Film Reviews
Vanessa Kirby Stands Tall In Netflix’s Shrugworthy Pieces of a Woman: Review
This review was originally part of our coverage of the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival . The Pitch: Pregnant couple Sean (Shia LaBeouf) and Martha (Vanessa Kirby) go through a dangerous labor with a new midwife, Eva (Molly Parker), only for the worst possible outcome to occur. In the months that follow, they each process their grief and anger in different ways. Meanwhile, Martha’s mother, Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn), pushes for legal justice that may or may not offer the closure that the family needs. Labour Pains: When people discuss Kornél Mundruczó’s Pieces of a Woman, the discussion will inevitably be broken into two parts. Most will focus on the film’s first 33 minutes, which takes place entirely on September 17th and follows – in one long, mostly uninterrupted take – the night...
Wonder Woman 1984 Is Gold Plated Positivity: Review
The Pitch: Wonder Woman is back — this time, in Washington DC, circa 1984 — to once again save the world from destruction. Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) is joined by her magically resurrected boyfriend Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) and new frenemy Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) to stop a destructive cycle of wish fulfillment and delusion run amok. In her second outing with the character, director Patty Jenkins once again leans into sentimentality, this time to extoll the power of honesty and sacrifice for the greater good. It’s a timely message, and though it takes some major suspension of disbelief to navigate the often clumsily connected dots, Wonder Woman 1984 is ultimately an uplifting story of hope in the face of pain and fear. I Wanna Know What Love Is: If you recall, 2017’s Wonder Woman focu...
Mads Mikkelsen Is Intoxicating In Another Round: Review
The Pitch: Mads Mikkelsen goes all-in for alcohol consumption in Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round (Druk), arguably the most generous film about drinking in recent memory. Sure, it’s a far-flung premise: Four academic buds decide to take a sip of Norwegian psychiatrist Finn Skårderud’s real-life hypothesis that human beings are born with a blood alcohol level that is 0.05 percent too low. In the US, a .08 is considered too drunk to drive. But .02, or a variable amount of alcohol based on individual physiology, can lead to lost focus and skill, he postulates. Skårderud’s big idea? When you’re a bit tipsy, you’re also on top. That’s to say you’re looser, more spontaneous, even inspired. Obviously he’s never binged, ignores addiction, and has likely never admitted to an excruciating hangover....
Education Ends the Small Axe Anthology With Full Marks: Review
The Pitch: Courtrooms, prisons, the police — Steve McQueen‘s Small Axe anthology has taken probing, deeply personal looks at the effects of racial discrimination, bias, and anti-Black violence on London’s Afro-Caribbean communities in the ’60s through the ’80s. With Education, McQueen turns his eye to London’s school systems in the 1970s, a place rife with bifurcated ideas about the intelligence of Black and white people. Enter Kingsley (a warm, intelligent turn from young Kenyah Sandy), the 12-year-old son of West Indies immigrants (Sharlene Whyte’s Agnes and Daniel Francis), who finds himself transferred to a “School for the Educationally Subnormal,” essentially a babysitting gig for special needs kids. Kingsley’s smart, intellectually curious; the school, filled with disi...
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Is an Exclamation Point on Chadwick Boseman’s Inspiring Life: Review
The Pitch: By definition, the word value means “the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something.” A person’s value, however, is most often overlooked, under-appreciated or even unknown. To understand one’s worth is a unique ability that not many possess – that attribute alone can change the trajectory of an individual’s life, drastically. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom digs deep into the core of one of America’s most beautiful artforms, during a time where segregation and racial oppression escalated across the country. Based on August Wilson’s Broadway play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom chronicles an emotional recording session housed within a Chicago studio in 1927. Along with a string of talented actors, George C. Wolfe’s direction explores the dicho...
Promising Young Woman Attempts to Scorch Earth with Provocative Rape Revenge Thriller: Review
The Pitch: Cassie (Carey Mulligan) was once a promising young woman in medical school, along with her best friend, Nina. When a traumatic event involving Nina resulted in her suicide, it left Cassie jaded and enraged at the system that would protect those that hurt her best friend. Because of this, Cassie dropped out of med school, took on a dead-end job at a coffee shop, and now spends her evenings dismantling the system one “Nice Guy” at a time. However, her plans for ruthless vengeance alter when she crosses paths with former classmate Ryan (Bo Burnham). “Toxic”: Writer and director Emerald Fennell’s auspicious feature debut serves as a scathing critique of rape culture and the privilege that protects it. To make the medicine go down easier, Fennell uses a bubble gum pop aesthetic, an e...
