When taking liberties with a real person’s life goes very, very right. Continue reading
Tagged with biopics …
“Surface-Level Adaptation ‘The Silent Twins’ Quiets Agnieszka Smoczynska’s Style”
…yeah, maybe they shoulda stayed silent? Continue reading
“‘Being the Ricardos’ Sags Under the Sorkin of It All”
This could have been a good movie, but the writer-director couldn’t help Sorkin all the oxygen out of the room. Continue reading
“Corporations Triumph Over Cars in Ford v Ferrari”
Vroom vroom zoom zoom beep beep screech crash bang boom man emotions vroooooom manly slap fight zip zip zap Continue reading
Review: Lizzie, 2018, dir. Craig William Macneill
Nothing clever here: Just a blunt-ass takedown of a really, really bad movie. I’m not sure if Lizzie thinks it’s higher class than it is, or…wait, yes I am. It’s a Lizzie Borden biopic that skimps way the hell out on murder, saving the best known part of the Borden legend until somewhere close to the … Continue reading
Review: The Polka King, 2017, dir. Maya Forbes
I’m happy enough to sneak a terrible-on-purpose play on Shakespeare into my review of Maya Forbes’ very good The Polka King that I don’t mind my reference to Phanuel being cut from the final copy. Take that bad with the good, or maybe in this case the bad with the very bad. Whatever. I don’t know. … Continue reading
Interview: Terence Davies, “A Quiet Passion”
More than a few times in my conversation with the great director Terence Davies (aside: he’s one of the most unsung masters of cinema working today, in case you didn’t know), who graciously offered me forty minutes of his time to talk about his latest film, A Quiet Passion, he invoked his sense of anger at … Continue reading
Review: Steve Jobs, 2015, dir. Danny Boyle
“And now, for your edutainment: 2015’s second movie about Apple visionary and all-around jerk, Steve Jobs, creatively titled Steve Jobs for sake of ease. The film marks Danny Boyle as the second person in 2015 to attempt at parsing out the many faces of the late Jobs, or maybe the third. Boyle has the director’s … Continue reading
Review: Spotlight, 2015, dir. Tom McCarthy
“Bostonians tend toward insularity that often comes off like rudeness. In truth, that stereotypical coarseness is a blend of honesty and austerity: They favor candor over sensitivity, and act like total introverts in the interest of honoring their neighbors’ privacy. Tom McCarthy’s latest film,Spotlight, appreciates that social shuttering better, perhaps, than it appreciates its subject … Continue reading
Review: Straight Outta Compton, 2015, dir. F. Gary Gray
“If there’s one question worth asking after the credits roll on F. Gary Gray’s Straight Outta Compton, it’s “Why didn’t he make a series instead of a film?” Next year, Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger will roll out Vinyl, a ten-episode series on HBO that focuses on the developing aural confluence of hip hop, disco … Continue reading
Review: Selma, 2014, dir. Ava DuVernay
“If Selma can be described in one word, it’s “fiery.” Biopics are typically such rote, thankless exercises in filmmaking that the idea anybody could make one colored with brushstrokes this passionate feels contrary. But there’s no better way to characterize what Ava DuVernay has accomplished in her dramatic chronicle of the 1965 voting rights marches … Continue reading
Review: Wild, 2014, dir. Jean-Marc Vallée
“Wild is ripe for easy snark on the page. Just as Cheryl Strayed embarked on her thousand mile sojourn to emotional betterment in 1995, Reese Witherspoon sets out to recreate Strayed’s quest in the pursuit of another Oscar win, what would be her first since 2005’s Walk the Line. It has long been the fashion … Continue reading
Review: Lincoln, 2012, dir. Steven Spielberg
Walking out of Lincoln, you may be struck at the revelation that Honest Abe had a pretty consistent comedic streak running through him. Would you believe that Spielberg’s biopic on one of the US’s greatest leaders happens to be one of the best comedies of 2012? I’m being dishonest, naturally; Lincoln, mired in a bloody stage … Continue reading
Review: Hitchcock, 2012, dir. Sacha Gervasi
Watching Hitchcock you may find yourself wondering, often, what Alfred Hitchcock himself would think of Sacha Gervasi’s efforts to celebrate his life and contributions to cinema. If Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal of the man tells us anything about him, his likeliest reaction might well be a cutting remark spoken while gazing down his nose at Gervasi’s film. Hitchcock commemorates the man’s … Continue reading
Review: We Bought a Zoo, 2011, dir. Cameron Crowe
(Cross-posted over at GoSeeTalk.) In an early scene in Cameron Crowe’s We Bought a Zoo, Scarlet Johansson’s beleaguered zookeeper whirls around on Matt Damon’s optimistic single father turned zoo owner and demonstrates the film’s greatest hindrance in one ham-handed chunk of dialogue. Neither Crowe nor the film has any faith in its audience to pick up … Continue reading
Review: Hunger, 2008, dir. Steve McQueen
We live in an odd world where the Lars Von Triers and Gaspar Noes come under degrees of attack for the overt depictions of violence and anti-humanity portrayed in their pictures while Steve McQueen receives almost universal praise for offering imagery that’s no less brutal and discomforting. This isn’t, by the way, an attack on … Continue reading
Review: The Runaways, 2010, dir. Floria Sigismondi
I didn’t know a whole lot about Joan Jett, Cherie Currie, Kim Fowley, or, well, any character involved when going into Floria Sigismondi’s biopic about the 1970s all-girl punk rock band, The Runaways. Unfortunately, I didn’t know much more about them coming out of it, either. Films in general, and biopics and documentaries in particular, … Continue reading
Review: Made in Dagenham, 2010, dir. Nigel Cole
Calling a movie like Made in Dagenham predictable makes me sound incompetent. Of course it’s predictable. It’s based on something that actually happened, the outcome of which I’m well aware. (Titanic was predictable, too. The ship sank at the end! How tragic!) Be that as it may, predictable is exactly what Made in Dagenham is– … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 