Search for Fran

Swedish director Ruben Ostlund is at it again, using the medium of film to satirize themes and ideas worthy of ridicule. In 2017’s The Square, he turned his attention to the art world. In Triangle of Sadness, the canvas is broader and include...

Justin Kurzel’s True History of the Kelly Gang opens with a warning that nothing in the film is true. Although that might be stretching things a bit, it puts viewers on notice that the events depicted herein adopt as gospel the Robin Hood-li...

In 2014, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Like Father, Like Son missed the #1 spot on my annual Top 10 list by a whisker (it was one of three films that year to which I awarded four stars). A few years later, his Shoplifters topped the l...

By the 1990s, the movie musical has become a dead art form. Four recent revival attempts have not been met enthusiastically. The first two, Newsies and Sarafina, went to video after approximately one-week theatrical runs (even the Disney name c...

Un Air de Famille, the fourth film from French director Cedric Klapisch, is a study of a dysfunctional family on the verge of blowing apart. While this isn't exactly an original topic, Klapisch's approach is vastly different from what we have come...

In addition to being employer and employee, Stephane (Daniel Auteuil) and Maxime (Andre Dussollier) share an intimate friendship. Stephane works for Maxime at an exclusive Paris violin repair shop. One evening, while the two are at dinner, Maxime...

Death: it is the lone certainty in life (forget the bit about taxes). Despite that, when the end comes to a loved one, even if expected, it can be difficult to process and handle. The situation is even more dramatic in cases when a death occurs a...

Yes, Unknown is preposterous. That in and of itself is not a reason to avoid the movie. The problems lie in the way the absurdity is presented and the manner in which the screenplay resolves once the "truth" is revealed. Alfred Hitchcock rarely me...

Unleashed is two radically different movies fused into one. On their own, each of the films might have stood a chance of working, but, brought together in concert, the radical shifts in tone create a weird dichotomy that will distract and disorien...

"No need to remember when, 'Cause everything old is new again." - Peter Allen & Carole Bayer Sager We live in an era of remakes, reboots, and sequels. Hollywood, having apparently run out of new ideas (or, more accurately, being ...