Category: Drama
-
The first twenty-five minutes of The Thomas Crown Affair is a bank heist. Starting with its planning. After opening titles suggesting the film is about stars Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway doing fashion advertising, we meet future wheelman Jack Weston. Weston gets hired by a mystery man to do a job. We jump forward in…
-
Insofar as it has a protagonist,Judgment at Nuremberg is the story of recently electorally defeated Maine judge Spencer Tracy. Tracy is the chief justice on a military tribunal hearing cases in the Nuremberg trials, the Allied attempt to hold the Germans accountable for their actions during World War II. Tracy's coming in towards the end…
-
The Fabulous Baker Boys opens with pseudo-protagonist Jeff Bridges saying goodbye to his latest cocktail waitress one-night stand (always his decision, never hers–Baker Boys is all about taking advantage of patriarchal privilege). Under the opening titles, he walks to work. Baker Boys takes place in Seattle and regularly features its skyline, but director Kloves is…
-
It’s been long enough since I last saw Amadeus I forgot the narrative face-plant of the epilogue. The film objectifying the suffering of nineteenth-century psychiatric hospital “patients” is bad enough, but the way the film ignores it’s spent the second half of the nearly three-hour film away from narrator F. Murray Abraham… Well. It doesn’t…
-
By the time Rocky gets to the big fight, you forget there’s actually going to be a big fight. While the film does open with a boxing match, until somewhere decidedly in the late second act, Rocky isn’t a sports movie. It’s a character study of a boxer, sure, but he’s not in a sports…
-
I wholeheartedly recommend Silkwood. It’s beautifully made, with a singular performance from Meryl Streep and great performances from its astounding ensemble. I need to remember to list all the supporting actors in the film. But I caution against reading up on the actual history. The film’s very accurate; the problem isn’t with veracity; it’s with…
-
While The Nightingale never gets more brutal than in its first hour—it runs two and a quarter—it’s almost more hopeless with less viciousness. The film’s about how the British slaughtered the Aboriginal Australians. It’s about quite a bit more, but the historical context is Australia in the early nineteenth century when people could still buy…
-
Quite appropriately, Everything Everywhere All at Once is all the things. At once. And more. The film’s a relatively simply told multiverse comic book action-comedy-family-drama-romance-horror story with time to do a traditional hero arc, then deconstruct it. The film gives stars Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, and Ke Huy Quan constantly changing roles as we meet…
-
Not counting the ill-advised, if still not wholly unwelcome epilogue, What’s Love Got to Do with It ends about ten years before the film came out. Love’s a biopic of Tina Turner (played by Angela Bassett except for the adorable then rending prologue), almost entirely focusing on her time with Ike Turner (Laurence Fishburne). Just…
-
The Naked Kiss is an exceptional motion picture. However, it’s never not without its problems: it’s an astoundingly classy exploitation picture about an ex-prostitute (Constance Towers) who tries going straight, only to discover the other side of the tracks just hides their secrets in different places. The film will also explore the lack of honor…
-
Miracle Mile is an actors’ movie without any great performances. There are affable performances, good performances, (bad performances), but no great performances. Lead Anthony Edwards occasionally tries hard—it’s the end of the world, after all, he’s got to emote—but he’ll frequently hit a wall and start moving his mouth like a Jimmy Stewart impression will…
-
As Staying Alive celebrates its fortieth birthday, I’m sure there’s information on the web to answer some of my most burning questions. For instance, did they shoot John Travolta and Finola Hughes singing numbers for the in-movie Broadway show (Satan’s Alley), or was it always a rock ballet? And what about the Frank Stallone songs—did…
-
Daughters of the Dust is an epical story told lyrically. Set in 1902, the film tells the story about the time a specific Gullah family headed to the mainland and north into the twentieth century. It opens with Cheryl Lynn Bruce returning home to make the crossing, bringing along photographer Tommy Redmond Hicks to document…
-
Richard III takes place in an alternate history where the British are five hundred years late with their royal wars, but still in the 1940s for technology and rising fascism. The film doesn’t update Shakespeare’s dialogue, so it’s the cast performing while dressed—increasingly—as Nazis. Except they’re British. Well, not Annette Bening or Robert Downey Jr.…
-
Killer of Sheep is a series of vignettes, usually connected with a sequence at the slaughterhouse (though not always slaughter, but sometimes, so be ready), always connected with a piece of music. Sometimes the music recalls a previous scene or musical selection, creating a narrative echo between the sequences. And even though Sheep is incredibly…
-
