Claire McCarthy’s Ophelia opens with the titular character telling, via voice-over, that she feels it is time that we hear her narrative told from her perspective. This is a promising notion. Many of Shakespeare’s supporting women warrant narratives on their own, and the veracious success that was 2016’s “Lady Macbeth” proves just how potent they…
“The catastrophic death of a star brings new life to the universe. In order for us to live, a star must die. We are all stardust.” These are the opening lines in Carol Morley’s film Out of Blue, drawing me in like one those documentaries you might see at a science museum or observatory. Images…
Film critic and current director of the New York Film Festival, Kent Jones’ first feature, Diane, offers a psychological portrait of a woman whose attempts to reach out to others hides her own inability to forgive herself for her past misdeeds. A 70-year-old divorced woman living in rural Massachusetts, Diane (Mary Kay Place, “Downsizing”) fills…
An older major league baseball player becoming a spy for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II to foil an atomic bomb plot has enough palpable atmosphere to be a compelling and pulpy noir. What is even more intriguing, is that it actually occurred. Based off the 1994 biography written by Nicholas…
Hot off its debut at the South by Southwest Film Festival comes Wildling, a horror-drama that focuses on a young girl named Anna (Bel Powley, “The Diary of a Teenage Girl”). Locked away in an isolated cabin since infancy, Anna only receives glimpses into the outside world through stories told by her Daddy (Brad Dourif,…
History lessons don’t have to be boring. But when they are, the problem usually lies with the execution of the presentation of the information. This happens to be the unfortunate circumstance of accomplished writer-director Armando Iannucci’s latest film, The Death of Stalin, which takes a satirical look at the death of Josef Stalin and the…
When I visited Spain for the first time many years ago, I immediately felt a sense of foreboding, as if I was being reminded of some long buried event, perhaps in another lifetime. Everything that happened during my stay there did nothing to dispel those feelings either and I have never gone back. Of course,…
