A beautifully rendered film about a remarkable child abandoned by her family and growing up alone in a shack in the marshland of North Carolina. Isolated from most of the town of Barkley Cove, she is called “the marsh girl” by townspeople who make up all kinds of negative stories about her. There are kindly people […]
Director Hans Petter Moland has adapted Per Petterson’s dense novel of the same name into a film that’s cinematically ornamental. Internationally, the film is being sold as a Stellan Skarsgård vehicle, despite the fact he’s a minor character in the story. Narratively framed similar to The Reader, Out Stealing Horses exists almost entirely in flashback.
It’s been a while since we had a powerful wrongly accused, racial discrimination courtroom drama. Upcoming “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” director Destin Daniel Cretton continues his collaborations with Brie Larson (“Short Term 12,” “The Glass House”) in “Just Mercy.” The subject matter and the simplistic way the story is told mirrors
Screenings were packed for “The Goldfinch,” at the Toronto Film Festival, despite negative reviews. John Crowley (“Brooklyn“) seems to be the right director choice for this film. “Goldfinch” doesn’t have “Brooklyn‘s” magic though. With so much content and plot to cover even over two hours of running-time is not enough time. “The Goldfinch” suffers most
Known for his inventive indie films, Richard Linklater (“Boyhood”) takes aim at the mainstream, with his adaptation of the best-selling book Where’d You Go, Bernadette. The Oscar-nominated director from Austin cast Cate Blanchett in the lead role, a choice that fans of the book had long predicted and hoped for. It’s a return to greatness for her
Oscar winner Barry Jenkins highly anticipated new film opens exactly the way you would hope. A perfectly timed musical score from his “Moonlight” collaborating composer Nicholas Britell folds into the frame. The two lead actors (KiKi Layne and Stephan James) wearing outfits that compliment each other, slowly walk down the street daydreaming about their future
Most of the time, a movie’s ingredients (i.e. director, visual effects, screenwriter, etc) predict how well a project will fare both in the eyes of audiences and critics. Director Jennifer Yuh Nelson is transitioning from “Kung Fu Panda” (animated) to live action with “The Darkest Minds” and it’s an unsteady shift. Here we have another young adult
The Glass Castle doesn’t work well on screen under director Destin Daniel Cretton’s vision for a handful of reasons. The first and foremost is how the narrative manipulates the audience’s emotions and feelings towards the monstrous father figure. While Harrelson (Wilson) and Larson (Kong Skull Island) are astutely cast, the best parts of the film
Tate Taylor’s third feature since becoming a mainstream Hollywood director with The Help, feels like the neglected cousin to Gone Girl. Adapted from the bestselling book of the same name, The Girl on the Train boasts a well assembled cast of Hollywood’s former breakouts, most of them in new character acting territory. Taylor’s film,
From the author of The Fault in Our Stars, John Green’s second book to film isn’t as polished or profound.