Sometimes the stories that don’t get made into films can be even more revealing of the dynamics within Hollywood than the ones that do. Though one of the most important American historical figures, until now, Harriet Tubman never received the biopic treatment given to so many other less significant individuals. Born into slavery and later…
“All we have to do is beat the clock by a second!“ As you may have read in my recent, Wounds (Babek Anvari, 2019) review, Hollywood seems rather obsessed with selling cell phone horror as a viable trend. This year alone, we have had A.M.I. (Rusty Nixon), Jexi (Jon Lucas, Scott Moore), and Wounds. Prior…
“A stock boy job at Wal-Mart is starting to look pretty good right now, boys.” To those well versed in the brief yet excellent filmography of one, J.C. Chandor, you’d be as surprised as me to hear about Triple Frontier. An ace A-Star leading men ensemble consisting of: Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett…
I’d love to say The Lighthouse is an ambitious failure – that Robert Eggers tried to tap into something heady, existential, or even primal, and just wound up coming up short. If only it were a thematic or narrative mess, or an admirable but flawed attempt at provocation that unfortunately missed the mark. Instead, Eggers’…
In 1965, Orson Welles wrote, directed, and starred in Chimes at Midnight, an adaptation of a variety of William Shakespeare’s plays, primarily those included in the Henriad. Welles had long held an interest in Shakespeare and adapted many of his plays to both stage and screen. Initially produced for live performance, Chimes at Midnight closed…
Rick and Ilsa, Jack and Rose, Mia and Sebastian, and now Nicole and Charlie. Sometimes the best couples in film just aren’t meant to be together in the end. Unlike these other couples, Adam Driver’s Charlie and Scarlett Johansson’s Nicole did get married and shared their lives with each other for many years with no…
Armed with a massive budget, an all-star cast, and total creative freedom, Martin Scorsese delivers a career-defining 209-minute epic crime film that’s less daunting and more purely entertaining than you’d expect. The Irishman is reminiscent of his other gangster pictures, like Goodfellas and Casino, but the propelling force here is character rather than plot, which…
Cinema Etc. 