Archive for the ‘Drama’ Category
Monday, February 24th, 2025
Note: I wanted to review all the best picture nominees this year but I haven’t even reviewed DUNE PART ONE and I’m just not ready to do a good job of PART TWO yet so please accept as a placeholder this review of a different movie with one of the same cast members.
If you saw my review of DANCIN’ – IT’S ON! a few weeks ago you saw me learning of the magical existence of David Winters, a dancer in the original Broadway run of West Side Story and choreographer of Elvis movies who later became a director of b-movies including SPACE MUTINY. One of the things that came up in my research was that when he directed the 1986 skatesploitation movie THRASHIN’ the producers wouldn’t let him cast pre-21 Jump Street Johnny Depp, and he was so mad about it he went off and founded a new production company so that he would have more control. Well, obviously after I read that I knew that THRASHIN’ – it’s on!
Josh Brolin (whose only previous movie was THE GOONIES) plays Corey Webster, a “Valley Boy” who goes to stay in a friend’s motor home in L.A. while he prepares for a pool skating competition and a downhill race called L.A. Massacre. His buddies Tyler (Brooke McCarter, THE LOST BOYS), Radley (Josh Richman, RIVER’S EDGE, director of Guns N’ Roses “Live And Let Die” video), and Bozo (Brett Marx, BAD NEWS BEARS movies) call themselves The Ramp Locals. They bring him to the different hangouts, they clash with a rival skate crew called the Daggers who kind of act like a gang, and he falls in love-at-first-sight with Chrissy (Pamela Gidley in her film debut, soon to play the title character in CHERRY 2000). At first it seems like Corey is trying to steal the girlfriend of scary Daggers leader Tommy Hook (Robert Rusler, WEIRD SCIENCE, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2), but luckily she turns out to be his sister. Unluckily he’s one of those SCARFACE type brothers who’s creepily possessive of his sister and forbids people from dating her. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Sacks, Alice Nunn, Anthony Kiedis, Brett Marx, Brooke McCarter, Christian Hosoi, Chuck McCann, David Winters, Flea, Josh Brolin, Josh Richman, Pamela Gidley, Paul Brown, Robert Rusler, Sherilyn Fenn, skateboards, Stacy Peralta, Tony Hawk
Posted in Reviews, Drama, Sport | 1 Comment »
Thursday, February 20th, 2025
THE MENU (2022) is part of the 2020s wave of “rich assholes go to an island and something fucked up happens there” movies (see also: GLASS ONION, BLINK TWICE, TRIANGLE OF SADNESS [though they end up on the island by accident there]). Juror #2 Nicholas “Nux” Hoult plays Tyler Ledford, a food-nerd who proudly paid $1250 a plate to bring his less-interested date Margot, played by Furiosa #2 Anya Taylor-Joy, to a private island where celebrity chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes, THE AVENGERS) presents extravagant themed meals for exclusive clientele. Right away you know Tyler sucks because he calls Margot “babe” and lectures her about her palate, and that Margot is the final girl because she’s the only one looking back to see the boat leaving and the doors closing behind them. We side with her anyway because when Tyler raves about the lemon caviar and raw oyster with mignonette and mansplains that alginate is made of algae she says, “Yeah. Pond scum.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anya Taylor-Joy, best picture nominees, Carlos Diehz, Edward Berger, Hong Chau, Isabella Rosellini, Jacek Koman, Janet McTeer, John Leguizamo, John Lithgow, Judith Light, Lucian Msamati, Mark Mylod, Nicholas Hoult, Peter Deming, Ralph Fiennes, Reed Bierney, Seth Reiss, Stanley Tucci, the pope, Will Tracy
Posted in Reviews, Drama, Horror, Thriller | 35 Comments »
Wednesday, February 19th, 2025
NICKEL BOYS is one of the underdog Best Picture nominees, one of the indies that doesn’t get that much discussion outside of film critic circles, definitely not seen as a frontrunner, but happy to be nominated. I was planning to see it anyway based on the effusive praise I’d seen, but the nomination gave me an extra push to see it on the big screen, so that’s a nice thing about the Oscars.
I was also able to see it pretty much blind. I did see a trailer before another movie a few days earlier, but that actually didn’t make it very clear what it was about. It did make me wonder if it was going to be told in first person perspective, which does turn out to be the case. Most of the time the camera represents what the main character Elwood Curtis is seeing. So, you know, it’s kind of like the classy version of HARDCORE HENRY or the MANIAC remake. There’s also a section where the camera follows behind the character’s head, like a video game (or IN A VIOLENT NATURE). Director of photography Jomo Fray (ALL DIRT ROADS TASTE OF SALT) shoots it both cleverly and beautifully. It’s kind of the same category as I’M STILL HERE: some beauty and nostalgia in a story about resilience in the face of horrible atrocities. But leaning heavier on the latter this time, and using the former to make it all the more eerie what we know is going on here. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aunjanue Ellis, best picture nominees, Brandon Wilson, Colson Whitehead, Daveed Diggs, Ethan Herisse, first person POV, Fred Hechinger, Hamish Linklater, Joslyn Barnes, RaMell Ross
Posted in Reviews, Drama | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, February 18th, 2025
A dumb and insignificant pet peeve of mine: Every time a trailer comes out for a music biopic, I see a bunch of posts about “I can’t believe they still make these after WALK HARD.” Yeah, ‘cause that’s the way it always works. After there’s a good parody the whole genre ends. Couldn’t possibly be that this is a type of movie people enjoy.
