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…
Hereditary begins after a 78-year-old woman, Ellen, dies, leaving her daughter Annie (Toni Collette, “Krampus”), teenage grandchildren Peter (Alex Wolff, “Coming Through the Rye”) and Charlie (Milly Shapiro), and their father Steve (Gabriel Byrne, “The 33”) alone in the house they’d shared at the end of her life. That’s one thing made eloquently and devastatingly…
There’s no clever way to lead into this, so I’m just going to state it plainly: Collateral Beauty is a disaster in every possible way. Trying to explain why is a tall order, as I will have to disclose core plot details that were cleverly withheld from the misleading trailers. So if you consider that…
Evidently filmmaker Garry Marshall cannot seem to get away from his tediously formulaic playbook of themed movie-making and certainly the tepid and toothless Mother’s Day reinforces this cinematic sentiment. Marshall is determined to exploit these cornball conveyor belt holiday-based movies that shamelessly boast an all-star cast, shallow sentimentality, heavy-handed and forced nuttiness and the gimmickry of…
The lyrical lad of film-making, in the form of Irish writer-director John Carney (who gave us the wonderfully musical drama in 2007’s “Once”), is at it again as he brings the continued inspiration of music and motivation in the engagingly festive coming-of-age musical melodrama Sing Street. Carney, the former member of the Irish rock group…
There are a few ways one could structure a biopic. One would be to celebrate the public image of a renowned individual and play up their endearing qualities for dramatic effect. Conversely, a biopic could also be presented as a juxtaposition of one’s public image and delve into the private, perhaps darker side of a…
A common criticism of modern filmmaking is a lack of originality. And in a medium of formulaic genre styles that thrive on remakes, reboots, sequels and extended cinematic universes, it’s perhaps a valid point to make. Yet there is one main advantage to movies that carry a sense of familiarity — consistency. Whether it is…
