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Bill Nighy is a fun, uninhibited actor, but there's an abashed, melancholy quality to him that hasn't been fully explored until "Living," a drama about a senior citizen reckoning with his life.  Nighy became an unlikely star playing a dissolute, clownish old rocker in "Love, Actually," and he's been aces in a series of character parts and second leads ever since. You never find unnecessary or inorganic flourishes in his acting: he's a pro who goes in and gets it done, whatever the parameters of the role. He's an active listener whose characters seem to be having their own thoughts on everything that happens. His unassuming presence makes you feel at least some affection for whomever he's playing, even if they're coded as unsympathetic.  The post-World War II London drama "Living" puts Nighy at the center of a story: he plays Williams, the head of the Public Works Department, who receives a terminal health diagnosis and, afte...

One thing a movie watcher might not be looking for during the actual bleak midwinter is more bleak midwinter on the screen. Full disclosure: “The Pale Blue Eye,” written and directed by Scott Cooper and starring his frequent collaborator Christian Bale , set in New York’s more-rugged-than-today Hudson Valley in 1830, is thoroughly suffused with bleak mid-winterness. Masanobu Takayanagi ’s cinematography sometimes reproduces a gorgeous kind of grayscale, broken up by flashes of blue water and the blue uniforms of the cadets of the West Point Military Academy, the then-fledgling institution at which much of the story’s action is set. The chilliness fits the story of course. At the Academy, a cadet, named Fry, is discovered not just dead—by hanging, it is first presumed—but with his heart cut out. The extremely spooked overseers of the school, fearful of scandal that might strike a death blow to the place, enlist a retired lawman to investigate. Augustus Landor, played by Bale, is a s...

True to its title, Emer Reynolds' "Joyride" holds both the thrills of getting away with something and the emotional crash that follows a burst of adrenaline—a mood killjoy, if you will. Fortunately, it's in this sweet-hearted movie's favor that the highs are stronger and more enjoyable than the lows. It may not come together as smoothly as the best feel-good movies of its kind, but there's an unwieldy charm to "Joyride" that makes the trip memorable.  At a cancer memorial fundraiser for his mom, 13-year-old Mully ( Charlie Reid ) catches his dad James ( Lochlann O'Mearáin ) stealing donations. It's for the family, he insists, but Mully isn't convinced. He snatches the wad of bills and takes off, jumping into a cab and driving away with it. Until that is, there's a snore from the backseat and then a baby's cry. He unintentionally picked up Joy ( Olivia Colman ), an uptight solicitor on her way to give her new baby away to her sis...

Writer/director Rian Johnson and star Daniel Craig are back for the sequel to “ Knives Out ,” and so is editor Bob Ducsay . In an interview with RogerEbert.com , Ducsay talked about some of the challenges of editing a film to leave in enough clues so on the second time through audiences will say, “Ah, that’s what I should have been looking at!” I think you had the hardest job of anybody in the movie. Putting all the pieces together so we see what you want us to see but not what you don't want us to see, must be a real challenge. I'd say I had the best job of the movie because it's so much fun, especially on a film like this. It is a complication; the genre is a complication because you want to give the audience truth so that they are actually getting information that would be valuable to them if they knew that it was when they were watching it. What you leave in the film and what you take out is sometimes a challenge. Rian wrote an unbelievably beautiful screenplay th...

One of our favorite features every year gives the regular writers and extended team of contributors here a chance to praise one of their favorite performances of the year. Much like the Sight & Sound poll refused to define “greatest” films to its participants, we simply ask our staff to pick a “great” performance. It doesn’t have to be the best. We don’t seek to fully capture the year in acting, so if an amazing turn is missing from the list below, don’t panic. In fact, this piece is designed more to show the breadth of incredible acting over a year than to be comprehensive in any way. To that end, a film can’t be on the list more than once, just to spread the wealth to a mix of the undeniable critical darlings and the acting turns that may have flown under the radar. There are over two dozen performances on the list below—and we are doing a partner piece on some of the best filmmaking craft of 2022 next week. All they have in common? At least one film critic loves them. Jack L...

The Alliance of Women Film Journalists and Whistler Film Festival announced the winners of the AWFJ EDA Awards for Best Female-Directed Feature and Best Female-Directed Short at this year's Whistler Film Festival. The winners were revealed during a virtual awards ceremony on December 13th. This year marks the tenth consecutive partnership between AWFJ and WFF to recognize and honor the work of female filmmakers. WFF nominates five narrative films and ten short films for consideration, while AWFJ members serve as the jurors. Winning this year's prize for Best Female-Directed Feature is "Rodeo," directed by Montreal filmmaker Joelle Desjardins Parquette in her feature debut. "The film tells the story of an unusual and engaging father-daughter relationship that plays out in a cross-country road movie in which a hard-living trucker and his nine-year-old daughter travel from Quebec to Alberta for a truck rodeo," according to AWFJ president Jennifer Merin. The ...