“It is no surprise that the work of Philip Roth, so easy to swallow on the page, should prove indigestible on film,” Anthony Lane once observed, in a review of an adaptation of The Humbling.
Roth’s favoured locus of neurosis was his own hometown of Newark, which he chronicled with the clarity and rigour of a cultural anthropologist. Uncut Gems lives and breathes in Manhattan, in the Diamond District, the notorious hive of grifting, trading and appraising on 47th Street in midtown, in which the Safdies immersed themselves gamely for years of diligent, grassroots research.
“You are the most annoying person in the world,” Howard’s estranged wife Dina, an ever-impatient Idina Menzel, informs him flatly as he implores her to give him another chance before she leaves. The movie is essentially a two-hour exercise to test whether an audience can work up enough empathy to disagree.
Nonsense Jojo Rabbit is the best movie of the year.