Suffragette Directed by Sarah Gavron Written by Abi Morgan United Kingdom, 2015 Sarah Gavron (Brick Lane) directs the story of the British suffragette movement from the ground up. Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) is a poor, working-class woman who has labored all her life for men at work and home. She toils for the survival of …
Suffragette Written by Abi Morgan Directed by Sarah Gavron UK, 2015 As the high-profile spearhead of UK film culture, the London Film Festival thrives on promoting the heritage films that its indigenous industry clings to so dearly: the historical and period dramas which keep the production designers, wardrobe wranglers and most of the Royal Shakespeare Company solvent throughout another procurement drive of Elizabethan ruffs, …
Jonathan Demme must enjoy weddings. His last theatrical endeavor, Rachel Getting Married, focused on the chaos one family is thrown into after a daughter returns home for rehab for her sister’s wedding. Ricki and the Flash takes the same fractured family dynamic, but the wrecking ball this time is mom. Ricki Rendazzo (Meryl Streep), left her husband and three kids behind when she decided to chase her dreams to be a musician years ago. Flash forward a couple of decades and Ricki’s life hasn’t matched up with her dreams.
Over the course of her career, performer Meryl Streep has played a variety of characters both fictional and real, portraying everyone from Karen Silkwood in Silkwood to the Witch in Into The Woods, even winning two Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role along the way for her performances in Sophie’s Choice and The …
The issue of the lack of women working in the film industry just received a huge Meryl Streep-sized boost in the form of a substantial amount of money. Variety reported Sunday that Streep, currently about to star in the women’s voting rights drama Suffragette, will be funding a new screenwriting lab for women over 40. The …
The terrorist attack on the American Embassy in Benghazi so consumed the media and Washington that it’s bound to make good fiction. There’s potential for an on-the-ground action thriller, Zero Dark Thirty style, there’s potential for a thorny, political drama surrounding the ensuing scandal, and one can even look at the conspiracy theorist angle. And …
40. Empire Records Directed by: Allan Moyle Ah, the coming-of-age story. There was no sub-genre more hijacked for a quick buck in the 1990’s. In between the good ones (“Dazed and Confused,” “Boyz in the Hood”), the cheesy ones (“She’s All That,” “She Drives Me Crazy”), and the under-appreciated ones (“The Man in the Moon,” …
Normally, I’m a fair and agreeable chap who approaches each movie with an open mind. I must warn you, however, that my review of Into the Woods will be neither fair nor agreeable. I will not be fawning over director Rob Marshall, who seems clueless as to what his own movie is about, nor will I be singing the praises of Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim, who has probably written grocery lists more pleasing to the ear than these tunes. What I will be doing is trying to deconstruct one of my most grueling cinematic experiences of 2014.
Into the Woods Written by James Lepine, based on a musical by Stephen Sondheim Directed by Rob Marshall USA, 2014 What is there to say about a film that is destined to succeed in spite of its weak ambitions and generic form? Rob Marshall’s newest project, Into the Woods, has been granted a Christmas Day …
Set during the pioneer era, The Homesman subverts the usual trajectory of westerns set in this time by instead focusing on a journey from what will eventually become Nebraska territory in the West to more Eastern Iowa, wherein defeat via the frontier is a primary concern, whether it be a defeat of the mind, body, soul, or all together. Director Tommy Lee Jones’s last theatrically released film was The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005), a contemporary neo-western with shades of Sam Peckinpah in its flavour. The Homesman may have the set dressing of a more traditional, old-school genre entry, but this film, adapted from Glendon Swarthout’s 1988 novel, is much more offbeat than one might expect.
The Giver Marco Beltrami Sony Classical For how many years has Hollywood endured the YA novel onslaught? Five? Ten? When was Twilight? It’s strange to think of The Giver as merely the latest in a string of adapted young adult fiction given that its source material, Lois Lowry’s 1993 bestseller, precedes the publication dates of Divergent, City …
The Giver Written for the screen by Michael Mitnick and Robert B. Weide Directed by Phillip Noyce USA, 2014 The Giver doesn’t want people thinking too much about its heavier themes, so it answers any nagging questions with the Hollywood truism, “Love conquers all.” That’s fine… if the love story works. Sadly, this adaptation of …
The release of The Jungle Book on Blu-ray today has become, as when Saving Mr. Banks was unveiled a couple months ago, an unplanned forum on a most thorny issue for the Disney uber-fan: was Walt Disney a racist/sexist/anti-Semite, and if so, was he a super-racist/sexist/anti-Semite, or just your average, garden-variety racist/sexist/anti-Semite? Even though the …
Full credit for this concept belongs to Mark Kermode… Given the law of averages, it’s fairly common that as film fans we’re far more likely to run into a stinker than we are a new classic, or worse still a underwhelming slice of anti-climax that promised so much more. Quite often that leaves us deciphering …
The Iron Lady Written by Abi Morgan Directed by Phyllida Lloyd UK/France, 2011 Very early on in The Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher’s father, in a flashback sequence, tells her to “never run with the crowd” and to go her own way. These words are typical of the “inspirational” biopic formula, and Phyllida Lloyd’s film embodies …
Acting and directing categories during awards seasons are always the hardest to determine. Who to choose and what for film is a constant battle, not to mention who deserves to be nominated. Between the veteran nominees (Clooney, Streep, Scorcese) to newbies in the awards season (Fassbender, Refn and Oldman (!)), let’s see who deserves a …
Throughout January, SOS writers will be biting the bullet and finally sitting down with a film they feel like bad film buffs for not having seen already. Manhattan Written and directed by Woody Allen 1977, USA When people think of Woody Allen, most people think of the 1977 romantic comedy Annie Hall. It has the …
In its glorious and barreling 87 minutes, Anderson and Baumbach, have taken the gist of Dahl’s book and carefully expanded it into everything you would expect it to be. Fantastic Mr. Fox Directed by Wes Anderson Wes Anderson joins Spike Jonze in adapting a much beloved children’s literature in the same year. First Jonze delivered …