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45 Years is a very fine and wise film, modest enough in scale to feel like a stage play, with a play’s emphasis on dialog. A comfortably retired couple is a few days away from hosting a big party with their many friends to celebrate 45 years of marriage. What could possibly go wrong? What’s it all about 45 Years shows the fragility of close relationships, and their vulnerability to what used to be called problems in communicating: withheld experiences, inattention to what the other person is saying and implying, insensitivity to emotional pain other

Hail Caesar is far more than a parody of or homage to Hollywood, more than a period piece (1951), more than a vehicle for cameo appearances by various stars, and less a series of set pieces than the trailer implies. Forget the tepid New York Times review — this is a good film. There are pleasures here well beyond recognizing scenes and lines from classic films, and beyond the clever, subtle sexual innuendo in dialog and dance. One viewing is never enough with a good film, either to understand it or to get all of

Brooklyn, directed by John Crowley, is an engaging film, well written and nicely acted, set in the 1950s not as those years were but as we might want them to have been. It is a feel-good confection. While Brooklyn is said to be about the quintessential immigration experience, it seems to be more about the quintessential romance novel experience: a winsome heroine, Eilis, torn between two admirers, one relatively affluent and one working class. In this quiet variant of the romance formula, neither man acts caddishly and each is too vapid to harbor dark secrets.

Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict, Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s 2015 film, succeeds in part because of its wonderful evocation of the art scenes in between-wars Paris and in 1950s New York. The film is visually lush, with so much wonderful art, vintage photographs and brief film clips, and some very clever fade-ins and fade-outs of individuals within single photographs. Holding the film together is the iconic Peggy Guggenheim, an interesting eccentric whose candor and anecdotes make up for her apparent lack of gravitas and aesthetic acumen. A patron, not an expert At several points the film mades

Suffragette is a well made film, but might ultimately be the victim of the classic trap of hagiography: two-dimensional characters. The film’s strength— its successful depiction of an era and two of its most important political issues — is to some extent weakened by a somewhat flat characterization. The fiend who manages the women at the laundry is almost comically evil, and reminded me of some Perils of Pauline villain, twirling his evil mustache. Unfortunately, such an over-the-top sexual predator allows the audience to associate 1912 employee sexual coercion with utterly debased monsters, and how