When you hear the words “boxing movie,” your first thought may be of something punchy and upbeat. On second thought, however, it’s startling to consider how much pain is built into...
In the opening scene of “The Smashing Machine,” Benny Safdie’s bracing, clear-eyed, and laceratingly humane sports biopic, we see grainy staged video footage of Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson), the mixed martial...
In Kent Jones’s lyrical and enchanting “Late Fame,” Willem Dafoe plays a forgotten New York poet who once had a moment. It was 1979, and Dafoe’s character, Ed Saxberger, was part...
The movies of Paolo Sorrentino, like “The Great Beauty” and “The Hand of God,” have always been bursting with color and movement and emotional energy, with torn-up romantic and family passion,...
