The camera tips skyward in several early moments of RaMell Ross’ exquisite, elliptical “Nickel Boys.” It’s counterintuitive when a filmmaker does this: Let’s assemble all these beautiful actors and sets, the whole of a movie’s production design, but instead, turn our attention to the clouds, an exploding beam of sunlight, the swaying trees, an orange ripe for picking. Ralph Fiennes …
Mostly, though, it’s because the capital loves nothing more than a mea culpa that doubles as a how-to guide. In the book, he notes that a Google search of “Phil Elwood” mainly turns up results about a long-deceased San Francisco Examiner jazz critic with the same name; he once told me he paid to boost the dead man’s search results, …
