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…
You don’t need to be rich or Asian to enjoy this film, but it helps if you are crazy. Unless you sneaked aboard NASA’s InSight Lander, you may have heard that John M. Chu’s (“Now You See Me 2”) satirical Crazy Rich Asians is the first Hollywood film since 1993’s “The Joy Luck Club” to…
Maine spends the first ten minutes immersing the viewers in its setting. There is no dialogue, just the picturesque Appalachian Trail, the sound of the wind, and a woman (Laia Costa, “Victoria”) going about her business, which involves peeing in the bushes and fiddling about with sanitary products. The immersion in nature and its elements…
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…
Entertainment guru Tyler Perry plants his fingertips on yet another toothless comedic concoction that has more cockeyed misfires than Madea’s gun rack display. In Perry’s latest baseless romantic comedy Nobody’s Fool, more of the same formula applies; tiresome stereotypes accompanied by forced melodrama and transparent seeds of recycled zaniness. Clearly, it has been a reliable…
Waiting For You, the directorial debut of Charles Garrad, screened at the Norwich Film Festival in November 2018, followed by a Q&A with the director. Based on an original idea by Garrad and co-writer Hugh Stoddard, Waiting For You tells the story of a young man investigating the life of his father after the death…
Outwardly unexpressive but inwardly volatile, Jongsu (Yoo Ah-in, “The Throne”), a young delivery man, aspires to be a writer but does not write. He asks himself, “What kind of story can I write?” but he is an outsider looking to the world to provide a story for him. “To me, the world is a mystery,”…
