“I’m more dramatic than people like me to be,” Tammy Faye (Jessica Chastain) says upon first meeting her future husband. “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” isn’t short on dramatics; in fact, this story would seem like fiction if the rise and fall of Jim and Tammy Bakker wasn’t so highly publicized in the late ’80s. […]
In a different year, “Birds of Passage,” along with a myriad of other mildly interesting foreign film submissions would have been sure bets for the Oscar lineup. However, the bar for foreign films has been raised extraordinary high now thanks to Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma.” Colombia’s submission to the 91st Academy Awards didn’t make the nominee roster,
There is little that works about “Cocote,” the Dominican Republic’s submission to the 91st Academy Awards. The most obvious shortfall is how the film is technically assembled. It begins in letterbox (full screen) format, which in itself is not that uncommon, Jonah Hill’s “Mid 90’s” and Poland’s foreign entry “Cold War” both utilize the format. However,
In many ways director Paul Schrader’s new film First Reformed could work as a double feature with last year’s Novitiate. It’s a dark piece on the complicated modern life of a minister dealing with his own internal demons. First Reformed is a twisted tale, not unlike the morally conflicted films in Schrader’s repertoire such as
We have seen nuns depicted in so many different films and in so many different ways. Novitiate offers something rather simple, yet original to the world of cinema. An in depth look at what exactly were the requirements and expectations of a young woman choosing a convent and to marry Christ in the 1960’s. Not
It’s easy to see what writer, director, and cinematographer Joshua Z Weinstein was attempting here. Weinstein is neither a member of the Haredi community nor does he speak the Yiddish language. Yes, the film is in subtitles. Menashe (me-na-sha) takes the structure of a film you have seen before, where a single father can’t get
If television director William Riead was aiming to create a film with the ultimate purpose of delivering dates and information, then one might measure The Letters as a success.