Soul Wears an Old Hat But Opens New Doors for Pixar: Review
The Pitch: A new original Pixar film from the co-writer/director of Monsters, Inc., Up, and Inside Out, Soul is meant to remind us all how wonderful this studio’s films can be. And with a cast including Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, and Graham Norton … could it possibly go wrong? Death Becomes Him: The ads for Soul have been playing for roughly a year, due to the film’s original release plan being upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. But the gist has been the same: Foxx voices Joe, a kindhearted middle-school music teacher in New York City who has dreams of being a full-time jazz pianist. Lucky for Joe, he’s got the talent, too, as he shows to a jazz legend (Angela Bassett) during an impromptu audition. After getting the gig, everything seems swell for Joe…until he falls through an open sewer and die...
George Clooney’s The Midnight Sky Blandly Goes Where Plenty of Sci-Fi Has Gone Before: Review
The Pitch: It’s 2049, and the Earth is plagued by a mysterious apocalyptic event – details are scarce, but it seems as though the world is in its last gasps, and time is running out. Perhaps the only man left on Earth is Augustine Lofthouse (George Clooney), an astronomer dying of cancer who chooses to stay behind while the rest of the personnel evacuate their observatory in the Arctic Circle. As he whiles away the days and weeks waiting for the world to end, two events force him into action: the arrival of a mute girl (seven-year-old newbie Caoilinn Springall) seemingly left behind in the evacuation, and the realization that a spaceship called the Aether is on its way back to the planet. They’ve spent the last few years scoping out a new planet for humanity called K-23, and are comin...
Alex Wheatle Is A Rare Stumble for the Small Axe Anthology: Review
The Pitch: Before he was an award-winning author of books like Brixton Rock and Island Songs, Alex Wheatle (Sheyi Cole) spent a short time in prison following his involvement in the 1981 Brixton riots, an explosive confrontation between the police and the neighborhood’s Afro-Caribbean community. There, with the help of his Rastafarian cellmate Simeon (Robbie Gee), Alex looks back on his life — a childhood marred by mistreatment in foster care homes and bolstered by his budding career as a DJ in Brixton — and tries to figure out what to do, and who to be, next. Short But Sweet: Of the five films in writer/director Steve McQueen‘s anthology about the West Indian communities of London from the ’60s to the ’80s, Alex Wheatle is by far the shortest (clocking in at 65 minutes). Th...
How Can You Mend a Broken Heart Is the Bee Gees Doc You’ve Been Waiting For: Review
The Pitch: Three Australian brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb formed the most formidable musical and songwriter trio this side of Holland-Dozier-Holland when they became the Bee Gees. Musical chameleons, they rose to fame during the late-staged British Invasion of the 1960s, recalibrated for the singer-songwriter era of the early-1970s, and rose to a level of fame during the height of disco not seen since The Beatles. Director Frank Marshall captures it all in his new HBO documentary, The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, mixing spine-tingling isolation tracks and archival interviews with the brothers Gibb to tell a captivating story of a sibling trio who, despite their differences, thrived due to their deep love. To Love Somebody: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart finds the B...
The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone Is Tighter, Leaner, and Self-Aware: Review
The Pitch: The Godfather trilogy has to be the most beloved hated idea in popular cinema. The Godfather, about the semi-reluctant rise of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) to become the head of his family’s criminal organization, is one of the most watched and venerated American movies. The Godfather Part II, about Michael leveraging the last bit of his soul for control that isn’t his to take, broke a rule it could just as easily have created: it’s a sequel every bit as good as the original. The third Godfather movie, which sees Michael’s past replay itself in a violent burlesque? That’s a movie over which people are still personally aggrieved. They’ll come out of the woodwork to tell you The Godfather Part III sucked. Go ahead and post about it on social media, someone will find you and tell y...
Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock Is Joyfully Intoxicating: Review
This review originally ran in September 2020 as part of our coverage of the 2020 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: In London’s West Indian community in 1980, a house party brews. The men haul furniture out to the backyard and bring in huge speakers to replace it, while the women crowd into the kitchen, cooking goat curry and plaintains while singing and laughing with each other. Men and women file in one at a time, paying the bouncer while the DJ pumps in the songs of Carl Douglas, Sister Sledge, Janet Kay — romantic reggae, “Lover’s Rock”. This is the setting for Steve McQueen‘s Lovers Rock, a glimpse into the Blues parties that served as an important space for Black Londoners of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s to find community, solidarity, and love, as a rotating ensemble of characters s...