Well at any rate WALK HARD couldn’t stop the director of WALK THE LINE from returning to the scene of the crime. I’m not sure but there might even be a violation of the Prime Directive here, where the parodied has become aware of the parody, altering the course of the format. While everyone is making fun of biopics that try to explain a person and their art too neatly, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN seems to be arguing, even with the title, that Bob Dylan cannot, in fact, be explained. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bob Dylan, Boyd Holbrook, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Eriko Hatsune, James Mangold, Jay Cocks, Johnny Cash, Monica Barbaro, music biopic, Norbert Leo Butz, Scoot McNairy, Timothee Chalamet
Posted in Reviews, Drama, Music | 9 Comments »
Monday, February 17th, 2025
A Complete Unknown Pre-Game Triple Feature: HEARTS OF FIRE (1987) / OLIVER & COMPANY (1988) / HOT SUMMER NIGHTS (2017)
I want to review Best Picture nominee A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, but to set the scene I thought I’d first take a look at earlier works from some of the people involved. So here’s a movie starring the subject, one written by the director, and one with the same star.
First up chronologically is the rock ’n roll drama HEARTS OF FIRE (1987), which starts out like LIGHT OF DAY but goes a little A STAR IS BORN. It follows 18 year-old singer/guitarist Molly McGuire, played by Fiona, a real singer who at the time had two albums on Atlantic Records and had guest starred on an episode of Miami Vice. Molly fronts a bar band in a small town and one day she’s surprised to see reclusive former rock legend Billy Parker (Bob Dylan, PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID) sitting at the bar. She scares him off with her gushing, but on another night he impishly appears in the crowd shouting a request for “The Unusual,” his song she told him was her favorite. Actually I guess it’s a John Hiatt cover, but he comes up and performs it with the band – a highlight of their small time rocker lives. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bette Midler, Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Carl Weintraub, Disney, Dom DeLuise, Emory Cohen, Fiona, Jack Kesy, James Mangold, Jim Cox, Joel Esterhaz, Joey Lawrence, Julian Glover, Maia Mitchell, Maika Monroe, Mark Rylance, Richard Marquand, Richard Mulligan, Richie Havens, Robert Loggia, Roscoe Lee Brown, Rupert Everett, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Susannah Hoffman, Taurean Blacque, Thomas Jane, Tim Disney, Timmy Cappello, Timothee Chalamet, William Fichtner
Posted in Reviews, Cartoons and Shit, Crime, Drama, Music | 6 Comments »
Thursday, February 13th, 2025
(not to be confused with the one where Joaquin Phoenix raps)
Last Saturday morning I was stressing about the situation – the billionaire gremlin coup and dismantling of society that is happening before our eyes with only measured pushback – and it was too much. I had to make myself stop thinking about it. I want to stay aware, but I have to take care of myself mentally, I can’t spend every day dwelling on catastrophes that I’m powerless against. It’s the weekend, I told myself. It’s a nice day, and I’m seeing a movie, the last best picture nominee I haven’t seen…
But the movie was I’M STILL HERE (Ainda Estou Aqui), about a family dealing with their patriarch being disappeared by the Brazilian government in 1971, and I couldn’t help but come out thinking that’s gonna be us very soon. I hope that’s just the doom and gloom talking, but I have zero doubt that Musk and Trump would love to have this kind of stuff done in their names, that more than enough cops and soldiers would be on board (or would sign up just to do the honors), that not one Republican would raise one finger even one time to do one tenth of jack shit about it, and that Democrats or laws wouldn’t be adequate to stop them. So… signs point to bad, and my morale did not improve that day.
The movie is great, though, and maybe not what you expect. Directed by Walter Salles (CENTRAL STATION, THE MOTORCYCLE DIARES, DARK WATER remake), it opens with the deeply unsettling juxtaposition of a title saying “Rio de Janeiro, 1970, Military Dictatorship,” and a bunch of beautiful people in a beautiful place having a great time. Teens are playing beach volleyball, a dog keeps getting in the way, so they hand him off to little brother Marcelo (Guilherme Silveira), who shows him off to his friends, and then their bare feet pitter patter off the sand across the street, to the house to ask his dad, Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello, upcoming ANACONDA movie?) if they can keep him. He’s in an important meeting in his office and their lovable maid Zezé (Pri Helena) begs the kid not to interrupt, but luckily Rubens is just as charmed by the mutt as everybody else, and even gives him a name. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: best picture nominees, Brazil, Charles Fricks, Fernanda Torres, Luiza Kosovski, Maeve Jinkings, Pri Helena, Selton Mello, Valentina Herszage, Walter Salles
Posted in Reviews, Drama | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, February 12th, 2025
A sincere trigger warning here: ON THE COUNT OF THREE (2021) is a movie about suicide. So please skip this one if that would bring up thoughts you don’t want. This is a very dark buddy comedy and in the opening scene the buddies have agreed to shoot each other. One of them hesitates at the last second and knocks the gun away (“I balked on that one, sorry,” he says), and they agree to have one last day, unencumbered by any worries about the future, before they go through with it.
