movies

Lee Jones and Meryl Streep in Hope Springs. (Columbia Pictures)

Hope Springs Sees Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones Rejuvenate Parched Cinematic Terrain

In an age of idiotic garbage overpopulated with alternate realities and toxic avengers in Halloween costumes, I cannot tell you how touching, restorative and vitamin-enriching it is to see a gentle, tender and intelligent film with A-list stars playing real people dealing with real problems in the everyday world. Instead of stupid gags and punchlines, Hope Springs is a character study in elegiac pastels about how people love, then change and eventually drift away from each other—and the daunting energy it takes for them to get their old mojo back while the apple still bites. Separately, Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones are national treasures, but together they are simultaneously spectacular and intimately awe-inspiring. I have never loved either one more. Read More

movies

Wilson, Black and Martin.

The Big Year is Fowl Play

The Big Year is arguably the best movie ever made about … bird watching? Yes, you heard me right. Now there’s a subject that should have them lined up around the block, fighting to get in. Maybe I’m wrong. A lot of people pay dues to join the Audubon Society. I am not one of them. Read More

Almost a Player in Prada: My Super-Close Casting Call

Anna Wintour is a very magnanimous woman. Hats off to the Vogue editor in chief for graciously showing up at the recent premiere of The Devil Wears Prada and not punching Lauren Weisberger’s lights out. Ms. Weisberger, for those of you who have been in a coma for the last few years, is Ms. Wintour’s Read More