“You can kill me if you want. I kind of wish you would.” Once Upon a River is a 92-minute, independent film that marks Haroula Rose’s debut as a feature film director, and an impressive first feature it is. Based on the novel published in 2011 by Bonnie Joe Campbell, a writer who has been…
Jenny Slate’s latest dram-rom-com vehicle, The Sunlit Night, seems like a bit of a rehash of her previous film, “Obvious Child.” There are certainly some broad similarities: Her character Frances has just gotten out of a relationship and she’s in a slump both romantically and professionally. So it is no wonder Slate brings the same…
“I was just thinking that of all the trails in this life, there is one that matters more than all the others. It is the trail of a true human being” — Kicking Bird in the film “Dances with Wolves” Kelly Reichardt’s (“Certain Women”) First Cow is a song to nature, a tribute to intimacy…
Bona fide Hollywood A-lister, Tom Hanks (“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”), strikes again in Greyhound, a World War II-set drama that drops viewers into the exceedingly cold, choppy waters of the Atlantic in the winter of 1942, as Allied forces attempt to deliver troops and supplies to the European Theatre. Director Aaron Schneider, who…
Author Victor Hugo was once quoted as saying, “There are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.” The idea that unjust law and prejudice infect communities for generations only to create more monsters along the way is still prevalent today, especially in media. In his third directorial effort,…
The Host is an example of what happens if you put multiple films into the meat grinder, chop them up and compress the pieces together. Incorporating tropes across genres as well as referencing specific films, Andy Newbery’s film shows little originality or stylistic élan but does offer an enjoyable narrative and plenty of homages for…
Francis Annan’s Escape from Pretoria describes the real-life adventures of political captives Tim Jenkin and Steven Lee as they attempt to leave the titular prison before their sentences are up. Set in the apartheid era of South Africa, the film spends most of its run-time within the walls of the prison itself, leaning on a…
