Screen Test

             Jesse Buckley and Paul Mescal in “Hamnet.”  Photo by Agata Grzybowska - © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC., via IMDb.com  After winning Oscars for Frances McDormand and herself by portraying contemporary America as “Nomadland,” director Chloé Zhao goes back 400 years to Elizabethan England to create her next masterpiece. It's called “Hamnet.” It's excruciating and profound. You probably won't get through it dry eyed. It breaks your heart … then makes it soar. Revolving around Jesse Buckley's force-of-nature performance, almost every name in the credits – beginning with executive producer Steven Spielberg – is an award nomination in the making.  Co-written by Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell from O'Farrell's historical novel, “Hamnet” is a love story. Many love stories, actually. The first is the fable of a Latin tutor named Will (Paul Mescal), who aspires to be a writer. He forgets all about the two boys he is teaching when he sees th...

  Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst in “Roofman.”  Davi Russo/Davi Russo - © 2025 PARAMOUNT PICTURES photo via IMDb.com. Someone – I'm pretty sure it was author and political gadfly Marianne Williamson – once said we love our liars. Their stories are so much more entertaining than the ones told by those boring old truth tellers. If our current political morass doesn't convince you she's right, check out “Roofman.” Inspired by a believe-it-or-not true story, Channing Tatum plays Jeffrey Manchester, a military vet dubbed Roofman in the media during a spree robbing between 40 and 60 McDonalds across the country, plus a Burger King or two, by drilling in through their roofs. He would lock the employees in the freezer, but in at least one case gave his jacket to one who was cold. That's the kind of guy he was. This is all basically backstory for director and co-writer Derek Cianfrance and Kirt Gunn, who prefer to focus on what happens after Manchester is caught, imprisoned, e...

Sandra Oh, Lupita Nyong'o, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Peter Dinklage  in a star-studded “Twelfth Night.”   PBS photo screenshots Ken Burns and company's “The American Revolution,” isn't the only historical treasure on PBS these days. Great Performances' “Twelfth Night” is another one. Saheem Ali filmed the rollicking comedy – its stellar cast led by Lupita Nyong'o and her brother, Junior Nyong'o, along with Sandra Oh, Peter Dinklage and Jesse Colin Ferguson – in a free Public Theater performance in Central Park's Delacorte Theater last summer. When Shakespeare wrote “Twelfth Night” in 1600, he added “What You Will” to the title. Probably just a coincidence that Will was his first name, too. Those words in big red letters provide the backdrop on the outdoor stage, which also makes ingenious use of trap doors. If the Bard were writing the play today, a better subtitle might be “Chain of Fools.” Rarely has such a collection of nutcases been assembled on one stage – ...

  In cowhide cowboy shirt, tie from Brooklyn. Watching Ethan Hawke's riveting portrayal of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart in the movie “Blue Moon” triggered long-forgotten memories of another love story on the Great White Way. The more details I remembered, the more unbelievable the story got.  But it was all true. “Blue Moon” takes place on March 31, 1943, the night “Oklahoma!” opened on Broadway. Not quite three years later, I was born in nearby Brooklyn to a father who had been a scientist on the Manhattan Project in World War II, and a mother who was a modern dancer and left-leaning political protester. Broadway and the real Oklahoma were worlds apart, but they would intertwine in my life in a love song as good as any Rodgers and Hammerstein ever wrote. Like the iconic songwriting duo, my parents were New York kids, first generation Americans born to Jewish immigrants fleeing Russia and Eastern Europe. New York was the only world they had ever known, but four years after my...

             Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson in “Die My Love.”  Kimberly French photo via IMDb.com Jennifer Lawrence is getting all the media buzz for her fearless, bare-it-all portrayal of a young mother losing her mind in “Die My Love.” But it's hardly a one-woman show. Besides Robert Pattinson as her well-intentioned but feckless husband, and icons Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte in the supporting ranks, almost everything else on the screen becomes a co-star under Lynne Ramsey's haunting direction. A ramshackle, ghosty Montana farmhouse is almost as much a character in the story as the New York transplants Grace (Lawrence) and Jackson (Pattinson) who move in after he inherits it from his recently deceased uncle.  Grace and Jackson make love and engage in hand-to-hand combat – sometimes you can't tell which is which – in these spooky environs that have their own gruesome back story. The mood is eerie. It's as though the house is watching...

Margaret Qualley and Ethan Hawke in “Blue Moon.”   Sony Pictures Classics photo via IMDb Blue Moon You saw me standin' alone Without a dream in my heart Without a love of my own Ethan Hawke makes himself almost unrecognizable to play Lorenz Hart, the man who wrote those words.  Hart was five-feet tall, balding, a cigar always in his mouth, his back so curved his chin barely clears the bar at Sardi's where he spends most of the movie “Blue Moon” yakking away. His sad – if witty and sometimes brilliant – monologues are performed for bartender Eddie (Bobby Cannavale), piano player Knuckles (Jonah Lees) and assorted folks who stop by the legendary Broadway celebrity hangout one fateful night in 1943. Showcasing the alcoholism and other sorts of self-destructiveness that would kill him at age 48 seven months later, it's a daring, all-in performance by Hawke. It's already getting buzz this awards season. Whether or not it nabs an Oscar nomination or two, it won't win many...