★★☆☆☆

Dirs. Carlos Carcas and Norberto López Amado. 2010. N/R. 78mins. Documentary.

Here’s your truism for the week: If you live in a metropolis, you know the work of Norman Foster. The big-wheel British architect has had a hand in constructing the towering totems of countless cities, from Hong Kong’s HSBC Main Building to the heavens-reflecting diagrid that is Manhattan’s Hearst Tower. Carlos Carcas and Norberto López Amado’s celebratory documentary provides a spectacular showcase for many of the builder’s creations…

★★☆☆☆

Dir. Rodrigo García. 2011. R. 113mins. Glenn Close, Mia Wasikowska, Janet McTeer.

Albert Nobbs (Close) has a secret: This dedicated yet introverted Irish manservant isn’t really a manservant at all! Yes — as Rodrigo García’s trifling melodrama goes to little effort to hide — he’s a she, though the reasons for her deception are murky beyond the big pile of cash (nearing 600 pounds) she’s saving beneath her floorboards. All this changes when the macho, chain-smoking Hubert (McTeer) comes…

[Published as part of New Pollution #2]

The irritatingly genteel Nomadland, adapted from a nonfiction book by Jessica Bruder, appears well on its way to golden statuettes and other year-end plaudits. For writer-director-editor Chloé Zhao this is the last stop before the Marvel Moloch grinds her personal stamp, such as it is, to a pre-viz’d pulp with The Eternals. I didn’t much care for the mannered neo-realism of The Rider, but at least it could fall back on the authenticity…

[Published at (All (Parentheses))]

Hilarious that many are taking Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half-hour-with-onscreen-intermission intima-epic The Brutalist as a Classic Hollywood throwback when it’s more a punkish wolf in sheep’s clothing. Hardly a loving riff on Citizen Kane or The Godfather, it’s more accurately Buffalo Bill parading the flayed skin of Elia Kazan’s America America. Corbet has now so fully assimilated the influences of acknowledged mentors Haneke and Von Trier that he’s come up with his own exceedingly entertaining jape: Propulsive awards-bait…