From its opening shots of a city by night to its final image of a teenage boy entering an apartment block, La Granja (English title: “The Farm”) declares its interconnectivity and sociological credentials for all to see. Set in the Barrio La Esperanza area of Puerto Rico, writer-director Angel Manuel Soto’s film presents three narrative…
As Arthurian films have gone in recent years, the most epic in my opinion is probably “Excalibur” from 1981; the most interesting one is the 1995 Richard Gere vehicle, “First Knight”; the most fun was the 1963 animated “The Sword in the Stone”; while the best is easily 1975’s classic, “Monty Python and the Holy…
Abbie Cornish (“Seven Psychopaths”) finds herself battling ghosts both metaphorical and literal in mystery thriller Lavender, which manages to be a decent enough flick in spite of its wholly derivative construction. Cornish plays Jane, mother to a precocious daughter (Lola Flanery, “The Mist” TV series), wife to a possibly philandering husband (Diego Klattenhoff, “Pacific Rim”),…
The synopsis of acclaimed German director Werner Herzog’s 2016 thriller Salt and Fire, at first, seems to present a truly intriguing, unique and captivating story — “A renowned scientist is sent to Bolivia on an urgent mission to analyze a looming environmental catastrophe she along with her colleagues are deceived by a man claiming to…
In Israeli-American director Joseph Cedar’s masterful film, Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, a ridiculously expensive pair of shoes given as a gift leads to a friendship between rising Israeli politician Micha Eshel (Lior Ashkenazi, “Encirclements”) and Norman Oppenheimer (Richard Gere, “Time Out of Mind”), an American businessman, consultant…
In Circles, a based-on-fact drama about crop circles in England, is unfortunately inert and dead on arrival. It’s a muddled ball of confusion that struggles fruitlessly to provide some sort of context or emotional connection among the characters, the audience, and the plot. Otherwise, it’s not really terrible. A reporter, Lara (Cassandra Thomas, “The Duchess…
Not your average bad movie, it’s definitely trying to be good. It’s just not quite there.
