of the Kremlin” aja monet. Photograph by Daniel N.
The Hollow Trickery of “The Wizard of the Kremlin”
Despite such philosophizing, “The Wizard of the Kremlin” can only superficially be called a movie of ideas; it’s a movie of strategies rather than of ideologies, of how power is used rather than why. Assayas takes a cynical and clichéd view regarding temptation and corruption, worldly rewards of security and pleasure, even ego and pride, while having nothing to say about the transformations envisioned or the values embodied in the exercise of political authority.
“Two Pianos” Turns Modern Melodrama Old-Fashioned
Mathias is staying with his mother, Anna (Anne Kessler), in the apartment where he grew up, and chance intervenes again: walking through a public park, he sees a young boy whom he considers his own childhood doppelgänger. Then, realizing that the child, named Simon (and played by Valentin Picard), is Claude’s, he becomes convinced he’s the father and tries to insinuate himself into Simon’s life—and into Claude’s.
“Michael,” Reviewed: A Sanitized Bio-Pic That’s All Business
In bed afterward, recovering from his father’s assault, Michael reads an illustrated Peter Pan book in which a drawing of the villainous Captain Hook is hand-labelled “Joseph”—a blatant foreshadowing of Michael’s refuge in a fantasy version of childhood. Soon, his real childhood is overtaken by his career, when Joseph pulls the group—now called the Jackson Five—out of school for a Chicago gig.
The History of Jazz Has Instantly Expanded
Like just about every major tenor saxophonist of his generation, Henderson was influenced by Coltrane, but Henderson absorbed that influence and transformed it into a mark of his own originality. He took on essential elements of Coltrane’s sound—the long low-note honks and growls and high-pitched screeches and wails—and he was inspired by Coltrane’s vehemence, how his energies from deep within seemed to burst out with reckless, self-revealing fervor.
“Blue Heron” Is an Exalted Drama of Troubled Childhood
The movie’s fluid observational construction conjures drama by compounding micro-incidents; its narrative emerges from the shaping of young Sasha’s inchoate sensibility as she observes the troubles that surround her. The story is something of a palimpsest, with Romvari’s own perspective intertwining with the character’s and conveying a sense of being both inside and outside the action. Romvari’s images are distinguished by their dual sense of logical efficacy and aesthetic loft.
“The Drama” Is One Long Troll
Emma was twenty-eight when she and Charlie met. In the two years between then and the run-up to their wedding, did Charlie never do an online search to find out who he was getting involved with? And, even if not, did this couple never talk about who they were in high school, what people from back then would remember them for? Did Charlie never meet Emma’s family or visit her home town? Have their two years together been a hermetically sealed black box of present-tense activity?
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