Lady Bird is a loving tribute to Sacramento, California, specifically growing up there as a teenager, from the perspective of a main character who hates Sacramento. Writer and director Gerwig opens the film with a travelogue of Sacramento streets and locations, a device she repeats sparingly (only significantly in the fantastic finale); Lady Bird is…
-
Elmer Gantry is all about possibilities. Possibilities for the plot, for the performances, for the film. Director (and screenwriter) Brooks watches the film along with the audience, specifically the performances. Everyone’s just waiting to see what Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, and Shirley Jones are going to do next. Sometimes, Brooks emphasizes the performance with quick…
-
Essentially, The Favourite gives each of its three stars an act to shine. Rachel Weisz gets the first act, Emma Stone the second, Olivia Colman the third. They all appear throughout, but the script’s surprisingly segmented with its narrative perspective. Surprisingly because it means the first-act protagonists (Weisz and Stone) are accessories in the third…
-
It’s impossible to say how Little Woods would play if Lily James weren’t terrible. As is, the film’s a waiting game to see if James will ever have a good scene. Spoiler alert: she doesn’t. She’s so bad I was expecting the production company to be “Lily James Productions.” She lets down writer and director…
-
While Tom Cruise is most of the show in American Made, it’s not a star vehicle. Star vehicle suggests it’s got somewhere to take him. Made exists because of Cruise’s likable performance, not the other way around. Thanks to that likability, he even gets away with an eighties TV “Louisiana” accent. The film also avoids…
-
Eve’s Bayou is Southern Gothic, but it’s got a kids’ summer story grafted onto it; by the end, the two genres are working together to great effect. I mean, the end’s got problems, but the way the film gets to it is captivating. The film opens with Tamara Tunie narrating from the future—when she was…
-
Given how much writer, director, and special guest star Welles cares about performances—not only does he dub over one of the other actors, he steals a juicy monologue from Michael Lonsdale—one would think he’d have seen the problem with star Anthony Perkins. Because everyone’s looping their dialogue in The Trial, Perkins gave this performance at…
-
Lilting is not a character study. You’d think it’d be a character study since it’s studying two characters to the detriment of all else (including the actors’ performances), but it’s actually a flashback-filled attempt at lyricism. Except for Lilting and writer and director Khaou, lyricism just means flashbacks. And the same editing device where dialogue…
-
Beans is an almost outstanding, always pretty good coming-of-age story with a historical event weaving its way through the narrative. The film tracks Indigenous Canadian tweenager Kiawentiio over summer 1990. The film starts with her interviewing to go into a prestigious (and very white) high school, setting up a contrast between her actual name (Tekehentahkhwa)…
-
Director Badham intended Whose Life Is It Anyway? to be black and white, which would probably help with the staginess. It’s a play adaptation. Badham handles the relatively big, busy cast well, but he doesn’t know how to shoot lead Richard Dreyfuss. Dreyfuss is playing a recently paralyzed sculptor who, after approximately six months, realizes…
-
So, it turns out sometimes you do actually need a story. No matter the locations, no matter the photography, the music, the actors, the editing, even the directing, sometimes you can’t get away with eighty minutes without some kind of narrative. Five Nights in Maine is the story of newly widowed David Oyelowo. He becomes…
-
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is a narrated character study. Protagonist Robin Wright is talking herself through her life while the film observes her, seeing where she’s gained the perspective of time and where she hasn’t. The film starts in the present, with Wright and husband Alan Arkin having just moved to a retirement…
-
Passing is a genre-buster, which heavily contrasts the very strict mores the film’s subjects live within. The film is an occasional Southern Gothic (set in 1920s Harlem), occasional character study Hitchcock homage. Harlem Renaissance society lady Tessa Thompson has a peculiar day when shopping for her son’s birthday; the sometimes very shitty white folks just…
-
Downton Abbey, the film franchise, has some singular traits (they’re not all problems); most of them related to it being an immediate sequel to a television show, but also the television show’s viewer demographics. Thanks to those demographics, A New Era can get away with a slightly disingenuous subtitle—it’s more of a “sure, maybe, come…
-
Setting aside the twists and reveals, The Sixth Sense is about three character relationships. There’s child psychologist Bruce Willis and troubled youth Haley Joel Osment, there’s Osment and mom Toni Collette, there’s Willis and wife Olivia Williams. The film opens with Willis and Williams celebrating him receiving an award for his work, which she thinks…
The Stop Button 