Hamnet (2025)

Jessie Buckley won the Best Actress Oscar as Agnes, the emotional and mystical wife of Will Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) in this wonderful movie. Everyone calls it a tear jerker, but you must know by now that I will not tell you what will jerk the tears because I hate spoilers. Terrific support comes from Emily Watson as Will's mother, Bodhi Rae Breathnach as Agnes and Will's firstborn Susanna, and Jacobi Jupe and Olivia Lynes as their twins Hamnet and Judith. At the very end we will see Noah Jupe, Jacobi's older brother, playing an actor in a play within the movie.

Chloé Zhao directs from the screenplay she wrote with Maggie O'Farrell, adapted from O'Farrell's 2020 historical fiction novel. A card at the opening states that the names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable in Shakespeare's time. Max Richter's moody score is currently setting my mood on Apple Music

The movie's 96 wins and 302 other nominations included Oscar nods for Best Picture, Zhao for directing, Zhao and O'Farrell for the adapted screenplay, Richter for the music, Fiona Crombie for production design, Malgosia Turzanska for costume design, and Nina Gold for casting.

Although he didn't win anything for this picture, cinematographer Lukasz Zal's work is evocative and did get 21 non-Oscar nominations.

There's a lot of interesting trivia but read it afterwards if you want to avoid spoilers. I will tell you that a very moving part of the final scene was actually improvised.

Buckley was last blogged for Women Talking, Mescal for All of Us Strangers, Watson for The Theory of Everything, Noah Jupe for Honey Boy, Zhao for Nomadland, Richter for Never Look Away, and Zal for Zone of Interest. Breathnach has another movie coming out this year. Jacobi Jupe was 12 when this was shot and it's his second feature, with three TV series under his belt (his brother was 20 at production time), and Lynes makes her feature debut with this one.

Rotten Tomatoes critics and audiences aren't playing, with averages of 87 and 93% respectively. We rented it on February 5 and now you can stream it on Peacock with a subscription.

Asleep in My Palm (2023)

We liked a lot this independent movie about a father and teenage daughter living off the grid in a storage container near an Ohio liberal arts college. The small cast is led by Tim Blake Nelson and Chloë Kerwin with a scant few as townies and out of town students, including Gus Birney as one of the latter.

Directed and written by Nelson's son Henry Nelson, a graduate of Oberlin College, the movie was shot near and on that campus and employed many students both behind and in front of the camera.

A google search for the composer Will Curry yielded this spoiler-free fascinating article about the making of the movie, but no links to his soundtrack are available. I think there were songs, too, but the rental has long expired and nothing is listed on imdb.

Tim Blake Nelson was last blogged for The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Birney for Happiness for Beginners. Henry Nelson and Curry make their debuts with this picture. I do not recognize Kerwin from seven episodes of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel season 5 (her character's name was Trudy) nor did I see her three other features and handful of shorts.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are wide awake, averaging 92% while its audiences are a bit drowsy at 75. We rented it on Apple TV March 29 and appreciated its tight brevity at one hour 28 minutes.

Nomadland (2020)

This Oscar bait movie about a woman living in her van and moving from job to job is every bit as good as Jack and I anticipated. Frances McDormand may earn a third statue as Fern in this understated masterpiece. David Strathairn, as Dave, is one of only five actors not playing themselves. Notable among the real nomads are Linda May, Swankie, and Bob Wells. Tay Strathairn makes a cameo playing his father's son James.

Chloé Zhao directs and adapted the screenplay from Jessica Bruder's 2017 book which was in turn fleshed out from her Harper's Magazine 2014 article, The End of Retirement, which you can read here. Bruder began her study with real occurrences and real people and Zhao added Fern and Dave and their families.

The lovely soundtrack, "featuring music of" Ludovico Einaudi, can be streamed on Apple Music and Spotify.

Director of photography Joshua James Richards gives us glorious vistas, huge warehouses, and the cramped quarters of Fern and her comrades, shot in Arizona, California, Nebraska, Nevada, and South Dakota. Be sure to watch the movie in a room that is properly darkened, so as to appreciate the night scenes.

To take a deeper dive, as I did, into the lives of these folks, read this article from Esquire magazine.

McDormand was last blogged for Isle of Dogs and Einaudi for The Intouchables. After I wrote about Strathairn for Temple Grandin, I saw him in the ensemble cast of Lincoln and eight episodes of Billions, among his many credits. This is the third feature for Zhao and Richards (working together on all).

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are settled in their seats, averaging 95%, while its audiences are a bit restless, coming in at 78. The critics' acclaim is backed by lots of nominations and awards, some of which I've listed on my awards page, sorted by title. I keep this list to decide what to watch next in awards season.

We watched it last week on Hulu and loved it.

Chloe (2009)

This movie is stylish (wardrobe, sets, locations), moody (suspicious, depressed), cold (Toronto in the winter), and hot (most definitely R rated for nudity and sex), and Jack and I found it entertaining, though the only laughs were a couple of lines by Julianne Moore's character's colleague. The music by Mychael Danna (most of director Atom Egoyan's work, Being Julia (2004), Capote (2005), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Lakeview Terrace, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and many more of high quality) is also stylish and moody. Egoyan's Where the Truth Lies (2005) was similarly about deceit and sex (I had meant to see Exotica (1994) and his Oscar nominated The Sweet Hereafter (1997) but never did). The screenplay was adapted by Erin Cressida Wilson, who wrote the wonderful Secretary (2002), from the French movie Nathalie... (2003). Moore's Catherine is so tightly wound that she rarely smiles, exhibiting a different kind of desperation than in A Single Man (I wrote more about her for that role, though now I should mention she can do comedy: her two recent 30 Rock episodes proved it). Luscious Amanda Seyfried (Mean Girls (2004), the HBO series Big Love, and Mamma Mia are the ones I've seen) gives the titular Chloe depth and heart as well as her astounding beauty and a showcase for great clothes. Poor Liam Neeson (some of my faves: Husbands and Wives (1992), Schindler's List (1993), and Kinsey (2004)) lost his wife Natasha Richardson (Vanessa Redgrave's daughter) to a skiing accident in the middle of shooting this (March 2009), but insisted on finishing anyway and we would never had known he was suffering behind his role as Catherine's husband David. The settings of the bars, restaurants, and particularly the boxy modern home in which Catherine and David live with their teenage son (Max Theriot) are spectacular. The reviews of this have been quite mixed (I'll put in some links but there are tons of spoilers). The normally positive Los Angeles Times was negative, almost as unkind as Rolling Stone. The New York Times didn't like it much either (why do these reviewers insist on telling so much plot?!?) but you should watch the little video that's on the left side about halfway down the web page. It's narrated by Egoyan, about Toronto "playing itself" for a change. Rottentomatoes.com averaged the 36% positive critics with the 70% positive viewers and came up with 51%. So that makes us pretty average for liking it.