There is an idealized Wonder Woman. It’s vague and often inconsistent in description, but seemingly ethereal in public consciousness, in spite of any prior comic book knowledge, or lack thereof. I would compare the cultural assumption to Superman, and the balancing act the original Richard Donner film had to pull off. The benefit of finally…
Lady Macbeth is an exercise in contradiction. It is a costume drama, a genre long associated with restraint and composure. It is also a gothic romance, which has a long association with passion and melodrama. These generic tropes work together as the passion of the melodrama pushes against the constraints of the costume drama, often…
Here are a few things I learned from the film Baywatch: Movies adapted from television programs are almost always terrible (the few exceptions are “The Brady Bunch Movie” and the “Mission: Impossible” franchise; this also includes most films based on “Saturday Night Live” sketches); moronic writers who cannot think of clever lines or situations always…
“We are not lost, we are just finding our way” — Stephen Meek, “Meek’s Cutoff” As depicted in “Wendy and Lucy” and “Meek’s Cutoff,” Kelly Reichardt’s characters are lost without a significant guidepost to hold on to, adrift in a society in which they struggle to fit in. Based on short stories from the 2009…
Time to head to port. Now. With its “final adventure” tag, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales glows with a compelling enough reason to re-rendezvous with Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp, “Alice Through the Looking Glass”), omitting how it will reward attendance with hollowed-out booty. Though ridding the stifled scope and static…
In The Shepherd, we meet Anselmo (Miguel Martín, “Cell 211”) on a day much like any other in his modest, repetitive life. He wakes up in his one-room farmhouse. He feeds his precious dog Pillo, he has breakfast, he showers. He spends the day with his sheep, reading and skimming stones when time permits. He…
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…
