Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Pictured : A French family en vacances (left to right,  Bérénice Vernet , Sophie Letourneur , Philippe Katerine and Esteban Melero ) , the subject of co-writer-director Sophie Letourneur 's film, ' L'Aventura ', the follow-up to her 2023 film, ' Voyages En Italie '. Still courtesy of Unifrance / Arizona Distribution .   Of all the 450 or so films I have covered in this series over the past eleven years, L’Aventura , written (with Laetitia Goffi) and directed by Sophie Letourneur, has the lowest stakes. In it, a young French mother, Sophie (Letourneur) takes her two children, ten-year-old Claudine (Bérénice Vernet) and three-year-old Raoul (Esteban Melero) and her older partner, Jean-Fi (Philippe Katerine) on holiday to Sardinia, where they drive around the island, staying in various accommodations. Nothing particularly consequential happens for the entire movie’s length (1 hour and 40 minutes), though at one point Jean-Fi complains about Sophie re-packing the...

Pictured : Art graduate J.B. Mooney ( Josh O'Connor ) cases the Framingham Museum of Art in writer-director Kelly Reichardt 's 1970-set American crime drama, ' The Mastermind '. Still courtesy of Mubi. What use is an art degree if you are not driven to create? This is a question partly answered by writer-director Kelly Reichardt’s 1970-set film, The Mastermind . Artists are by their nature divergent personalities with a reflex for expression who question society and our relationship to others. In the narrative arts, they explore questions of morality, confronting divergence that is destructive in nature. Narrative artists are less concerned with ‘good verses evil’ than societal benefit verses narcissism. However, a creative urge is also narcissistic, venerating the self. Against that is the belief that art can foster curiosity about others. By contrast, narcissists are only curious – nay, paranoid – about how others perceive them. Reichardt’s protagonist, art graduate...