Besides minor adjustments with its story and certain supporting characters, Neil Burger’s (“Limitless”) The Upside is a fairly faithful remake of the popular 2011 French film “The Intouchables.” Both movies are inspired by the real-life friendship of French aristocrat Philippe Pozzo di Borgo and his Algerian caretaker Abdel Sellou and each highlight their dynamics of…
At a time when typical Hollywood fare consists of retreads and blockbusters aimed at mass markets, introspective and highly personal films have become increasingly rare. That alone is reason to celebrate Alfonso Cuarón’s (“Gravity”) Roma, an intimate journey that draws on the director’s memory of a childhood filled with domestic turmoil as well as a…
Cinema has long been home to inspirational “true story” interpretations, operating as a vessel through which filmmakers can translate fact into fiction. There’s an audience for it, so the biopic genre and its various filtered offshoots continue to be a mainstay of mainstream movies. There’s a seemingly endless collection of personalities and adventures to choose…
Martin Luther King’s message that people should be judged not on the color of their skin but on the content of their character came one year too late to reach the folks encountered by black Jamaican jazz pianist Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali, “Hidden Figures”), in his 1962 concert tour of the segregated Deep South….
Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri said, “Writing comes partly out of being wounded by life. The need to create art is connected to a need to heal.” Without a market for her books and Isolated from her literary peers, for Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy, “Ghostbusters”) healing has given way to loneliness, alcohol, and deception….
Based on the memoir by Garrard Conley and set in rural Arkansas, Australian director Joel Edgerton`s (“The Gift”) Boy Erased tells the moving story of Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges, “Lady Bird”), an 18-year-old gay college student and his struggle for self-acceptance in the face of rejection by those whose support he desperately needs. Raised in…
“A day once dawned, and it was beautiful. A day once dawned from the ground. Then the night she fell . . . The night she fell all around” — From the Morning, Nick Drake Directed by Belgian director Felix Van Groeningen (“Belgica”) and adapted for the screen by Luke Davies (“Lion”), Beautiful Boy is…
