• Uncut Gems

    January 17, 2020 - By 

    Uncut Gems, writer-directors Josh & Benny Safdie’s fifth feature together, starts full throttle and only occasionally lets up. It is fixed to the world and worldview of Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler), a jeweller for the stars in New York’s diamond district: a chancer and grifter, thriving in an ecosystem of insatiable avarice. As it becomes rapidly clear, he is a man that gets both a hit and an identity from triumphing over the constant barrage of knife-edge negotiations and impossible odds. Or, failing that, just surviving them. Ratner juggles his family life, with kids he is provisionally interested in and…

  • Good Time

    November 30, 2017 - By 

    As titles go, it’s hard to think of one more misleading than Good Time since people went to see Eraserhead thinking it was about a teacher with a penchant for clean notebooks. No one is having a ‘good time’ in the Safdie brothers’ latest offering: not Robert Pattinson’s Connie; not his girlfriend Corey (Jennifer Jason Leigh); and certainly not the viewer. This is as intense a noir thriller as you’re likely to see. All the action takes place over a particularly manic 24 hours in New York. It starts with Connie and his mentally challenged brother Nick (Ben Safdie) attempting to…