Our Souls at Night is what I would call an “easy recommendation”. It has a satisfying modesty that makes the viewer feel nice. It’s also a safe suggestion for fellow movie goers within the same social circles. However, it isn’t a “necessary recommendation” because that would require the film to carry more weight than expected while also pleasing the audience.
By: Jessica Goddard Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name is a complex and highly nuanced coming-of-age story, packed with moving performances.
The Only Living Boy in New York, Marc Webb’s second film of the year after Gifted, is both a surprise and an expected move from the filmmaker.
By: Nick Ferwerda Academy Award nominee Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and Academy Award winner Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea) play M and C, a couple who lives in an old fashion country home that holds a lot of history. After C is killed in a car accident nearby, M is left with the haunting image of her love and debates moving despite adoring the house. C returns to the house as a ghost…
Tyler Perry apologists may find pleasurable qualities in Sergio Navarretta’s The Colossal Failure of the Modern Relationship. Then again, even those movie goers have seen this sort of romantic peril too many times by now (the Why Did I Get Married? series).
Jude Klassen’s feature film debut Love in the Sixth is a hodgepodge of “stuff”, but I kind of expected that.
By: Jessica Goddard Directed by Roger Michell (Notting Hill, Changing Lanes), My Cousin Rachel is a mysterious, ambiguous, and appropriately moody adaption of the 1951 Daphne du Maurier novel of the same name.
By: Nick Ferwerda Song to Song is tough to summarize. Then again, I expect nothing less from Terrence Malick. The Oscar-nominated filmmaker is known to make, what can be considered, poetic films that consider plot as a secondary function. Honestly, I’m okay with that. It’s different and, every now and then, it’s refreshing.
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.
