All writers

Owen Gleiberman

variety.com
30
articles (90 days)

Recent articles

‘Maverick — The Epic Adventures of David Lean’ Review: How the Director of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ Expressed His Turbulent Life in His Grand Visions
"Maverick," which is full of singular stories, stunning films clips, and extraordinary insights from a panoply of film directors (Francis Ford Coppola and Alfonso Cuarón to Paul Greengrass and Celi...
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‘Diamond’ Review: Andy Garcia Directs and Stars in a Charming but Slight Neo-Noir About an Old-Movie Detective…in Contemporary L.A.
A lot of tender loving care, and Hollywood obsession, has been poured into it, and it’s amusing to see how the quality that’s always made Andy Garcia such an appealing actor — his way of being dire...
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‘The Man I Love’ Review: Rami Malek Has His Best Role Since ‘Bohemian Rhapody’ in Ira Sachs’s Delicate and Touching ’80s Character Study
Malek colors him in with shades of anger, tenderness, psychosis, and the sheer pesky individuality of Jimmy. He makes him a morosely charismatic flake — the kind of flamboyant narcissist who’s got ...
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‘Her Private Hell’ Review: Nicolas Winding Refn Gets Lost in His Own Private Filmmaking Hell with This David Lynch-on-Bad-Acid Disaster
"Her Private Hell" takes up where "The Neon Demon" left off — or maybe I should say where "Twin Peaks: The Return" left off, since the new movie plays like a knockoff of David Lynch at his most baf...
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‘Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu’ Review: An Efficient Adventure That Only Pretends to Be a Real ‘Star Wars’ Movie. Maybe That’s a Good Thing
I found "The Mandalorian and Grogu" to be fun in a slightly flat way. But because the movie has so little pretense, it’s basically an invitation to wallow in the lite "Star Wars" nostalgia that’s t...
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‘Full Phil’ Review: With Woody Harrelson and Kristen Stewart Locked in a Father-Daughter Hatefest, Will Quentin Dupieux’s Latest Bizarro-World Lark Be His Crossover Movie?
"Full Phil," brash and throttling as it is, is an overly italicized screw-loose satire that some will want to see, because in its halfway funny, halfway off-putting extreme way it dares to color so...
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‘Sheep in the Box’ Review: Kore-eda’s Sweet but Limp Sci-Fi Fable About a 7-Year-Old AI Humanoid
or all the fantasy simplicity of the premise, there’s no structure to it, and though the humanoid Kakeru increases in agency and brains as the movie goes on, it still never figures out who he is.
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‘Paper Tiger’ Review: Miles Teller and Adam Driver Get Ensnared by the Russian Mob in a James Gray Film With More Atmosphere Than Plausibility
You can feel James Gray wanting to will something like a Lumet version of Greek tragedy into the tale of these brothers, and of Irwin’s blind loyalty to Gary’s huckster-psycho moves. But even the s...
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‘The Beloved’ Review: Javier Bardem Is Powerful as a Filmmaker Directing His Estranged Daughter in Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s Making-of-a-Movie Drama
"The Beloved," unlike "Sentimental Value," really is one of those movies about the making of a movie, like "Day for Night" or "The Stunt Man." It’s a meaty and enjoyable entry in the genre, one tha...
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‘Propeller One-Way Night Coach’ Review: John Travolta’s Slim and Winning Boyhood Reverie of Air Travel in the Lost-Paradise Age of TWA
"Propeller One-Way Night Coach" is sometimes funny in a light way, but it's mostly sincere. Travolta wants to share how much he loved being on this plane: the wide-eyed wonder of it all — and, unde...
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‘John Lennon: The Last Interview’ Review: Steven Soderbergh’s Documentary Captures John Lennon at His Happiest…and Most Messianic
John, in "The Last Interview," comes off as just about the happiest he has ever been. But he’s so high on the life he’s leading that he’s also at his most messianic. And a little of that goes a lon...
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‘Fatherland’ Review: Thomas Mann and His Daughter Travel Across Germany in 1949 in Pawel Pawlikowski’s Meticulous Time Machine of a Drama
The matter-of-fact seduction of Pawlikowski’s filmmaking lies in how he stages everything with a coolly objective authenticity. In "Fatherland," he lends this historical moment a time-machine quali...
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‘Parallel Tales’ Review: Isabelle Huppert Is a French Novelist Spying on the Apartment Across the Street in Asghar Farhadi’s Weirdly Muddled Voyeuristic Head Game
It’s all about people spying on each other, which can be a good idea for a movie. And no one is saying that Farhadi has to stick to his familiar mode of neorealist drama. But "Parallel Tales," it’s...
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‘The Electric Kiss’ Review: Cannes Opens With a Thud — a ‘Light’ French Period Romance About an Artist and a Fake Psychic, but the Movie Is Inert
Salvadori has conceived "The Electric Kiss" as a film about fake magic, yet there’s no spirit of real magic underlying the fakery that’s supposed to be playful but is actually leaden.
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‘Billie Eilish — Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour Live in 3D’ Review: James Cameron Co-Directs a Titanic Concert Film
