The narrative represented in Jeanne Du Barry is more of a historical timeline walkthrough. There isn’t a plot-based backbone, and the film isn’t necessarily character driven either. Instead, the audience is presented with important people from a specific era, their individual impacts, and the decadence that surrounded them. That may not sound like much of a movie, but this biopic’s secret weapon is the filmmaker’s love for the subject matter. If I want someone to…
By: Jessica Goddard Full disclosure: I am bad at watching war movies. I watch war movies out of some (likely misdirected) sense of duty – if actual human beings lived these horrors, I should be able to stomach cinematic recreations of them, is my thinking. But, I find it very hard to watch people die (which I’ve chosen to attribute to a smug overabundance of empathy) even if it’s only a performance. For this reason,…
By: Nick Ferwerda To my surprise, Bitter Harvest – a film that was supposed to be about the Holodomor Genocide in the early 1930’s – is actually a mediocre love story. I didn’t say it was a good surprise.