Nonetheless, that’s where The Boys in the Boat, the latest satiny period piece directed by George Clooney, hopes to rekindle old pride, honor, and excitement. Boosted by inspirational history and adapted from Daniel James Brown’s 2013 bestseller, Clooney’s film cannot push back the entire predominant stereotype described earlier, but it can offer a scrappy team of bourgeoisie to root for and showcase the dauntless fortitude to perform the marginalized sport itself.
Read MoreShockingly and woefully, Joaquin Phoenix does not achieve a single one of those aforementioned personality traits of Napoleon Bonaparte to any compelling degree. You read that right– not a single one of them. There’s no sweeping speech destined for an Oscar nomination clip that wins over citizens, soldiers, or us viewers. Big political ideas pop without sparks. The fireworks and cunning strategy never make it off the battlefield, and any legendary swagger is reduced to the snivels of a lazy and insecure cuckold.
Read MoreTo say Bradley Cooper threw himself into his work is an understatement. He is a marvel to behold. The actor was operating with a spot-on imitation of Bernstein’s vocal annunciations, inflections, cadence, and tone. He found all the highs and lows of hubris, profundity, stress, dedication, and talent in front of and behind the camera. Is all of this in Maestro ostentatious hopscotch from Cooper? Probably, but what else would you expect from an energy like working at an insanely masterful level?
Read MoreWhile ambitious as a ripe tangent in borrowing a real-life scandal, the whole shadowing angle of May December overloads what was excessive enough as off-screen history to begin with. Applying a smattering of unlikely kinks and a confounding third act of insecurity swerves sinks the film. Haynes is left with a mood piece of examining taboo with more taboo. and it gets unattractively lost in just that very vibe.
Read MoreThe JustWatch Lists feature now offers more than just saving and tracking your favorite movies and TV shows: Users can now create, share & import lists, discover list collections curated by our team and track their TV shows. Browse and save lists from other users or import IMDb lists straight into JustWatch to enhance the lists with the JustWatch feature set.
Read MoreAmong his peers and contemporaries, David Fincher conveys a commanding control of fluidity that few filmmakers can rival in this day and age. His stringent melding of staging, cinematography, performance outcomes, editing, and music rarely, if ever, stumble or loiter. Fincher’s mise-en-scène is an authority of total precision, arguably second to none. He simply doesn’t miss his marks, which makes The Killer and its propulsive narrative about a rare and fatal mistake so much more fascinating.
Read MoreNYAD is the film adaptation of that incredible feat recounted in Diane’s autobiography Find a Way. Four-time Academy Award nominee Annette Bening is playing the title subject alongside two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster as her friend and coach Bonnie Stoll. This true chronicle lends itself to a sports movie’s narrative flow and swell of dramatic license, yet NYAD was made by a pair of Oscar-winning documentarians– the Free Solo husband-and-wife directorial team of Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin– giving it a purposeful backbone of authenticity to push some of those tropes to the side.
Read MoreFor better or worse, that’s a microcosm of the entirety of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. As helpful as Robertson’s plucked metronome is to fill voids and create a foreboding cinematic heartbeat, your own pulse rate ends up matching that placidness. No matter what heinous deception, jarring murder, or well-appointed finery appears on screen, very little in the film intensifies or accelerates beyond that methodical drowning dirge.
Read MoreThe linchpin of Foe becomes Saorise Ronan. With a strong and near-Method effort at being constantly jaded and exhausted, Paul Mescal impressively spends the majority of the film withering in the wringer he’s sent through by Terrence. He’s going for broke. Meanwhile, the real palpable depth of Foe comes from Hen’s female perspective. Since the beginning of the film opened on her crying in the shower, our perception of Hen has been the bigger question mark than the stranger Terrence.
Read MoreFor all of these reasons and more, we can be pleased and entertained that The Burial is here on Amazon Prime Video. Matching Lesson #2, it’s as stock and formulaic as it comes within the courtroom drama subgenre. Hot damn, that’s going to work every time. Within the formula, the heart and spine of the narrative will always be the two biggest ingredients. The backbone is a compelling case, and the beating pulse is the people embroiled in the affair.
Read MoreHow did this all happen? What can tear apart a marriage? Most folks go straight to the tawdry daytime talk show topics of money and infidelity, neither of which are anywhere close to the catalysts in Black White and the Greys and there’s zero crowd to watch it all go down. Rather, the frost seeping into the cracks of the Grey family lies in a growing divergence of intellectual contrasts and moral conflicts.
Read MoreTrue to the sharp storytelling adage of “show, don’t tell,” Fair Play from writer-director Chloe Domont heightens its drama with these featured stares because you imagine the thoughts or predicted words before they are performed. Oftentimes, a viewer’s imagination can get riled up even worse than what is shown on-screen. The wallop of that effect is the characters will get their releases, retorts, and replies, but the audience members– short of shouting at the screen or clutching their armchair partner– do not. With sly effectiveness in hanging on every stare between the words, that’s how a movie like Fair Play gets you.
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