Archive for the ‘Drama’ Category
Wednesday, June 28th, 2023
DEAD PIGS is a little movie that premiered at Sundance in 2018, and didn’t come to home video in the U.S. until a few years later, but I knew about it because it’s the feature debut of director Cathy Yan, and got her the job of directing BIRDS OF PREY (AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN).
Yan is American, born in China, raised in Virginia, went to high school in Hong Kong, then went to Princeton and a couple other American schools. Before she started making short films she was a reporter for the L.A. Times and the Wall Street Journal working out of New York, Hong Kong, and Beijing. With a background like that it makes sense that her debut would be a truly international movie: American producers, Chinese financiers, presented by Chinese director Jia Zhangke (ASH IS THE PUREST WHITE), filmed in Shanghai with a bilingual crew, with mostly Mandarin dialogue but also some English, post production done in New York. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cathy Yan, David Rysdahl, Haoyu Yang, international co-productions, Jia Zhangke, Mason Lee, Meng Li, Shanghai, Vivian Wu, Zazie Beetz
Posted in Reviews, Drama | 4 Comments »
Monday, June 26th, 2023
MASTER GARDENER is the latest from Paul Schrader, who I consider to be on a late career roll between FIRST REFORMED and THE CARD COUNTER. This one is thematically related to those, and Schrader has called the three of them his unintentional “Lonely Man Trilogy,” but the template goes all the way back to TAXI DRIVER and has been loosely repeated over and over again throughout his filmography. Which is one of the things I love about him.
This time the journal-writing weirdo narrator is Narvel Roth (Joel Edgerton, JANE GOT A GUN), the fastidious horticulturalist in charge of Gracewood Gardens, an estate in Louisiana (filmed at a former plantation). He’s very loyal to his aging heiress boss, Norma Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver, ABDUCTION) – including having sex with her on demand – so he does as she says when she instructs him to take on her troubled grand-niece Maya (Quintessa Swindell, BLACK ADAM) as an apprentice. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Devonte Hynes, Esai Morales, Jared Bankens, Joel Edgerton, Matt Mercurio, Paul Schrader, Quintessa Swindell, Sigourney Weaver
Posted in Reviews, Crime, Drama, Thriller | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, March 8th, 2023
You know I love the CREED movies and the ROCKY movies. ROCKY V is easily the weakest of all of them, and I even like that one. I don’t expect there ever to be another one as impressive as CREED, a miraculous rebirth by a brilliant director who deeply loved Stallone’s movies and evolved them into something new, so I enjoyed CREED II for what it was. I was thrilled that it brought back Dolph Lundgren as Ivan Drago and let us care about him the way I always wanted to. As I wrote in my review at the time, “He was a human specimen in ROCKY IV, and now he’s a human.”
CREED II is a solid sequel, but CREED III is a truly great one. It’s the directorial debut of Michael B. Jordan, and being populated only by characters from the CREED part of the series it stands more on its own, less on our nostalgia and good will. It follows the ROCKY sequel template in that it checks in with Adonis Creed (Jordan) at a new stage of his career and life, catches up with his family, introduces a new rival, and builds up a conflict that will result in a big match wrapped up in personal meaning. To his credit, Jordan also introduces a bit of stylization in the fight scenes that stands out from the others in the series. But most importantly he tells a story that genuinely has things to say about life and relationships that to me is as exciting as any of the boxing. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron D. Alexander, boxing, Florian Munteanu, Jonathan Majors, Joseph Shirley, Keenan Coogler, Michael B. Jordan, Phylicia Rashad, Ryan Coogler, Tessa Thompson, Thaddeus J. Mixson, Wood Harris, Zach Baylin
Posted in Reviews, Drama, Sport | 48 Comments »
Tuesday, February 14th, 2023
“My dad died fighting Nazis in Germany, but he died fightin the wrong ones, huh?”
THE FINAL COMEDOWN is a 1972 drama starring Billy Dee Williams as an angry young militant who leads some sort of small uprising. It has been categorized as blaxploitation, and that makes sense – it’s a low budget movie with a funky soundtrack, and a sex scene (maybe to please producer Roger Corman), and it co-stars that bad D’Urville Martin (director of DOLEMITE, played by Wesley Snipes in DOLEMITE IS MY NAME) and Raymond St. Jacques right after COOL BREEZE. But despite having many bullets fired and quite a few falling-off-a-building stunts, it’s not exactly an action movie or empowerment fantasy. It’s a very earnest issue movie, with the unvarnished rage and radicalism of THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR, plus an editing style and non-linear storytelling that seems more in the arty vein of stuff like SWEET SWEETBACK and TOP OF THE HEAP than all the ones that were trying to cash in on the success of SHAFT and SUPER FLY. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Allan Arkush, Billy Dee Williams, Celia Kaye, D'Urville Martin, Ed Cambridge, Grant Green, Maide Norman, Oscar Williams, Pamela Jones, Raymond St. Jacques, Roger Corman
Posted in Reviews, Action, Crime, Drama | 2 Comments »
Monday, February 6th, 2023
THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN is last year’s best picture nominated movie from writer/director Martin McDonagh, and I think my favorite from him so far. (The other best is his debut IN BRUGES, and he also did SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS and THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI). This one is set in 1923 in a small island village of Ireland, and concerns the simple topic of two old friends after one of them decides they shouldn’t have any contact with each other anymore. It’s not in response to some specific action, it’s a decision to redirect his life, and a rejection of the value of spending any time with this other person. It’s a sad movie and also a really funny one. Since it didn’t make me cry, despite my middle age status as an easy crier, I say it’s more funny than sad. You may disagree.
