Screens and Streams
23
Stories
2
Writers
Discover More from This Category: Screens and Streams
Academy Award nominations for 2025
January 29, 2025
The nominations for the 2025 Academy Awards came out on Thursday, Jan. 23, and any year where four of my top film picks get nominated for Best Picture and Director, I can’t complain. Out of the 10 nominees for Best Picture, I’ve seen eight, and seven of those I’ve reviewed for The Mountain Times since…
David Lynch (1946-2025)The Red Curtain draws on one of cinema’s true masters.
January 22, 2025
There are filmmakers who redefine the movie-going experience and those who reshape it. David Lynch did both. He remains one of the most important filmmakers and certainly one of the most unique, risk-taking, and singular visionaries to ever pick up a movie camera. When critics discuss films that push the boundaries of the medium, Lynch’s…
‘The Brutalist’ is a monumental achievement in film
January 15, 2025
With home viewing becoming the preferred way to watch movies, it’s a rare delight to encounter a film that demands to be seen in a theater. Brady Corbet’s "The Brutalist" is one such film. This 215-minute epic, shot in stunning VistaVision and presented in 70mm, is a cinematic experience that makes the journey to the…
‘A Complete Unknown’ effectively channels the essence and mystique of Bob Dylan
January 8, 2025
When a musical bio-pic like “A Complete Unknown” comes along, movie red flags always rise. Are we going to get another cookie-cutter, a paint-by-numbers retelling of a famous musician, lined with “magical moments” of inspiration behind the music numbers we know so well, heightened by a performance that is more mime than realistic by an…
‘Squid Game 2’ continues its brilliant examination of class warfare
January 8, 2025
South Korea’s limited series, “Squid Game,” became a national sensation when it debuted in the U.S. in the fall of 2021. Its combination of hyper-violence and reality show meets “The Hunger Games” proved the perfect blend of entertainment for an audience still dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic and feeling that life’s many challenges placed their…
Robert Eggers’ methodical ‘Nosferatu’ plays like a Masterpiece Theater Hammer film
January 2, 2025
Director Robert Eggers’ re-imagining of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent classic “Nosferatu,” which itself was a thinly disguised ripoff of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” sneaked into theaters Christmas Day, just in the nick of time to give all the Goth kids nighttime refuge from all the family holiday parties, to sink their teeth into some counter-programming. For…
2024 year in film: Naughty and nice list
December 26, 2024
As 2024 draws to a close, it would seem fitting to offer up a top-ten best-film list and maybe throw in a worst-of-the-year list, too. However, I live in Vermont, which is not a large market for the film industry, and we hardly have any theaters in the state where new films can be seen,…
‘Yule Log 2: Branching Out’ and ‘Dear Santa’: Two lumps of coal for your movie stockings
December 18, 2024
In keeping with the spirit of the holiday season, I found it only fitting to review some current holiday film offerings. The biggest holiday movie offering of the season, at least in terms of cast and Hollywood budget expenditures, is the Rock vehicle “Red One.” It’s streaming now on Amazon Prime after a less-than-stellar box…
‘Emilia Pérez’ aims high but doesn’t quite reach the top
December 11, 2024
Jacques Audiard’s musical thriller can’t achieve its lofty ambitions but still offers more than most films Acclaimed French film director Jacques Audiard delivered one of the best crime films of the past 20 years in 2009’s “A Prophet.” Audiard returns to the crime world once more, but this time, he travels from the French prison…
‘Conclave’: The peculiar and political process of picking a pope
December 4, 2024
By James Kent Catholicism and its many mysteries and secret rituals are on full display in “Conclave” (in theaters and on-demand.) The pope is dead. And the process of transferring the powers of God from one human vessel to another begins. Depending on one’s faith and knowledge of the subject, that process, the subject of…
‘Wicked’ provides fine entertainment for the holidays
November 27, 2024
“Wicked,” the global musical sensation based on author Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, arrives in theaters some 20 years after its Broadway debut. Even if you haven’t seen the musical, you know about it, and chances are, you knew this movie was coming out around Thanksgiving. It would be near impossible not to know because the…
‘Warren Miller’s 75’
November 27, 2024
The Town Hall theater in Middlebury was the happening scene for ski and snowboard enthusiasts of all ages on Wednesday, Nov. 20, for a special roadshow screening of “Warren Miller’s 75.” Now, if you’re like me-a person who gets queasy the moment I step off a ski lift, or if the mere mention of the…
‘A Different Man’ exposes the masks we wear on the inside
November 20, 2024
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about “The Apprentice,” where actor Sebastian Stan had to put on the mask of an egomaniac for two hours. Here I am, a couple of weeks later, reviewing another film where Sebastian Stan has to wear a mask of sorts. This time around, the film, "A Different Man,"…
‘Anora’ deconstructs the Cinderella narrative
November 13, 2024
By James Kent Anora is an exotic dancer at a Manhattan strip club. She dabbles in sex work on the side if the money’s right, and she’s interested enough in the man. At the club, she meets a young, immature son of a Russian oligarch. Anora, who goes by Ani, gets the assignment because she…
‘The Apprentice’ is a half-brilliant take on DJT, the early years
November 6, 2024
There is a moment that comes in the second half of Iranian film director Ali Abbasi’s film, “The Apprentice,” or as I call it, “Trump: The Prequel,” where Donald Trump, played by actor Sebastian Stan, has his manhood called into question by his wife Ivana, played by Maria Bakalova. The Don, hopped up on too…