On the Basis of Sex Mimi Leder (2018) This new biopic about superstar Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is just out in wide release this week. Like many serious biopics filmed since Tony Kushner’s screenplay for Spielberg’s Lincoln, this one, penned by newcomer Daniel Stiepleman, focuses on a single major turning point in the […]
Review No. 141: JJ’s Grill 1010 Main Street (501) 336-0100 64.5 percent finished reviewing Conway restaurants The Situation He Said: We didn’t actually know whether JJ’s was local or part of a chain, having never crossed their threshold before. Turns out it is, actually, a chain—there are eight JJ’s locations in Arkansas, the local […]
If Beale Street Could Talk Barry Jenkins (2018) You might remember Barry Jenkins’ last film, a little thing called Moonlight, which garnered eight Academy Award nominations and took home three Oscars, including Best Picture. That film, which had been based on an unproduced semi-autobiographical drama by playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, told the story of a […]
Review No. 140: Zaxby’s 3800 Dave Ward Drive (501) 329-5000 64.0 percent finished reviewing Conway restaurants The Situation She Said: Feeling like a mild repast after Epiphany church services, we decided to head out west on Dave Ward to Zaxby’s, a restaurant we’d never visited here or anywhere. I’m warning you, dear readers, that […]
Vice Adam McKay (2018) “Facts are stubborn things,” Ronald Reagan once famously observed. I wonder if the Great Communicator could have foreseen how, within a generation of his presidency, his own party would put into power a man whose version of reality is so often violently at odds with actual facts—one who, in the last […]
Mary Poppins Returns Rob Marshall (2018) And now for the sequel 54 years in the making. Disney’s new Mary Poppins Returns strives to capture, and sometimes succeeds in replicating, the charm and wonder of the original production, after generations of children have been raised and tickled by the original production. It’s not that Disney set the […]
The Favourite Yorgos Lanthimos (2018) The Favourite, one of the very few films on limited release in December in order to be considered for Oscar nominations that has actually made it to central Arkansas (albeit on but a single screen) is one of those interesting anomalies that has critics cheering (it has a 94 percent […]