Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
Screenwriter Christy Hall makes her directorial debut with Daddio, a script she originally conceived of as a stage play. That theatrical quality is evident in the film, an emotionally rich two-character study that takes place in near real time. Featuring stellar performances from Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn, Daddio is the sort of understated but affecting drama that often gets lost in the summer blockbuster shuffle but deserves to be seen.
Both the original A Quiet Place and its follow up, A Quiet Place Part II, made my Top 10 lists for 2018 and 2021, respectively. A Quiet Place: Day One, the new film in the series, however, falls far short of achieving that honor this year. A prequel to the original movie, this third film in the franchise offers audiences nothing new, and merely repeats elements that made the first two movies so successful.
Croatian filmmaker Daina Oniunas-Pusic has earned multiple awards for her short films, and now parlays that talent on to the big screen with Tuesday, her terrific feature film debut. A contemplative and serious meditation on life, death, grief, and letting go, Oniunas-Pusic’s film never feels heavy-handed, even as it grapples with some of life’s most weighty philosophical questions.
Robert De Niro and Bobby Cannavale have acted together once before, in Martin Scorsese’s 2019 mob drama The Irishman. But casting them as father and son is a brilliant idea, and, if nothing else, actor/director Tony Goldwyn’s new film Ezra at least offers audiences that long overdue delight.
The summer blockbuster movies season is still a few weeks away, but in the interim two very different smaller pictures featuring female protagonists open today. Are they worth seeing? Read on to find out!
Continue reading “Film Reviews: “Babes” and “Back to Black””
The 67th SFFilm Festival opens tomorrow, Wednesday, April 24th, and will run through Sunday, April 28th. The Festival is presenting over 45 programs featuring films from 40 countries in venues in San Francisco and Berkeley. We’ve already previewed five of the Fest’s films (two documentaries and three narratives), and below we take a look at five more narrative features:
Continue reading “Film Feature: 67th SFFILM Festival Preview #2”
Based on a true story, Wicked Little Letters is a charming period piece that reunites the terrific actresses Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman, both of whom played the same character at different ages in 2021’s The Lost Daughter. While they share no scenes in that film, their new movie provides a welcome vehicle for showcasing their spirited chemistry.
The 96th Academy Awards air tomorrow, Sunday, March 10th, on ABC at a new, earlier 4:00 pm PST start time. Friendly reminder to fellow film fans: don’t forget to spring forward for daylight savings, or you might miss the start of the show! Below, Spinning Platters film critics Carrie Kahn and Chad Liffmann share their predictions and thoughts for the major categories. Although we feel smug when our picks win, we don’t mind some upsets to keep things interesting! You can print your own ballot here. Good luck to all!
Continue reading “Film Feature: Carrie and Chad Pick the 2024 Oscars”
Following in his big brother Joel’s footsteps, Ethan Coen steps outside the pair’s successful filmmaking partnership with Drive-Away Dolls, his first solo narrative feature. Unfortunately, Ethan doesn’t do as well as his brother did with his 2021 award-winning The Tragedy of Macbeth. Drive-Away Dolls probably won’t win any awards, but it’s a serviceable, if mostly forgettable, attempt at a retro, low-brow comedy.
In the early 2000s, filmmaker Laura Chinn was a teenager living with her mother in Clearwater, Florida. Chinn’s older brother Max, terminally ill with brain cancer, spent the last few days of his life in a hospice center with an internationally famous resident: Terri Schiavo. Schiavo’s right-to-die legal case spanned fifteen years, from 1998 until 2005, when the courts finally allowed her husband to remove her feeding tube. In Chinn’s feature film debut, she turns this grim early experience into Suncoast, a fictional, semi-autobiographical tear-jerker of a movie with a few tonal problems, but also much to recommend it.