Wadjda is the first full-length feature film shot entirely inside Saudi Arabia, a conservative Islamic country where women are denied civic freedoms or any public role. It’s director is Haifaa Al-Mansour, a Saudi-born female filmmaker who now lives in Bahrain. While shooting on location in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, Al-Mansour had to hide in a production van, directing her actors via walkie-talkie, because she could not publicly mix with her male crew.
Before Midnight is the third in Richard Linklater’s intermittent catch-ups with Jesse and Celine, characters played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy who the filmmaker first introduced in 1995’s Before Sunrise.
Behind The Candelabra reminds me a little of a Scorsese film, with Michael Douglas’ toupe in particular bringing to mind the extraordinary hairpieces worn by the elderly Midwestern crime bosses in Casino. This is Steven Soderbergh’s frequently hilarious biopic about Liberace and his 6-year relationship with the much younger Scott Thorson. It is a world of palatial kitsch, excess and small dogs, Lear jets, plastic surgeons and boogie woogie piano.