"Hit Me Hard and Soft" is a concert film that doesn’t look and feel like other concert films. It’s a genuine experience, because of a combination of the show itself and the way Cameron has filmed it.
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‘Mortal Kombat II’ Review: Dependable Action, Sludgy Story in an Old-School Mediocre Video-Game Bash
For a while, we’re cheered at the prospect that Karl Urban might lighten the film’s load with his meta ironic balsa-wood Don Johnson presence. And he does — a bit. But "Mortal Kombat II," a sequel ...
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‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ Is Built Around a Radical Hook: That Moviegoers Care About the Future of Magazines. But Maybe They Do
In the juiciest speech in “The Devil Wears Prada,” Miranda Priestly, the frosty-haired, frosty-souled Runway magazine editrix played by Meryl Streep (in a performance that should have won her the O...
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‘Swapped’ Review: Michael B. Jordon and Juno Temple Voice a Minor but Ravishing Animated Body-Swap Comedy for Tykes
On the story level, "Swapped" is quite basic, but there’s a surprise enchantment to it — it’s like a woodland fairy tale for seven-year-olds, yet on that score it’s visually ravishing and quite tou...
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‘Power to the People: John & Yoko Live in NYC’ Review: Sizzling Concert Film of John Lennon’s Rockin’ 1972 Madison Square Garden Shows
In his Army jacket and lollipop-blue round sunglasses, with shaggy long sideburns, Lennon gives off a fascinating air of self-involved indifference, which is expressed in the fact that he’s chewing...
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‘Michael’ May Be ‘Family-Friendly,’ but It’s a Movie That Taps Into Michael Jackson’s Most Powerful Creative Fuel — His Anger
The media has done a good job of talking about what’s not in “Michael.” I refer, of course, to the accusations of child sexual abuse that dogged Michael Jackson from 1993 until the day he died (and...
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‘Deep Water’ Review: Renny Harlin’s Double-Dip Disaster Movie — Plane Crash + Shark Thriller — Has His Signature Schlock Touch
"Deep Water," which is very much a neo-'70s disaster film. should have been called "Airplane Crash into a Sea of Jaws." As it stands, the word in the film’s generic title that echoes that earlier H...
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‘Michael’ Review: The Thrill Is Not Gone, as a Surprisingly Effective Middle-of-the-Road Biopic Conducts Michael Jackson’s Electricity
if you zero in on what’s routine about "Michael" or what the movie leaves out, you may miss the compelling urgency of what it gets in: Michael Jackson’s journey to become himself by freeing himself...
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‘Everyone Is Lying to You for Money’ Review: Ben McKenzie’s Knife-Sharp Documentary Takedown of Cryptocurrency
In "Everyone Is Lying to You for Money," McKenzie cuts through reams of misinformation and conducts unshowy but confrontational interviews with finance players who are famous and powerful. (He also...
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‘Lorne’ Review: Just When You Thought You Were Done Looking Back at ‘SNL,’ Morgan Neville’s Puckishly Playful Lorne Michaels Doc Completes the Picture
"Lorne" lures us in with the mischievous playfulness of its tone. The premise of the movie is that Lorne Michaels is one of those rare showbiz figures known, almost mythologically, by just one name...
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‘Mother Mary’ Review: Anne Hathaway Plays a Gaga Pop Star, and Michaela Coel Is Her Designer, in David Lowery’s Thuddingly Pretentious Fantasia
"Mother Mary," as it takes the leap into Gothic metaphysical fantasy, becomes almost completely incoherent, and stays that way. It’s like an exorcist movie where the devil is a piece of bolt fabric.
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‘Mile End Kicks’ Review: Barbie Ferreira Is a Young Music Critic in an Indie-Rock Comedy Where Reality Bites
I like youth comedies that dither in a lifelike way (one of the greatest is "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"), but the trouble with "Mile End Kicks" is that the movie tends to be lackadaisical and...
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‘Thrash’ Review: It’s Netflix and Chomp, as Phoebe Dynevor Stars in a Familiar but Gruesomely Competent Shark Thriller
Everything in the movie, from the chomping shark attacks that churn up the splashing water with Hawaiian Punch foam to the way that a humungous great white meets her fate at the end, takes an obvio...
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How ‘The Drama’ Could Redefine A24
Like a lot of people today who care passionately about movies, I love A24. I don’t love every movie they make or release. But I love, and certainly like, enough of them, and I recognize — and salut...
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‘Faces of Death’ Review: A ’70s-Style B-Horror Movie Taps into the Growing Appetite for Horror That’s ‘Real’
The idea that a sicko like Arthur isn’t just a serial killer — he’s part of the new anything-goes attention economy! — is a provocative but facile idea. Yet that’s part of what gives "Faces of Deat...
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‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’ Review: Frenetic and Disappointing Sequel is a Threadbare Adventure That’s All Video-Game Easter Eggs
In “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” we meet Yoshi, a cuddly green dinosaur in pink boots who looks like a plastic bath toy and will eat just about anything (he’s voiced in a babyish coo by Donald Gl...
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