Franco Freakout

As suggested by its title, Allen Ginsberg’s game-changing poem “Howl” is essentially performative — and so is Howl, the Sundance-opening quasi-biographical movie by Oscar-winning documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. Howl the movie — which, in addition to touching on Ginsberg’s early life (and successful coming-out), dramatizes the poem’s obscenity…

Franco Freakout

As suggested by its title, Allen Ginsberg’s game-changing poem “Howl” is essentially performative — and so is Howl, the Sundance-opening quasi-biographical movie by Oscar-winning documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. Howl the movie — which, in addition to touching on Ginsberg’s early life (and successful coming-out), dramatizes the poem’s obscenity…

Franco Freakout

As suggested by its title, Allen Ginsberg’s game-changing poem “Howl” is essentially performative — and so is Howl, the Sundance-opening quasi-biographical movie by Oscar-winning documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. Howl the movie — which, in addition to touching on Ginsberg’s early life (and successful coming-out), dramatizes the poem’s obscenity…

German Romance

An exercise in voyeurism, Maren Ade’s provocatively titled, superbly performed, emotionally graphic Everyone Else is more fascinating than enjoyable. Placing a youngish, newly formed couple under relentless observation, Ade’s two-hour squirmathon gets a bit more intimate on the subject of intimacy than the viewer might wish. Chris (Lars Eidinger), an…

Not Nearly Curiouser Enough

Lewis Carroll’s literal-minded little Alice was something of a logician; Burton’s is comfortable with adult irrationality, although she’s hardly a hippie chick; neither is his Alice, sad to report, in the least bit lysergic. (Perhaps as a cost-cutting measure, Alice was shot normally and stereofied in post production. The resulting…

Best movies of the decade

Looking back on a decade dominated by the movie franchise — Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Spider-Man to name just a few — and overrun with prequels and sequels (Saw I, Saw II, Saw III, Saw…), our film critics pick their favorites of the ’00s. Who’s…