Outwardly it would appear that the more messed up of the two is Kevin (Christopher Abbott, POSSESSOR, POOR THINGS, WOLF MAN), who has been severely troubled his whole life and tried to overdose by himself only three days ago. His best friend Val (comedian Jerrod Carmichael, also making his directorial debut, not counting two HBO documentaries) is seemingly more grounded, but he’s the instigator here, busting Kevin out of the psychiatric hospital, driving him to an alley next to a strip club and asking him to do this. When he asks Kevin if he was serious about wanting to die the other day or if it was just a cry for help, Kevin is offended. “That’s rude.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christopher Abbott, Henry Winkler, J.B. Smoove, Jerrod Carmichael, Tiffany Haddish
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Drama | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, February 11th, 2025
RODEO (2022) is a raw, low key, French crime drama about the world of motorcycles. Specifically it’s about one woman, Julia (Julie Ledru, Furies), a.k.a. Unknown, who loves to ride. It just kind of throws us into her life and she’s not big on talking or being vulnerable, so we never really learn much about where she’s coming from other than what can be gleaned by what she’s up to at the moment, or by doing the math from the little details. For example her mom is only mentioned as someone who will call the cops on her if she sees her, her dad only when she lies about him as part of a scam. As she falls into an underworld the movie doesn’t hold our hand explaining what’s going on, but it’s mostly straight forward anyway. They steal motorcycles, fix them up, sell them, ride them. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Antonia Buresi, Julie Ledru, Lola Quivoron, motorcycles
Posted in Reviews, Crime, Drama | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 4th, 2025
Hey guys, it’s me, member of a small club of people who enjoy post-2000 Robert Zemeckis, the guy who has gotten carried away with digital technology and always finds something weird to do with it, whether or not it works, and whether or not society approves (which it usually does not). HERE is a movie that would only, maybe could only be made by that person. And that’s what I want to see out of art.
The bigger selling point, to the extent that any effort was made to sell it when it came out last year, is that it’s a FORREST GUMP reunion. It stars Tom Hanks (THE LADYKILLERS) and Robin Wright (HOLLYWOOD VICE SQUAD) and he wrote the screenplay with Eric Roth (YEAR OF THE DRAGON) and obviously the score is by Alan Silvestri (THE DELTA FORCE). Like FORREST GUMP it tells a story that seems to be about American culture at large, because it takes place over a stretch of years with many emblematic incidents touching on moments in history and representing societal changes. But it does this with a very particular gimmick, taken directly from the graphic novel of the same name by Richard McGuire: it’s told from one static camera shot. It spans from the time of dinosaurs to the present, but the camera just sits there in the same spot the whole time.
(Actually, at times it kinda reminded me of ADULT SWIM YULE LOG.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Silvestri, Daniel Betts, Eric Roth, Keith Bartlett, Kelly Reilly, Michelle Dockery, Paul Bettany, Robert Zemeckis, Robin Wright, Tom Hanks
Posted in Reviews, Drama | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, January 21st, 2025
I watched the 2023 Canadian film RED ROOMS (Les chambres rouges) on Shudder, but come to think of it it’s not exactly a horror movie. It’s kind of more harsh than that. It’ an extremely unsettling character drama, maybe a thriller, about the trial of a man accused of horrific child murders live on webcam. We thankfully don’t have to see any of the violence, but the images created in our mind are worse, described with a true crime bluntness rather than genre flair. I would not say this is a fun movie.
It takes its sweet time rolling out what it will be about, or even what form it will take. One of the first scenes is a long unbroken shot of the judge’s introduction and the opening statements from both sides. It goes on long enough that I genuinely started to think the whole movie would be the trial – a new gimmicky format to put alongside mockumentary, found footage and screen time. A story told through testimony.
That’s not actually what it is, and even before it breaks we can see that the focus is on one of the court room observers, Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy, BOOST). The camera rotates around but keeps coming back to her reactions, and what she’s looking at in the room. Later we learn that she sleeps on the street every morning to get a good place in line, like it’s the first showing of THE PHANTOM MENACE, or a Taylor Swift concert. When reporters try to interview her leaving she shoos them away, though another observer, Clémentine (Laurie Babin, THE LITTLE GIRL WHO WAS TOO FOND OF MATCHES) is happy to tell them about all the conspiracies and injustices against poor Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, LAND OF THE DEAD), who has kind eyes, she says. (To me he looks like a creep, but I only know him in the context of wearing an orange jumpsuit behind plexiglass examining his fingernails while people accuse him of atrocities.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Canadian, Juliette Gariepy, Laurie Babin, Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, Pascal Plante
Posted in Reviews, Drama, Thriller | 16 Comments »
