Mary Queen of Scots, Josie Rourke’s interpretation of rival queens in the 16th century is stilted and anticlimactic, with poor pacing and a weak screenplay that casts a rather conspicuous shadow over its two prominent leads, Saoirse Ronan (“Lady Bird”) and Margot Robbie (“I, Tonya”). Rourke, long affiliated with the London stage (she’s the artistic…
At a time when typical Hollywood fare consists of retreads and blockbusters aimed at mass markets, introspective and highly personal films have become increasingly rare. That alone is reason to celebrate Alfonso Cuarón’s (“Gravity”) Roma, an intimate journey that draws on the director’s memory of a childhood filled with domestic turmoil as well as a…
Cinema has long been home to inspirational “true story” interpretations, operating as a vessel through which filmmakers can translate fact into fiction. There’s an audience for it, so the biopic genre and its various filtered offshoots continue to be a mainstay of mainstream movies. There’s a seemingly endless collection of personalities and adventures to choose…
Martin Luther King’s message that people should be judged not on the color of their skin but on the content of their character came one year too late to reach the folks encountered by black Jamaican jazz pianist Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali, “Hidden Figures”), in his 1962 concert tour of the segregated Deep South….
Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri said, “Writing comes partly out of being wounded by life. The need to create art is connected to a need to heal.” Without a market for her books and Isolated from her literary peers, for Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy, “Ghostbusters”) healing has given way to loneliness, alcohol, and deception….
Based on the memoir by Garrard Conley and set in rural Arkansas, Australian director Joel Edgerton`s (“The Gift”) Boy Erased tells the moving story of Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges, “Lady Bird”), an 18-year-old gay college student and his struggle for self-acceptance in the face of rejection by those whose support he desperately needs. Raised in…
Bohemian Rhapsody certainly did not have the smoothest of beginnings, with Sacha Baron Cohen (“Borat”) — who was first slated to pick up the mantle of Freddie Mercury — leaving due to creative differences. Cohen wanted to go down a more authentic, grittier road, a road paved with rampant sex scenes and pornographic amounts of…
