(this article closes our 2022 coverage of the 2022 Sundance Festival) This has been a very good year for films at the Sundance Film Festival for works by actors or actresses who have changed my opinion on their abilities. With the smart satire “When You’re Finished Saving the World,” actor Jesse Eisenberg has found his true calling, as writer and director. The film’s excellent title attests to ... more >
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LAST OF SUNDANCE 2022 | The Jesse Eisenberg-directed “When You Finish Saving the World”
"Jesse Eisenberg has proven himself the astute filmmaker for these times"
Julianne Moore, Finn Wolfhard, Billy Bryk and Alisha Boe
Directed by Jesse Eisenberg
Woody Allen’s “Cafe Society”
A great Allen vintage
Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg
Directed by Woody Allen
2016 is starting to shape up as the year of the love letter to Hollywood’s Golden Age. We started the year with the Coen Brothers's "Hail Caesar!," a kidnapping comedy set in a fictional fifties studio with million-dollar mermaids, crooning cowboys and blacklisted commie screenwriters. Still to come is Damien Chazelle’s musical "La La Land" with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. Stuck in the middle is ... more >
Buoyant “Cafe Society” opens Cannes Festival
Film was shown this morning
Blake Lively, Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart
Directed by Woody Allen
The Cannes Festival opened today with the best possible film it could open with: the buoyant and lighthearted “Cafe Society,” directed by Woody Allen. I walked out of this morning’s screening with my spirits raised. But, then became quickly hungry for lunch. In Allen’s perfectly-told, jaunty tale a young man, played by Jesse Eisenberg, moves to L.A. from New York to find work. He meets the ... more >
The end of the tour
Imagine the greatest conversation you've ever had
Jason Segel, Jesse Eisenberg and Joan Cusack
Directed by James Ponsoldt
David Foster Wallace is the much-celebrated author of the one thousand-page plus novel “Infinite Jest.” Not an easy read. But then, neither is “Ulysses,” or “Gravity’s Rainbow,” George Perec’s “Life: a User’s Manual” nor any number of boundary-blowing, epoch-making masterpieces that we crack open from time to time and know we will read some day. “Infinite Jest” I’d already given up on and picked ... more >
Night Moves
Dakota Fanning like you've never seen her before
Jesse Eisenberg and Dakota Fanning
Directed by Kelly Reichardt
Kelly Reichardt likes uncomplicated. As early as when “Wendy and Lucy” came out her films have testified to her ultra-sharp minimalism and efficiency. “Night Moves,” a genre film in which three environmentalists (they're David Koresh league, but for the tree-hugger set) conspire together to blow up a dam follows the same ethos of subtlety. In lieu and place of a psychological drama about ... more >
To Rome with love
Four stories intersecting in la bella città
Roberto Benigni, Alison Pill and Penelope Cruz
Directed by Woody Allen
Woody Allen continues his European wandering, this time taking on four stories centered around love, infidelity and fame and set in beautiful Rome, la bella città. Only the narrative is so slight and the comedy so unfunny that "To Rome with love" quickly grows tiresome. This is the first time that Allen has gone in front of the camera in a while and it helps because he gives himself all the ... more >
30 minutes or less
Loosely based on real events
Jesse Eisenberg, Danny McBride and Nick Swardson
Directed by Ruben Fleischer
Like any good pizza delivery driver with a bomb vest strapped to his body, 30 Minutes or Less knows how to get there, get the job done and get it over with with a second to spare. When it comes to explosives, every second counts, and there aren't many films with such a clear-eyed grasp of its premise's lifespan. Like a good pizza, it goes down with a smile before you can taste too much of it, ... more >