“And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime. Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning” — Wilfred Owen, “Dulce Et Decorum Est” The lives of World War I English poets Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden (“Dunkirk”) and Wilfred Owen (Matthew Tennyson, “Making Noise Quietly”)…
In German director Thor Freudenthal’s (“Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters”) deeply-moving Words on Bathroom Walls, high-school student Adam Petrazelli (Charlie Plummer, “All the Money in the World”) lives in a world without silence. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, the voices in his head never stop, interfering with his ability to function and endangering his need to graduate…
Hope Gap is one of those typical independent movies, where mood, atmosphere and setting dominates more than the narrative. There are no complaints here, because the film’s frequent dallying at these seaside locations and our watching the characters walk along the shoreline or climb up various rocky features is quite beautiful to look at. I…
For the most part, hard luck familial dramas have the potential for being notoriously manipulative on an emotional scale. However, when done remarkably well — with the right precision of pathos and truth — such melodramas can resonate and overcome their soapy constraints. Director/co-writer Jake Scott (“Welcome to the Rileys”) oversees such a one with…
“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing… Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore” — Naomi Shihab Nye Though it is a genre that often flounders on an excess of sentimentality, first-time writer-directors Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz’ The Peanut Butter Falcon…
Fueled by over-prescription of highly addictive painkillers, two thirds of all drug overdose deaths reported in 2016 involved opioids. Though the film industry has been late in dramatizing the epidemic, several high profile films have been released this year on the subject including Peter Hedges’ powerful and moving Ben is Back, starring the director’s son,…
April 15, 2013. This infamous date would rock not only the Greater Boston/New England region but send a devastating shock wave throughout the nation and world. It was, sadly, the fateful day of the double bombing at the Boston Marathon. A day that would forever change and upset the lives of those victimized by this…
