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…
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.
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).
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 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.
By: Jessica Goddard A United Kingdom is a beautifully-made, sincere, and well-acted historical drama. Director Amma Asante (Belle) knows what she’s doing with this story, and hits all the right notes to make this an inspiring and uplifting film that still feels truthful and grounded in reality.
The late Andrzej Wajda tells a story of artistic integrity in Afterimage, a biopic about Polish avant-garde painter Wladyslaw Strzeminski.
The People vs. Fritz Bauer is a good film driven by a stellar central performance by Burghart Klaussner (Good Bye Lenin!).
Christine Chubbuck was a woman who managed to do what no one else could – shock America. In 1974, in the midst of countless political assassinations, mass murders and serial killings, it would take a truly jarring event to shake the American public, which turned out to be a suicide on live television; “the latest in blood and guts, in living colour”. Chubbuck’s suicide has been an object of morbid curiosity since and it has…
Free State of Jones is inspired by real events that took place in Jones County, Mississippi following the United States’ civil war. As expected, Matthew McConaughey (Interstellar, Dallas Buyers Club) is impressive as Newton Knight, a former army medic who lead an armed rebellion against the confederate army. The film also features strong performances by Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a freedwoman named Rachel, and Mahershala Ali as a former slave named Moses who joins Knight’s movement.