Jude Andrew Williams (Jack O’Connell, “Money Monster”) “always has a camera in his hand and a photograph in his mind.” He met Emma Ryerson (Olivia Cooke, “Ready Player One”) on a day when she was feeling very sad, though she won’t be able to tell you why — she can’t remember. Through Halloween parties, trips…
When you sit down for a movie, it can go one of two ways: either it fulfills its purpose of entertaining the viewer or leaves them unsatisfied. And in the case of Roger Michell’s Blackbird, I felt myself falling into the second category. Because, though I am one for reinterpretations of classic tales, I’m not…
“Life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud” — Yann Martel, Life of Pi Moments of crisis can bring a family closer together but can just as easily rip them apart. In first-time director Elizabeth Chomko’s What They Had,…
At the end of “Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials,” Thomas (Dylan O’Brien, “Deepwater Horizon”) and his friends have finally found solace in the mountains with a resistance group known as the Right Arm. Teresa (Kaya Scodelario, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales”) reveals to Thomas she has betrayed them and their newfound…
The camera loves Sam Elliott, and why not? He has a tall, lean body with thick gray, unruly hair hanging over a furrowed brow, a trademark horseshoe mustache to go along with dark chest hair; it all blends so well with the unforgettable masculinity in his deep, golden voice that seems to descend directly from…
Inspirational dramas are inherently uplifting, motivational and psychologically gripping. Their feel-good elements or inevitable triumph-into-tragedy climaxes are the functional foundations behind rewarding, emotionally-charged cinema. However, tear-jerking tales of adversity sometimes often fall into the realm of derivative dramatics that register in mawkishness despite their well-intentional pursuit of truthful sentimentality. Writer-director T.C. Christensen’s (“The Cokeville Miracle”)…
Indeed director Stella Meghie’s (“Jean of the Joneses”) teary-eyed tale of pain and young love in the debilitating drama Everything, Everything may be a well-meaning, symbolic serving of the “fragile-heart-yet-winning-spirit” in the eyes of the targeted impressionable teenyboppers harboring such oscillating emotions. However, for discerning others this manufactured, saccharine-coated, junior-sized Lifetime Movie made for the…
