Archive for the ‘Drama’ Category
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 | 8 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 »
Thursday, November 21st, 2024
REZ BALL is a recent sports drama that went straight to Netflix. I wouldn’t normally even know about something like that, but it’s co-written by Sterlin Harjo, creator of one of my favorite TV shows ever, Reservation Dogs (2021-2023). This is a little more along the lines of his indie dramas (I’ve previously reviewed his movies FOUR SHEETS TO THE WIND and MEKKO).
The director is Sydney Freeland, who set it in her home state of New Mexico (Harjo’s are usually in Oklahoma). Like Harjo, she established herself with a drama at the Sundance Film Festival (DRUNKTOWN’S FINEST in 2014). Since then she’s directed lots of TV, including two episodes of Reservation Dogs and four of Echo.
It’s a high-school-basketball-team-comeback story, and narratively doesn’t deviate much from what you expect. So there’s a bunch of tragedy at the beginning involving the troubled life of “The Braided Assassin” Nataanii Jackson (Kusem Goodwind), star player of the Chuska Warriors. He’s got a really compelling, stoic presence and I really thought he was gonna be the main character, but when the team is forced to go on without him you realize oh, this is about his smiley buddy Jimmy Holiday (Kauchani Bratt) having to come into his own. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amber Midthunder, basketball, Cody Lightning, Dallas Goldtooth, Jessica Matten, Julia Jones, Kauchani Bratt, Kusem Goodwind, Sterlin Harjo, Sydney Freeland
Posted in Reviews, Drama, Sport | 2 Comments »
Monday, November 18th, 2024
ANORA is a real knock out of a movie from writer/director Sean Baker, major indie voice of the 21st century known for style on a microbudget, authentic performances by non-professional actors, and being one of the first to shoot an acclaimed movie on an iPhone. I’ll be honest, I’ve only seen THE FLORIDA PROJECT, which I loved at the time, but for some reason haven’t caught up or kept up with the rest of his filmography. So correct me if I’m wrong, but my impression from that limited view is that this is him doing something a little more slick and mainstream than usual without abandoning what he’s good at.
Not that it’s 100% commercial or normal. It just feels that way. It’s pretty long, it’s about a sex worker, and it’s a somewhat odd combination of genres, but it’s really funny, it’s not super weird, and it has heart. It won the Palme d’Or, but I think it could pass as a fun movie for normal people better than recent winners PARASITE, TITANE, TRIANGLE OF SADNESS or ANATOMY OF A FALL. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aleksei Serebryakov, Brittney Rodriguez, Darya Ekemasova, Ella Rubin, Karren Karagulian, Lindsey Normington, Mark Eydelshteyn, Mikey Madison, Palme d'Or winner, Sean Baker, Vache Tovmasyan, Yura Borisov
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Drama | 19 Comments »
Thursday, November 14th, 2024
A couple months ago I got on a Jean-Michel Basquiat kick. You probly know who that is, but if not, he was a New York City graffiti artist in the early hip hop era, transferred his skills to paintings for galleries, became rich and famous and friends with Andy Warhol and stuff in a brief, prolific life before (like so many bright lights) dying of a drug overdose at 27.
Set aside the inspirational underdog story, the meteoric rise, the quirky details, the tragic ending. All interesting, but you don’t need any context for his art to be incredible. Labelled a “neo-expressionist,” he just has this lively, messy style, an explosion of scratches and scrapes and colors and doodles and words. If they are child-like, then the child in question must’ve remained young for 100 years, evolving his drawing into highly sophisticated crudeness. There are traces of influences from cartoons to African art, he sometimes references boxers and current events and social issues, but he translates it into these distinctive scribbles and cryptic/poetic phrases, sculpting beauty and humor from garbage and decay and vandalism. I don’t know of anybody quite like him, and lately (even before… you know) I’ve really been feeling it’s important to honor and glorify the true originals and pure artists among us, through my chosen medium of, uh, movie reviews. So here I am, glorifying Jean-Michel Basquiat. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amos Poe, Andy Warhol, Anne Carlisle, Becky Johnston, Benicio Del Toro, Christopher Walken, Claire Forlani, Courtney Love, David Bowie, Debbie Harry, Dennis Hopper, Edo Bertoglio, Elina Lowensohn, Eszter Balint, Fab 5 Freddy, Gary Oldman, Glenn O'Brien, graffiti, hip hop, Hope Clarke, Jean-Claude La Marre, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeffrey Wright, John Lurie, Julian Schnabel, Lee Quinones, Michael Holman, Michael Wincott, New York City, Parker Posey, Paul Bartel, Rockets Redglare, Saul Williams, Tamra Davis, Tatum O'Neal, Vincent Gallo
Posted in Reviews, Documentary, Drama | 10 Comments »
Thursday, November 7th, 2024
In Clint Eastwood’s JUROR #2, Nicholas Hoult (THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD) plays Justin Kemp, an upstanding magazine writer in Georgia who gets summoned for jury duty. He tries to get dismissed because his wife Ally (Zoey Deutch, THE DISASTER ARTIST) is expecting soon in what he describes as “a high risk pregnancy,” but he ends up seated on the jury for a murder trial.
The prosecutor Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette, xXx: RETURN OF XANDER CAGE) and public defender Eric Resnick (Chris Messina, BIRDS OF PREY) are friends, or at least professionally friendly enough to talk to each other at the bar they both hang out in. Faith is running for district attorney and feels putting away a real scumbag like this may put her over the top; Eric insists she’s got it wrong this time, the guy is really innocent. Defendant James Sythe (Gabriel Basso, THE KINGS OF SUMMER, also unfortunately played dictator elect J.D. Vance in HILLBILLY ELEGY) is a known asshole who was seen arguing with his girlfriend Kendall (Francesca Eastwood, M.F.A.) at a bar (a decidedly different one than the lawyers go to) until she stormed off, refusing a ride home. The next day a hiker found her dead under a bridge on Old Quarry Road.
As the story is being told to the jury, Justin has a growing “oh, fuck” look on his face, and if you haven’t heard the premise of JUROR #2 you’re gonna be shocked too: he’s realizing that he was there when that fight happened. He remembers the date, because it was Ally’s due date from the last pregnancy, when they lost twins. He took his depressed, recovering alcoholic ass to the hideaway, stared down a drink but didn’t give in, then on his way home his car hit something on Old Quarry Road. He got out, couldn’t find anything in the dark, saw a deer crossing sign and hoped to God that explained it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cedric Yarbrough, Chris Messina, Clint Eastwood, court room drama, Francesca Eastwood, Gabriel Basso, J.K. Simmons, Jonathan Abrams, Kiefer Sutherland, Leslie Bibb, Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, Zoey Deutch
Posted in Reviews, Drama | 35 Comments »
