Viola Davis
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‘Blackhat’ is a cyber-thriller that makes Solitaire look exciting
Blackhat is a cyber-thriller that starts out boring and ends dumb. It’s almost unimaginable that a gifted director like Michael Mann, responsible for, arguably, the best crime-thriller of the last 30 years in Heat, could helm a film so utterly bereft of tension or drama. Not even his signature hyper-stylized aesthetic can disguise what a lackluster film this is. From the unimaginative script to the indifferent editing, Blackhat needs a complete overhaul to escape the basement of Mann’s distinguished filmography. More
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How to Get Away With Murder, Ep. 1.06, “Whack-a-Mole” addresses race and injustice head on
Six weeks into fall and How to Get Away With Murder is the biggest hit of the new season and one of the most watched shows on television. Viewers are connecting with its potent mix of legal procedural, murder mystery, and soap opera. They also must be connecting with the character of Annalise Keating, a woman as complicated as has ever been seen on network television, and where the question of her likability, or lack thereof, is deemed completely irrelevant on the strength of Viola Davis’s masterful performance. Annalise is an idealist and a hypocrite, passionate and calculating, funny and terrifying. But is she a good person? The creators trust their audience’s intelligence not to even bother asking that question. More
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How to Get Away With Murder, Ep. 1.01, “Pilot” is TV’s newest obsession
How to Get Away With Murder, the new ABC drama from writer Peter Norwalk and executive producer Shonda Rimes, has the potential to drive off the rails at any moment. The premise it sets up for itself (spoiler alert: it’s a murder) cannot sustain itself for more than a season. Its characters, a group of ambitious law students, are pitched at tones ranging between frantic and rabid. Its procedural elements are nothing that would be out of place on a Dick Wolf show. But the one element that gives me utter confidence that this show is worth watching, besides Shondaland’s unquestionable track record, is the central performance of Viola Davis, one of the great American actresses of our time. Her role as Annalise Keating, criminal law professor at Philadelphia’s fictional Middleton University, shows herself to be charismatic, intelligent, and supremely manipulative in just a handful of scenes. She’s a predator with flashes of humanity. If the writing holds up, Davis will be able to create an antihero in the league of Tony Soprano and Walter White. More
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‘Blackhat’, from filmmaker Michael Mann, gets its first trailer
Director Michael Mann has not been seen on the big screen since 2009’s Public Enemies, although he has been busy in the interim with the short-lived HBO show Luck. That’s set to change with his upcoming feature, however. Titled Blackhat, Mann directs from a script co-wrriten by him and Morgan Davis Foehl, in a cast […] More
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‘The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby’, with Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy, gets a first trailer
Two of the rising stars over the past few years have been Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy. Chastain has garnered critical acclaim for her work on The Tree of Life, Take Shelter, and Zero Dark Thirty, and McAvoy has similarly gained a number of fans for films such as The Last King of Scotland, Wanted, […] More
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The Definitive Religious Movies: 50-41
As we are full-on in the Lent season, our definitive list will focus on films about religion or some aspect of it. The #1 qualification to be on this list is to deliberately focus on religion, a religious figure, or have the presence of a religion/faith as an integral plot point. For example, most of […] More
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‘Get on Up’, a biopic of James Brown, releases its first trailer
One of the legendary figures in music history is James Brown, whose musical influence has been cited by numerous artists, and whose songs have gone on to become classics. Fans of the singer were excited to learn of a biopic of Brown in the works, one that had licence to use his songs. Titled Get […] More
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‘Ender’s Game’ a suitably entertaining, if very condensed, young-adult adaptation
Condensing a popular young adult book to its most basic and necessary parts is an unenviable task. No matter how passionate the filmmakers are to the original text, someone’s bound to be disappointed. No film adaptation can satisfy every fan; it doesn’t matter how hard you try. Take out one character or rewrite them to be minimal, and you’re doomed. More
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‘Prisoners’ is an engrossingly gruelling drama soaked in blood, grief and indefensible deception
Overstuffed with an A-list cast, Denis Villeneuve’s (Incendies, Polytechnique) Prisoners is a funereal and often shocking meditation on what people are capable of doing for their loved ones. Permeated with savagery and blood, this is a film that forces ghastly situations on the audience which they’ve likely seen before but are hopefully not entirely numb to processing from a victim’s point of view. The drive behind what holds a family together for better or worse is showcased in painful detail. Gruesome, agonizing, and distressing, Prisoners goes for the jugular and leaves everyone wincing at the hideous view of the human condition that it leaves in its wake. More
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‘Prisoners’, the latest feature from Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, releases a new trailer
Filmmaker Denis Villeneuve is well known to fans of international cinema, garnering acclaim for films such as Polytechnique and Incendies, with the latter earning Villeneuve an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. Many people were thus intrigued when it was announced that the filmmaker would be taking on directing duties on a complete English language […] More
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‘Beautiful Creatures’ a daffy but entertaining ‘Twilight’ retread
Beautiful Creatures Directed by Richard LaGravenese Written by Richard LaGravenese USA, 2013 What Beautiful Creatures has that the Twilight films desperately needed is a refreshing sense of silly self-awareness. The latter books and films, which clearly inspired the former, were frequently funny, if always unintentionally so. (OK, fine, that Michael Sheen yelp in the last […] More
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‘Won’t Back Down’ is overly schmaltzy and dramatically inert
Won’t Back Down Directed by Daniel Barnz Written by Brin Hill and Daniel Barnz USA, 2012 The modern educational system is full of corporate bureaucracy, personal frustrations, and district-, state-, and nationwide complications. In short, the system is labyrinthine at best, broken at worst. And as much as we try to think of education in […] More
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