The rejected party is Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell, DEAD MAN DOWN), who opens the movie in comical obliviousness, walking into town saying hello to everybody he passes like it’s a damn Disney movie. There’s even a rainbow. But when he knocks on Colm (Brendan Gleeson, TURBULENCE)’s window Colm won’t acknowledge him, and later at the pub won’t sit with or talk to him. And after some pushing Colm tells him the friendship is over. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Barry Keoghan, Brendan Gleeson, Colin Farrell, Gary Lydon, Ireland, Kerry Condon, Martin McDonagh, Sheila Flitton
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Drama | 14 Comments »
Wednesday, February 1st, 2023
WOMEN TALKING is the new best picture nominated film from writer/director Sarah Polley, who is minor-key beloved as an actress for people around my age (THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, GO, EXISTENZ, DAWN OF THE DEAD, SPLICE), but these days is more known as an acclaimed filmmaker (she directed AWAY FROM HER, TAKE THIS WALTZ and STORIES WE TELL). Now I’ve finally seen one of the ones she directed, and it lives up to her reputation. It’s based on a novel, but I would’ve guessed it was based on a play, because it’s one of those stories with a really concise but heavy-duty set up to put a top shelf ensemble of actors into a limited location (in this case a hay loft) with much to discuss, debate, and decide. Kind of a 12 ANGRY MEN deal, except there’s very intentionally only one man with a speaking part in the whole movie. And he’s way more sad than angry.
Canadian author Miriam Toews wrote the novel as a “reaction through fiction” to a real thing that happened in a Mennonite colony in Bolivia. So bear with me – this is awful. In an isolated religious colony (here seemingly in the U.S.) women and even young girls have, for some time, been waking up bruised and covered in blood as they have been repeatedly knocked unconscious by cow tranquilizer and then raped. For years they’ve been told by the elders that they imagined it or it was the Devil or a ghost or a punishment from God or all that kind of bullshit. But before the movie begins our young narrator Autje (Kate Hallett) and her friend Neitje (Liv McNeil) caught one of them running away, they got him to name the others, they were arrested and taken to jail. The men of the colony have gone to the city to bail them out, and given the women 48 hours to forgive them, or they will be excommunicated. Can you believe that shit? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: August Winter, Ben Wishaw, best picture nominees, Canadian, Claire Foy, Frances McDormand, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Kate Hallett, Liv McNeil, Michelle McLeod, Miriam Toews, Rooney Mara, Sarah Polley, Sheila McCarthy
Posted in Reviews, Drama | 12 Comments »
Monday, January 30th, 2023
There’s a surprising amount of shitting, pissing, and puking in BABYLON, the bawdy fictionalized-early-Hollywood period comedy-drama from writer/director Damien Chazelle (writer of THE LAST EXORCISM PART II). It opens with hard-working studio assistant Manny Torres (Diego Calva, Narcos: Mexico) trying to impress his bosses by helping organize a crazy mansion party/orgy, and he has to figure out how the fuck to get a rented elephant up a hill. While pushing the way-too-small truck, the elephant gets spooked, and the wrangler (Jimmy Ortega, “Sicario #1,” SABOTAGE) is graphically showered with feces from above.
I appreciate that it’s a surprisingly JACKASS way to kick off a movie some had purported to be Oscar bait, but it’s narratively odd. It must be intended to establish the lowest-of-the-low start to Manny’s career in the movie industry, but he doesn’t seem to get any on him, so it kinda seems like stolen valor to me. Shouldn’t the wrangler be the one getting the meteoric rise? Oh well. Maybe that’s the sequel.
