Author: Carrie Kahn

Moving from the arthouse to the multiplex with grace, ease, and only the occasional eye roll. Proud member of the San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle.

Film Feature: Carrie’s Top 10 Films of 2016

Spinning Platters film critics present their top 10 films of 2016

Spinning Platters film critics Carrie Kahn and Chad Liffmann each share their ten favorite films of 2016. Here is Carrie’s list, presented, unlike last year’s alphabetized list, in descending rank order. And you can check out Chad’s list here to see which one of us you agree with more!

10.) Nocturnal Animals

Tony (Jake Gyllenhaal, middle) arrives at a possible crime scene with lawman Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon, r.).

Sometimes the story-within-the-story convention can be confusing or feel gimmicky, but in this visually stunning picture from fashion designer turned filmmaker Tom Ford, the technique works to terrific effect. Amy Adams, as a woman haunted by a decision she made years ago, reads a manuscript sent to her by her ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal), and that story comes alive on screen in the form of family man Tony (Gyllenhaal again) and his confrontation with some dangerous, deranged miscreants. Ford’s keen aesthetic vision and sharp performances by Adams, Gyllenhaal, and Michael Shannon as a tenacious lawman combine to make this brutally poetic but utterly captivating film one of the year’s most definitively unusual. (You can also read my full-length review here.)

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Film Review: Hidden Figures

Hidden figures brought to light in inspiring new film

Katherine (Taraji P. Henson) performs a calculation that will help NASA successfully launch manned capsules into space.

2016 hasn’t exactly been a stellar year in a lot of ways, but in terms of film, it’s been an exceptional year for girl power movies. This is a year in which we saw a brave 13-year-old stand strong against centuries of male-dominated tradition in The Eagle Huntress, a 14-year-old chess prodigy overcome tremendous odds in Queen of Katwe, and now, in Theodore Melfi’s new film Hidden Figures, we witness a trio of African-American women contribute to national success despite facing rampant and demoralizing sexism and racism in the segregated south of the early 1960s. There has never been a better time to be inspired at the movies.
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Film Review: Fences

Powerful performances anchor heavy family drama

Young Cory (Jovan Adepo, l.) doesn’t see eye to eye with his father Troy (Denzel Washington).

If you’re finishing up Christmas dinner later this evening and contemplating a trip to the cinema for a new release the whole family can enjoy, you may be better off today with Hidden Figures, and not Fences. That’s not to say Fences doesn’t warrant a recommendation; it certainly does, but let’s just say during a time of year in which your own family issues and simmering resentments might be coming to the forefront, watching another family going through the same may not be high on your list.
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Film Review: Miss Sloane

Dark look at American politics also a top notch thriller      

An emotionally fragile Esme (Gugu Mbatha-Raw, l.) is coached by her unflappable mentor and boss Elizabeth Sloane (Jessica Chastain).
An emotionally fragile Esme (Gugu Mbatha-Raw, l.) is coached by her unflappable mentor and boss Elizabeth Sloane (Jessica Chastain).

When a line is repeated more than once in a film – especially in a film that is a high stakes political thriller – you know the screenwriter is giving you a clue to the film’s secrets. So when ruthless political lobbyist Elizabeth Sloane (a fierce Jessica Chastain) tells us that “lobbying is about foresight, about anticipating your opponent’s moves, and devising counter measures…. It’s about making sure you surprise them, and they don’t surprise you,” take it to heart as you study the machinations of the dueling lobbyists in Miss Sloane, director John Madden’s smart, absorbing new drama.
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Film Review: Nocturnal Animals

Ford’s newest picture well worth the wait     

West Texas ne’er-do-well Ray Marcus (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, middle) warily answers questions from lawman Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon, l.) and crime victim Tony (Jake Gyllenhaal, r.).

Tom Ford, the American fashion designer turned filmmaker who first garnered accolades for his cinematic talents back in 2009 with his Colin Firth-helmed picture A Single Man, finally returns seven years later with his follow up, another film inspired by a novel. With Nocturnal Animals, based on Austin Wright’s 1993 novel Tony and Susan, Ford again both directs and writes the screenplay, and proves that his first success was no fluke. Ford’s patient fans have been rewarded for their long wait with another visually stunning, captivating picture.
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Film Review: The Accountant

Convoluted, violent story doesn’t add up to a picture worth seeing   

Accountants Dana (Anna Kendrick) and Chris (Ben Affleck) are puzzled by some discrepancies they discover on the books at a robotics firm.

