I Can Only Imagine
I Can Only Imagine is, more or less, about the act of forgiveness. And just like that personal journey, this movie starts out tough before it starts feeling better for everyone.
Biopic
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
By: Jessica Goddard Paul McGuigan’s Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is a sappy, sweet, and rich examination of the relationship between Oscar winner Gloria Grahame (Annette Bening) and aspiring actor Peter Turner (Jamie Bell), some thirty years her junior. It’s a movie about a lot of things; their weird but earnest age gap romance, the eccentric persona of the former film starlet, the panic spiral associated with aging, the cutthroat nature of showbiz.
The Dancer
Stephanie Di Giusto’s The Dancer is one of the more interesting biopics in recent memory. It’s by the book in terms of the genre’s formula and narrative structure but Di Giusto finds another way to look at her film’s biographical material.
Goodbye Christopher Robin
By: Jessica Goddard From the title to the opening scene to the whole conflict at its core, Goodbye Christopher Robin is a movie determined to make you rethink the context in which A.A. Milne (Domhnall Gleeson) wrote the beloved Winnie the Pooh stories (then Winnie-the-Pooh). There’s nothing wrong, in theory, with a biopic about A. A. Milne, but why this movie chooses to focus on A. A. Milne being a bad father who apparently ruined his…
Loving Vincent
Loving Vincent wants you to focus hard on the six-year process it took to make this movie. This oil-painted film is the first of its kind, with over 100 artists (including Canadian Valerie Fulford) painstakingly painting over 65,000 frames to make a cohesive cinematic work of art. Each frame is in the signature swirly style of tortured painter Vincent van Gogh.
Rebel in the Rye
By: Jessica Goddard The writing instructor continuously trying to put down his most gifted student in hopes of making him better and stronger. A father who doesn’t want to indulge his son’s delusions of a career as a professional writer. The sight of a Capital A “artist” bent over his typewriter in an otherwise empty, white room. These are just a few of the many contrivances the viewer of Rebel in the Rye is subjected…
All Eyez on Me
Benny Boom, the music video director/indie filmmaker behind Next Day Air and 48 Hours to Live, has been given a chance to swim in a larger pond with the Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez on Me. On paper, this should work. Boom’s been working upwards to larger projects, and the source material is certainly in his wheelhouse.
Alone in Berlin
While I’m completely aware that Alone in Berlin is based on a true story, I’m afraid Vincent Perez’s big-screen adaptation is thin and tedious. There’s not enough here for the director/co-writer to flesh out, and likewise for the talented leading cast (Brendan Gleeson, Emma Thompson, Daniel Brühl).
Tommy’s Honour
Movie goers waiting for a biopic to blow their socks off shouldn’t rely on Tommy’s Honour, a drama that seems to fulfil its non-fiction requirements procedurally. Tommy’s Honour would be par for the course (ba-dum-tss) if it wasn’t so underwhelming.
A Quiet Passion
A Quiet Passion is a stage play that has wandered into movie theatres. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with individual physical elements in this Emily Dickinson biopic, but writer/director Terence Davies (Sunset Song) doesn’t connect with his audience through the medium he’s presenting on.