This party scene could be a short film unto itself, and it introduces each of the characters whose ups and downs we’ll be following throughout the movie, chief among them Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie, THE LEGEND OF TARZAN), an aspiring starlet from New Jersey who’s not on the guest list, but Manny takes pity on her and sneaks her in. She peer pressures him into doing a line with her and they have a vulnerable moment that will connect them for life, sharing their Hollywood aspirations. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brad Pitt, Damien Chazelle, Diego Calva, Eric Roberts, Ethan Suplee, Flea, Jean Smart, Jimmy Ortega, Joe Dallesandro, Jovan Adepo, Justin Hurwitz, Lewis Tan, Li Jun Li, Lukas Haas, Margot Robbie, Olivia Hamilton, Olivie Wilde, Patrick Fugit, Rory Scovel, Spike Jonze, Tobey Maguire, Troy Metcalf, Vanessa Bednar
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Music | 16 Comments »
Wednesday, January 25th, 2023
STEP UP: YEAR OF THE DANCE (a.k.a. STEP UP CHINA) is a Chinese production developed by Lionsgate as an official entry in the STEP UP franchise, though it’s not connected by any characters. It was released in China in 2019 and apparently here (digital only) in 2020, but I didn’t find out until recently. I watched the English-dubbed version that’s on Tubi because I wasn’t sure if the VOD release would be different. (That’s not the ideal way to watch it, I imagine, but I got over it.)
My podcast friend Michael Scott of Action For Everyone shares my love of the STEP UP series and the dance movie genre, and we’ve talked about doing a STEP UP episode some day. He always says that dance movies are martial arts movies, and this one really literalizes that notion. It actually starts with a fight, and has more of them later, and the central dance crew find their success by starting a fad of “kung fu street dance.” So it makes sense that YEAR OF THE DANCE is directed by the great American stunt veteran and martial artist Ron Yuan, who you’ve seen in many movies including DOUBLE DRAGON, BLOOD & BONE, THE ACCOUNTANT and THE PAPER TIGERS, and who recently directed BLADE OF THE 47 RONIN.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: dance movies, Ron Yuan
Posted in Reviews, Action, Drama, Music | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, January 17th, 2023
VÉRN ON TÁR
By now if you’re the type of person who would see TÁR but hasn’t seen TÁR you’ve probly already heard that TÁR is good and you don’t need me to sell you on it. It is indeed a great acting vehicle for Cate Blanchett (HANNA), a really smart and thought-provoking character study, and just an all around engrossing, original cinematic experience that doesn’t fit any of the templates of the kind of stuff I normally watch, and is all the more captivating for it. So I would encourage you to go through with it.
It’s written and directed by Todd Field, who we of course know mainly as the actor who played Nick Nightingale in EYES WIDE SHUT, and he was also in EYE OF THE EAGLE 2: INSIDE THE ENEMY, BACK TO BACK, TWISTER and THE HAUNTING. He suddenly became an acclaimed filmmaker with IN THE BEDROOM in 2001, then LITTLE CHILDREN in 2006, and then he disappeared into a puff of smoke until finally returning last year holding TÁR above his head like baby Simba.
Blanchett plays Lydia Tár, famous and respected classical composer and conductor, introduced to viewers as well as a live New Yorker Festival audience within the movie with a torturously long list of credits and achievements. She’s giving a faux-humble-but-clearly-very-impressed-with-herself Q&A, saying all her clever lines and opinions, explaining her interpretations of the meanings of famous musical works, brushing off being the first female conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and being called “maestro” and not “maestra.” The audience loves her. She says she’s experienced no gender bias. Maybe just no other woman in history was ever qualified until her. That must be what it was. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Allan Corduner, Cate Blanchett, Mark Strong, Nina Hoss, Noemie Merlant, Sophie Kauer, Todd Field, Zethphan Smith-Gneist
Posted in Reviews, Drama | 26 Comments »
Wednesday, January 4th, 2023
THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE is a phantom movie that came well before PHANTOM THREAD, THE PHANTOM MENACE, or even my man THE PHANTOM. In fact it hails from way back in the silent era of film. Obviously 1921 is a long time ago, but it was a little ways into the movie before it clicked in my brain that holy shit this movie is a-hundred-and-one-years-old. That’s, like, pretty old. Trends, hairstyles, etc. have changed.
It’s also Swedish, which is a whole other thing. I’ve watched HÄXAN, THE VIRGIN SPRING, THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN and the DRAGON TATTOO trilogy from my Ikea couch while eating Swedish Fish and wishing I had a Dolph Lundgren poster, but otherwise it’s a culture I’m completely ignorant about. Wikipedia describes PHANTOM CARRIAGE writer/director/star Victor Sjöström as “Sweden’s most prominent director in the Golden Age of Silent Film in Europe.” He was such an influence on also-very-influential Swedish director Ingmar Bergman that Bergman cast him in the lead of WILD STRAWBERRIES and got the idea of his most internationally recognizable character – Death in THE SEVENTH SEAL – straight from THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: New Year's Eve, silent, Swedish cinema, Victor Sjostrom
Posted in Reviews, Drama, Horror | 5 Comments »