Ben Affleck has always had a sort of a cold, distant quality; showcasing warmth and deep emotion isn’t his strong suit. Such chilliness is what made him both a decent Batman and so good in a role like the one he had in Gone Girl, in which he played such a standoffish husband that he easily seemed capable of murdering his wife. So it’s not surprising that director Gavin O’Connor (best known for the 2011 cult hit Warrior) would cast Affleck in his new film The Accountant, an action thriller in which Affleck plays Christian “Chris” Wolff, an imperturbable accountant and assassin with a high-functioning form of autism who connects better with numbers than with people. The problem, though, is that O’Connor and screenwriter Bill Dubuque (The Judge) play much of Chris’s condition for laughs, and the Rain Man-as-Jason Bourne premise doesn’t succeed nearly as well as the filmmakers probably hoped it would.
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MVFF39 Spotlights: The Eagle Huntress/The Architect/A Late Style of Fire: Larry Levis, American Poet/Love is Thicker Than Water/Moonlight

The 39th Mill Valley Film Festival, showcasing over 200 films from more than 50 countries, opened last Thursday evening, and runs until this Sunday, October 16th. The Festival is screening some titles already garnering Oscar buzz: Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, which opened the Festival (and will open widely this fall), the stunning Manchester by the Sea (which already received deserved acclaim back in January at its Sundance premiere), and Loving, the Jeff Nichols historical drama that closes the Fest.

With a full week to go, there is still plenty of time to head over to Marin to catch some great new films. Below we spotlight five Fest titles you may want to check out. Full schedule, tickets, and more information are available here. Continue reading “MVFF39 Spotlights: The Eagle Huntress/The Architect/A Late Style of Fire: Larry Levis, American Poet/Love is Thicker Than Water/Moonlight“

Film Review: Queen of Katwe

Nair brings inspirational chess prodigy story to life in appealing new film  

Robert Katende (David Oyelowo) imparts chess – and life – wisdom to young Phiona (Madina Nalwanga).

The phrase “heartwarming family film” has been overused so much that it’s become a meaningless cliché, but when is the last time you saw a live action picture that legitimately fit that description? A few Pixar movies aside, the cinematic offerings that truly appeal to parents and kids alike have been pretty paltry lately. Disney competently rectifies that situation today with Queen of Katwe, a well made, well acted, inspirational-without-being-cloying film that tells the true story of a poor girl from the poverty-stricken town of Katwe, Uganda, who becomes a national and international chess champion.
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Film Review: Sully

Heroic pilot’s story takes flight in Eastwood’s well executed film 

Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (Tom Hanks, r.) and co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart, l.) prepare to land US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River.

No discussion of Sully, director Clint Eastwood’s new film about East Bay hero Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the commercial airline pilot who, in January, 2009, successfully landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the frigid Hudson River after its engines failed, can begin without first acknowledging that casting Tom Hanks as Sully is a perfect marriage of actor and role. Tom Hanks, the Jimmy Stewart of our day, embodies competence, integrity, and innate decency in a way that makes him a natural fit to play the heroic pilot of the so-called Miracle on the Hudson, in which all 155 people on board survived the emergency water landing. Imagining another actor in the role is almost impossible, and Hanks’s dependable Everyman persona is a large reason Eastwood’s dramatization of the real life event works so well.
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Film Review: War Dogs

Arms and the bros: Hangover director brings incredible true story to the screen

Efraim (Jonah Hill, center) and David (Miles Teller, r.) inspect some choice merchandise in an Albanian warehouse.

The economy of war and the audacity of youth brilliantly collide in writer/director Todd Phillips’s new picture War Dogs. A heavily fictionalized dramatization of Guy Lawson’s 2011 Rolling Stone article  (and later book), the film details the spectacular rise and fall of two 20-something young men from Miami Beach who became major international arms dealers during the heart of the Iraq War.
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