Whenever I find myself looking at the treasured imagery of the American Frontier, there’s always a bittersweetness that washes over. Perhaps it is the grandeur of the mountains looming against the most idyllic of cottages, but there’s this sense of melancholy that’s fascinating to explore. One such example comes in the form of Mona Fastvold’s…
Meredith Danluck’s State Like Sleep is one of those films that, despite disguising itself as a slow-burning mystery, reveals its thesis within the first 30 seconds. During a televised press interview, Belgian actor Stefan Delvoe (Michiel Huisman, “The Ottoman Lieutenant”) elaborates on the greater significance of being an actor, a filmmaker, and a person, “We…
Coming-of-age angst and self-discovery set against the Southern Californian skateboarding circuit are enthusiastically explored in the directorial debut of Oscar-nominated actor Jonah Hill in his observational and exuberant vehicle, Mid90s. As producer-writer-director and product of a 90’s West Coast teenage upbringing, Hill spins a heartfelt tale of growing pains balanced by skateboarding rebellion, a sense…
Zoë Kravitz’s (“Rough Night”) character in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Leta Lestrange, tells the franchise’s bashful hero, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne, “The Danish Girl”), “You never met a monster you couldn’t love.” The line is actually quite interchangeable with the film itself. While the narrative is somewhat of a slog, there is just…
Here it is, the comeback the “Alien” franchise sorely needed. “Nothing,” remarked Daniels (Katherine Waterston, “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”) on the noise level of her surroundings, a gorgeous planet seemingly teeming with conditions perfect for them, 2,000 in-cryosleep passengers and 1,000-plus embryos to colonize. Little does the character know this, but what…
Half the fun of watching Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a prequel of sorts to the “Harry Potter” franchise, is trying to figure out just who will be a vital link to that amazingly popular film series. J.K. Rowling (the author of the original “Potter” books, as well as this screenplay) seeks, like,…
Loosely based on Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network”), Danny Boyle’s (“127 Hours”) Steve Jobs is not a conventional biopic of the famous co-founder of Apple Computers but is more like an impressionist painting — short strokes of paint that capture the essence of the subject rather than…
