Oscar-winner Bill Condon (“Chicago,” “Beauty and the Beast“) has an eclectic filmography, dabbling in both big-budget CGI films like “The Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn,” and smaller films aimed at multi-generational audiences like “Mr. Holmes.” “The Good Liar” marks the first film Oscar-nominee Ian McKellen (“The Lord of the Rings”) and Oscar-winner Helen Mirren (“The Queen”) […]
The simple nature in which actress/producer and now first time director, Swati Bhise tells the epic story of Warrior Queen Rani Lakshmibai doesn’t do history or legend justice. The script pigeonholes the film somewhere between a Disney movie and a made for classroom educational video. Bhise might not have the qualifications to send this film
“Waves” first act is a roller coaster of emotion. It’s the editing that lifts you very high on this ride as you wait for the inevitable fall. Houston filmmaker Trey Edward Shults (“Krisha,” “It Comes At Night”), returns in his most solid film yet. The trailer is selling you “Moonlight,” but “Waves” is offering you
Writer/director Ira Sachs (Love is Strange, Keep the Lights On) has always been interested in exploring human interaction, more specifically, strenuous relationships. Noah Baumbach gets a mention in the script, but it’s Woody Allen that Sachs unintentionally molds the framing and pacing of Frankie after. The assembly of actors is quite impressive, just seeing Oscar
I shake my head when I see productions like Playing with Fire presented to kids. Clearly, the filmmakers don’t know kids very well (all the dialog for these kids sounds like an adult who still has childhood remnants in his psyche and/or has no idea what real children are like), and they portray adults behaving and sounding like children. The movie misses the
The fact that filmmaker Roland Emmerich (“White House Down,” “10,000 BC”) having to get funds outside the U.S. to finance his $100+ million epic of American history should have been a clue that more work was needed with this project. Emmerich has assembled a B-list cast of characters and attempts to give each at least
This year’s seasonal romantic comedy finds our former dragon queen, fully unchained from the “Game of Thrones” TV series, eagerly soaring into a film career. If you have been unfortunate enough to catch Emilia Clarke’s previous films (“Me Before You,” “Terminator Genisys”) shot between “Game of Thrones,” then you know it can’t get any worse for her on-screen. “Last Christmas” is written by Oscar-winner
The latest “Terminator” film, 6th in the franchise, is as irrelevant and insignificant as previous iterations. James Cameron, creator of the original from 1984, can ignore or disregard all the versions he wasn’t associated with (films 3-5), but that doesn’t alter the fact those films and their stories are still in our minds. Despite having
Filmmaker David Michôd (“Animal Kingdom,” “The Rover”) and fellow Australian Justin Kurzel (“Macbeth,” “True History of the Kelly Gang“) have more in common than hailing from the same country. Both are visionary filmmakers, not directors who can see the future of cinema necessarily, but artists who create an entire film around an initial or singular
In Edward Norton’s sophomore feature as director (his first official writing credit), he takes the audience back to the early 1990s where lite mobster movies were a dime a dozen. The saxophone led original score by Daniel Pemberton (Steve Jobs) transports the viewer back to a different era of filmmaking. The cinematography, editing, and leisurely