Sport films can be annoying for non-sport fans, if they require a pre-existing interest in the sport itself. The more effective films in this genre, therefore, are often historical dramas that present the life of an individual through history, with the relevant sport part of his or her life. This gives filmmakers the opportunities to…
Jess (Katee Sackhoff, “Oculus”), a reformed drug addict, is trying to reclaim her daughter Chloe (Lucy Boynton, “The Blackcoat’s Daughter”) from the children’s home. Chloe, still angry at the desertion years earlier, is in no hurry to return to her birth mother. Yet one night, after an adventure gone wrong with her boyfriend, Chloe becomes…
The word that will be most often used to describe Across the River, a movie about two ex-lovers spending a few hours together on the streets of London, is small. We often use the word small these days to describe movies that don’t involve superheroes or CGI, what Siskel & Ebert used to refer to…
While its better scenes help to distract from these moments, clichés are still clichés, and no matter what strengths its actors might bring to the film, “Wolves” remains a bland, uninteresting drama that leaves the viewer feeling underwhelmed as its credits begin to roll.
One night, on a quiet neighborhood street, a black man walks along, minding his business, trying to remember directions he was given. He mumbles to himself about street names and how “confusing and scary-ass” the suburbs are (true story). A white Porsche creeps up behind him, eventually pulling ahead of him to idle near the…
Emad Etesami (Shahab Hosseini, “About Elly”) and his wife Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti, “The Wedlock”), a childless married couple in their early thirties, are amateur actors playing the lead roles in a local production of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” a play in which a good man’s virtue turns to hypocrisy and his marriage crumbles….
The signs for Live by Night are promising. Ben Affleck’s previous directorial offerings — “Gone Baby Gone,” “The Town,” “Argo” — showed ever increasing confidence and skill. The period gangster sub-genre has delivered such classics as “The Godfather,” “The Godfather: Part II” and “Once Upon a Time in America.” The source material, Dennis Lehane’s epic,…
