“More times than I can count,
I have thanked the movie
gods for Jeff Goldblum,” said
Jeannette Catsoulis in The New
York Times. The loquacious
actor “can lighten almost any
project,” even this “adamantly
depressive” yet mesmerizing
drama about a 1950s celebrity
lobotomist who, with a young
assistant, travels the country
looking for new patients. The assistant, Andy, is
the story’s true protagonist, said David Sims in The
Atlantic, and Tye Sheridan makes him “as passive
as a protagonist can get.” He is a study in alien-
ation who becomes our eyes on an America “at itsmost self-confident and horrify-
ing.” The movie doesn’t always
work, but the scenes featuring
Goldblum are “genuinely enrap-
turing.” Andy identifies with the
prospective lobotomy patients to
a disturbing degree, and the film
“accumulates a sense of dread
as it progresses, subtly fray-
ing its own sense of reality as
Andy’s mind deteriorates,” said
Dan Schindel in Hyperallergic.com. The movie will
try viewers’ patience, but “it is rare that a film so
acutely captures the numbness of total estrangement.
For anyone who can recognize this kind of melan-
choly, it might be a dark catharsis.”“Brutal is too soft a word to
describe The Nightingale,” said
Stephen Garrett in Time Out
New York. The new film from
the director of The Babadook
is merciless in its depictions
of rape and murder, but the
viciousness serves the movie’s
“brilliantly harrowing” indict-
ment of white male oppres-
sion in 1825 Australia. Aisling
Franciosi stars as Clare, an Irish convict consigned
to a penal colony. Very early on she is raped by a
sadistic British officer, who then murders her hus-
band and infant child. Clare somehow survives to
take up a hunt for her assailant and his henchman,enlisting an Aboriginal tracker
who has also lost everything to
the British. “A more sentimen-
tal movie might treat the bond
that develops between the two
as a beautiful culture-crossing
friendship,” said A.A. Dowd in
AVClub.com. In this relentlessly
violent film, the central alliance
is “purer and sadder: a kind of
blood pact between lost souls.”
I saw The Nightingale at a festival where some
male viewers argued that the director’s anger spoils
the project, said Justin Chang in the Los Angeles
Times. “I couldn’t disagree more. Jennifer Kent
knows precisely what she’s doing.”Kelvin Harrison Jr. deserves to
be a 2020 Oscar contender, said
Benjamin Lee in TheGuardian
.com. The young actor is “so
astounding” in this knotty
puzzle of a film that “it’s tough
to imagine how any of it could
have worked without him.”
Harrison plays Luce, a talented
high schooler who is on his way
to valedictorian status when a
teacher finds fireworks in his locker and suggests he
might be plotting violence. Luce had been a child
soldier in Eritrea before he was adopted at 7 by
white parents, and the central mystery here becomeswho he truly is: a model teen
or a ticking bomb. Luce was
written for the stage, and its
roots show, said Eric Kohn in
IndieWire.com. But the support-
ing actors—Naomi Watts and
Tim Roth as Luce’s adoptive
parents; Octavia Spencer as the
teacher—“go to great lengths to
sell the premise” as the movie
piles up tense confrontations.
“Ingeniously subversive,” Luce poses some difficult
questions, said Peter Debruge in Variety.com. “Is
such a young man allowed to be his own person, or
must he remain a symbol of others’ expectations?”The Mountain
A bereft young man
befriends a lobotomist.++++
Directed by
Rick Alverson
(Not rated)Review of reviews: Film & Music ARTS^25
The
Nightingale
Two lost souls hunt down
their oppressors.++++
Directed by Jennifer Kent
(R)Luce
A model student is
suspected of treachery.++++
Directe d by
Julius Onah
(R)Goldblum (center): A chilling charismaFranciosi: Fighting for all abused womenHarrison at ease, with Spencer and WattsIFC Films, Matt Nettheim, Jon Pack, AP
“As of now there is no Amer-
ican award—not the Grammy,
not the Oscar—that could
adequately reward the miracle
that is ‘Old Town Road,’” said
Jon Caramanica in The New
York Times. Last week,
the country-rap hit by Lil
Nas X became the longest-running No. 1
single in Billboard history, reaching a streak
of 17 weeks with the help of remixes and awild history. The song originally broke out
online, where Nas X, then 19, pushed it him-
self, launching a wave of copycats posting
videos of themselves dancing to the track’s
trap beat in cowboy hats. The song’s popu-
larity hit a whole new level, though, when
Billboard ruled in March that it didn’t belong
on the country singles chart, creating a con-
troversy that helped push it to No. 1 on the
magazine’s pop chart a month later.An act of rebellion helped, said Anne Steele
in The Wall Street Journal. The song’s
next leap occurred after country star Billy
Ray Cyrus agreed to record a remix withNas X. That version cemented the song’s
hold on the top slot for weeks, and the run
was extended by the May 17 release of a
star-studded music video and a second
remix that added a verse sung by a 12-year-
old yodeler who’s an internet sensation
himself. The size of the song’s child audi-
ence can’t be discounted, said Dan Kopf
in Quartz.com. Though it’s impossible to
measure how many kids have been listen-
ing to the song nonstop since falling in love
with the simple melody and the lyrics about
horses and cowboys, “Old Town Road” is
clearly their summer jam. “Just go ask any
of your friends with a 5- to 10-year-old.”‘Old Town Road’:
The song that
just won’t quitCyrus and Lil Nas