News of Kitty Green’s The Royal Hotel had me excited. Previously impressing me with her strengths as a documentarian with Ukraine Is Not a Brothel, Green would be drawing inspiration from another documentary that I really admired – 2016’s Hotel Coolgardie.
In Fair Play, Emily (Phoebe Dynevor of Netflix’s Bridgerton) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich of Solo: A Star Wars Story and Cocaine Bear) are financial analysts who are discreetly dating but individually on the offence at the workplace. The hedge fund they work for is highly competitive, but unprofessional when dealing with internal matters. An open promotion heard through the grapevine makes everyone more sharp and vicious, but it’s Emily who is eyed for the position….
Dumb Money is supposed to educate viewers on how the stock market was overturned by amateur buyers who invested in the video store retailer GameStop, causing a disruption felt by Wall Street. The film is informative, though viewers are still required to know the basics of stock market culture before buying a ticket. However, what I find more interesting than the biographical intentions of Dumb Money is that director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) has made…
M.H. Murray’s I Don’t Know Who You Are is a well-meaning dramatic thriller that raises awareness about systemic abandonment felt by sexual abuse survivors.
Golden Delicious is melodramatic molasses. Each emotional beat, as sincere as they may be, can be seen coming from a mile away as they slowly roll their way towards the screen. Personal epiphanies from the characters feel like déjà vu to movie goers who may be more than familiar with coming-of-age stories involving closeted teens becoming more in touch with who they are.
By: Jolie Featherstone Origin is Ava DuVernay’s latest film and it is, quite simply, a masterpiece.
The anxiety-inducing energy in the short film Motherland speaks to Jasmin Mozzaffari’s multifaceted talents as a storyteller.
Golda kicks off a season of “Oscar bait”, movies that try very hard to make an impression towards the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. As much as Guy Nattiv’s film may have been conceived from a good place, with the movie’s heavy use of make-up and prosthetics to transform Oscar-winner Helen Mirren into Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, it’s hard for viewers to dismiss this possible pandering.
Passages has a great introduction. Film director Tomas (Franz Rogowski) orders actors around and painstakingly focuses on someone’s inability to walk down a flight of stairs. As Tomas shows the actor how to walk down the stairs, it becomes very obvious that Tomas wants to be idolized. He does this by being intimidating to get what he wants.
