Tag: drama
The Tribe envelops you in a world of silence
What makes a film “brave”? Is it telling a type of story that hasn’t been told before? Is it doing something innovative technically? By either definition, The Tribe is brave film-making.
The feature debut of Ukrainian writer-director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy, it takes place in a time and place where sound is, by and large, irrelevant, and features “No translation, no subtitles, no voice-over”, only sign language.…
The Program is the real dope
The sound of the wind. Breathing. A steady heartbeat.
A man on a racing bike waggles his way up a scrubby hillside – his progress is measured, a gradual, steady ascent. Whether or not this is slow motion, it feels like it.…
Rosewater is a bit too floral and watery for its own good
As the directorial debut of a man better known for political satire than drama – The Daily Show’s long-time, recently abdicated host Jon Stewart – Rosewater is a suitably timely work of dramatized non-fiction.
It tells the story of Maziar Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian journalist imprisoned by the Ahmadinejad regime for 118 days following Iran’s controversial 2009 elections.…
Z For Zachariah gets a B+ in the post-apocalypse stakes
Craig Zobel’s Z For Zachariah may have the same PG-13 age rating as the bloodless Terminator Genisys1, but there’s more to this adaptation of Robert C. O’Brien’s classic junior sci-fi than just The Road for kiddies.
While Cormac McCarthy’s famously grim work of fiction is structured around, well, the road, Z For Zachariah concerns staying put.…
I loved The Falling
How do we categorize ambition in a film?
It has to mean more than scope or scale — Avengers: Age of Ultron is big and bold but what new does it attempt in terms of storytelling, apart from maybe giving Hawkeye something to do?…
Maggie shows the Austrian Oak is still putting down roots
As his involvement in Terminator Genisys shows, Arnold Schwarzenegger is not a man who’s afraid to return to the same watering hole.
Over the course of forty years — and almost sixty films — he’s taken on iconic villains like the Predator, the T-1000, and Charles Dance (because screw it, I liked The Last Action Hero), but has so far steered clear of the Universal lineup vis-a-vis Dracula, Mummy, and The Wolfman.…
True Story is a pallid case study that seems likely to fade away before too long
The truth is a funny thing. While facts may be unyielding — a child’s body submerged in a suitcase with a teddy bear; a flood of brackish water — our relationship to them is often more elastic.
Case in point: reporter Michael Finkel (Jonah Hill), dismissed from his job at the New York Times for fabrication, and Christian Longo (James Franco), a man accused of murdering his wife and children.…
Mommy: a love-hate experience I had mixed feelings about
Right, where to begin. Mommy, the latest work of French-Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan, plays like a hyper-saturated soap opera underscored with Greek tragedy and just a dash of plot-convenient alternate universe social community.
Set in a Canada where its legal to indefinitely commit problem kids at the age of sixteen, Mommy revolves around Diane “Die” Després (Anne Dorval), a gutsy, sometimes glamorous single mum who, first we see her, is stepping out a car wreck; a few minutes later Die’s smacking gum and staring down a teacher who questions her ability to look after her troubled son, Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon).…
Love & Mercy is a not inconsiderable blessing from the music biopic genre
Has there been any sub-genre of drama more reliable in recent years than the music biopic?
They give the chance for charismatic character actors like Joaquin Phoenix and Marion Cotillard to take on larger-than-life personalities undergoing the trials and tribulations of fame and fortune.