Watch List Weekly Recap 8/26/22

This is the Friday recap of Ty Burr’s Watch List postings for the week. If you’d like to receive this weekly email ONLY, please go to your account page and under “Email notifications” uncheck every box except “Weekly Digest.” If you’d prefer to not receive it at all, uncheck just “Weekly Digest.”

Earlier this week I posted an appreciation of the late Leon Vitali, who stands in for all the many men and women who make possible the movies we love but whose names are buried far down in the credits (when they’re not entirely lost to history). Vitali was Stanley Kubrick’s personal assistant for decades, which may have been rewarding but was hardly easy, and it’s him we have to thank for a surprising number of classic Kubrick moments.

A Handmaid's Tale (Leon Vitali 1948-2022)

Leon Vitali died last week, and if you’re saying, “Who?,” that’s pretty much the point. In a film industry and a popular culture that lionizes the individual, Vitali represented the many unknown names and faces without whom the individual would have no glory. He was a factotum – the person who g…

Ty Burr's Watch List

For today’s New Release Friday round-up, I take a look at “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” in which Tilda Swinton plays a lonely academic befriended by a wish-granting Djinn (Idris Elba) during a holiday in Istanbul. The director is George “Mad Max” Miller, and if those three names don’t convince you to take a look, I can’t help you. Plus: Other new releases in theaters and on VOD, and two overlooked Spielberg films that are the only Spielberg films on Netflix at the moment.

What to Watch: Genies and geniuses

Here’s something interesting: Two of the most unique and strangely satisfying movies of the year to date have both involved a beloved actress of a certain age in a hotel room with a hot co-star talking about love and sex and the whole damn thing. The first was – is – “

Ty Burr's Watch List

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