Kirsten Dunst is Marie Antoinette (2006) in Sofia Coppola’s portrait of the decadent, indifferent monarchy that toppled in the French Revolution. Marie is a teenage Austrian princess married off to France’s distant young King Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman) and sent to the alien of the French court. She’s a political naïf dropped into a world […]
In the Loop (2009), a fiercely funny and profane satire of British party politics and international diplomacy, makes the case that politics is no place for idealists or amateurs. The triumph of director Armando Iannucci (Veep), his writers, and especially his star, Peter Capaldi (Doctor Who), is that for all the raucous chaos and foul […]
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), Jim Jarmusch’s whimsical, 17-years-in-the-making anthology is “a series of short films disguised as a feature (or maybe vice-versa),” according to the director. It’s an anthology of curiosities, some more curious than others, wound around a diverse cast paired off for random ramblings over caffeine and nicotine. It opens with the original […]
“Do you have to be miserable to be funny?” That’s the question that comedian and actor Kevin Pollak poses to his fellow performers in the documentary Misery Loves Comedy, his directorial debut. It’s a fair question and a serious one—the film is, after all, dedicated to Robin Williams, who took his own life while Pollak […]
