The resiliency of the human spirit is pummeled by a squall of sentimentality in Baltasar Kormákur’s based-on-a-true-story survival drama Adrift, which long vacillates between prettily photographed seafaring and soggy backstory. The movie opens thrillingly in the chaotic aftermath of a storm that has left a luxurious sailboat in ruins and protagonist Tami (Shailene Woodley, “Allegiant”)…
“The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori (“It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”)” — Wilfred Owen In his film “Of Gods and Men,” director Xavier Beauvois tells the story of seven Roman Catholic French Trappist monks kidnapped from their monastery in a village in Algeria by radical Islamists…
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…
“The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded” — Ralph Waldo Emerson In Lucrecia Martel’s masterfully hypnotic Zama, the sensuous and seductive Luciana Pinares de Lueñga (Lola Dueñas, “Can’t Say Goodbye”) says that “Europe is best remembered by those who were never there.” If Zama is any indication, we might…
Co-directed by Julie Cohen (“American Veteran”) and Betsy West, RBG is a celebration of the life and career of 85-year-old Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, also known as the “Notorious R.B.G.,” a reference to the famous rock star “The Notorious B.I.G.,” and the title of a book about her by Irin Carmon and Shana…
The desire to transcend the environment in which you were raised and choose your own direction in life is central to Disobedience, a clash between religious orthodoxy and the desire for sexual freedom. Adapted from Naomi Alderman’s novel of the same name, it is the first English-language effort for Chilean director Sebastian Lelio whose critically…
“Oh, God, make small the old star-eaten blanket of the sky, that I may fold it round me and in comfort lie” — T.E. Hulme, “The Embankment” When I first heard about British director Andrew Haigh’s (“45 Years”) Lean on Pete, it sounded like a warm, cuddly drama about horses, perhaps an updated version of…
