Edward norton

Wednesday

Deborah Ross

Funny, savvy, starry: The Invite reviewed

From our UK edition

The Invite is a dramedy from the dinner-party-gone-awry genre about a marriage and whether a sex party might save it – or will it make it go boom? It’s extremely savvy, very funny and packs an emotional punch. It stars Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton – and if there is more pleasure to be had than watching great actors behaving badly, I would genuinely wish to know about it. If there is more pleasure to be had than watching great actors behaving badly, I would wish to know about it It opens with a quote from Oscar Wilde: ‘One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.’ (Wilde obviously didn’t know about the tax advantages.) Joe and Angela’s marriage is hanging by a thread.

Thursday

Deborah Ross

As good a Dylan biopic as you’ll ever get: A Complete Unknown reviewed

From our UK edition

It doesn’t have anything new to say, which is right. If you could figure Dylan out, it would all be over A Complete Unknown is the Bob Dylan biopic from James Mangold, who also made Walk The Line about Johnny Cash. It stars Timothée Chalamet, who is astonishing, and does his own singing. He may even be better at singing Dylan than Dylan is at singing Dylan. (Same sound but fewer of those bum notes that make you go ‘ouch’.) It doesn’t have anything new or insightful to say, which is right and proper. If you could figure Dylan out, it would all be over. Instead, the focus is on the four years leading up to his use of electric instruments at Newport Folk Festival in 1965. This was greeted by fans with such horror and outrage it was as if, live on stage, he was kicking puppies.

Thursday

The Spectator

This month in culture: December 2024

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Disney+, December 3 Of the making of Star Wars, there appears to be no end. This one, though, looks different. The characters are a group of children on an Amblin Entertainment-style adventure, a coming-of-age story as they try to make their way back home across the universe after something goes wrong on their home planet. The trailer gives strong Spielberg/E.T./Goonies vibes. Taking place around the same time as The Mandalorian, it rounds out its cast with Jude Law as a “new kind of Jedi,” according to the creators. — Zack Christenson Nightbitch In theaters December 6 Based on Rachel Yoder’s hit horror-comedy novel of the same title: Amy Adams stars as an artist turned stay-at-home mom who learns that domesticity contains multitudes.

culture

Thursday

Amelia Butler-Gallie

Twenty-five years of Fight Club and American Beauty

Sound the alarm: hypermasc beefcakes all over the world have an anniversary to celebrate! Beware women, children and the effete, this year marks the twenty-fifth birthday of both David Fincher’s notorious psychodrama Fight Club, adapted from the debut novel by Chuck Palahniuk, and Sam Mendes’s equally notorious American Beauty, which has gone from Oscar-winning acclaim to being a punchline on chat shows and animated comedies alike. If you haven’t seen Fight Club, shame on you. Go to Hulu and binge away. Revel in its anarchic ludicrousness and head-to-head carnage; inhale the feculent atmospheres of Lou’s Tavern and Tyler’s dilapidated mansion house, all tied together through Fincher’s iconic desaturated color palette. It is all too easy to taste the blood, sweat and tears.

Fight Club
Deborah Ross

You’ll tire of the wackiness and the whimsy: The French Dispatch reviewed

From our UK edition

The American filmmaker Wes Anderson has an apartment in Paris and has always yearned to make a French movie but also he has always yearned to make a film about the New Yorker, the magazine with subscribers all round the world, some of whom actually get round to reading it before binning it, and some of whom don’t. (She says, guiltily.) So The French Dispatch is, he has said, the ‘smooching’ of these two ideas, and it is, alas, a ‘smooch’ of a film. That is, not one thing or the other. I would further add it’s as if all the cast had been instructed to act wackily and off-kilter throughout because we won’t get tired of that. But I promise you we quickly do.

Monday

Ben Domenech

Wes Anderson movies have become meaningless

The trailer for Wes Anderson’s latest film, Asteroid City, depicts the lonesome, desert sci-fi-induced death of twee. A sepia-toned artifice of the American West filmed near Madrid, it has everyone you would expect to be in a Wes Anderson movie, depicting themselves as always, with that special twinge of beautifully centered shots combined with at least one saccharine line which is designed to make you choke up a bit about a character who probably died off screen. Here is the trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FXCSXuGTF4&ab_channel=FocusFeatures There is something so horribly depressing about this.

wes anderson asteroid city