Carrie Kahn – Page 26 – Spinning Platters

MVFF39 Spotlights: The Eagle Huntress/The Architect/A Late Style of Fire: Larry Levis, American Poet/Love is Thicker Than Water/Moonlight

The 39^th Mill Valley Film Festival, showcasing over 200 films from more than 50 countries, opened last Thursday evening, and runs until this Sunday, October 16th. The Festival is screening some titles already garnering Oscar buzz: Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, which opened the Festival (and will open widely this fall), the stunning Manchester by the Sea (which already received deserved acclaim back in January at its Sundance premiere), and Loving, the Jeff Nichols historical drama that closes the Fest.

With a full week to go, there is still plenty of time to head over to Marin to catch some great new films. Below we spotlight five Fest titles you may want to check out. Full schedule, tickets, and more information are available here. Continue reading “MVFF39 Spotlights: The Eagle Huntress/The Architect/A Late Style of Fire: Larry Levis, American Poet/Love is Thicker Than Water/Moonlight“

Film Review: Queen of Katwe

Nair brings inspirational chess prodigy story to life in appealing new film

Robert Katende (David Oyelowo) imparts chess – and life – wisdom to young Phiona (Madina Nalwanga).

The phrase “heartwarming family film” has been overused so much that it’s become a meaningless cliché, but when is the last time you saw a live action picture that legitimately fit that description? A few Pixar movies aside, the cinematic offerings that truly appeal to parents and kids alike have been pretty paltry lately. Disney competently rectifies that situation today with Queen of Katwe, a well made, well acted, inspirational-without-being-cloying film that tells the true story of a poor girl from the poverty-stricken town of Katwe, Uganda, who becomes a national and international chess champion.
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Film Review: Sully

Heroic pilot’s story takes flight in Eastwood’s well executed film

Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (Tom Hanks, r.) and co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart, l.) prepare to land US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River.

No discussion of Sully, director Clint Eastwood’s new film about East Bay hero Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the commercial airline pilot who, in January, 2009, successfully landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the frigid Hudson River after its engines failed, can begin without first acknowledging that casting Tom Hanks as Sully is a perfect marriage of actor and role. Tom Hanks, the Jimmy Stewart of our day, embodies competence, integrity, and innate decency in a way that makes him a natural fit to play the heroic pilot of the so-called Miracle on the Hudson, in which all 155 people on board survived the emergency water landing. Imagining another actor in the role is almost impossible, and Hanks’s dependable Everyman persona is a large reason Eastwood’s dramatization of the real life event works so well.
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Film Review: War Dogs

**Arms and the bros: Hangover director brings incredible true story to the screen**

Efraim (Jonah Hill, center) and David (Miles Teller, r.) inspect some choice merchandise in an Albanian warehouse.

The economy of war and the audacity of youth brilliantly collide in writer/director Todd Phillips’s new picture War Dogs. A heavily fictionalized dramatization of Guy Lawson’s 2011 Rolling Stone article (and later book), the film details the spectacular rise and fall of two 20-something young men from Miami Beach who became major international arms dealers during the heart of the Iraq War.
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Film Review: Hell or High Water

Bridges, Pine anchor riveting western crime drama

Brothers Tanner (Ben Foster, l.) and Toby (Chris Pine) come up with a plan to save their family’s West Texas farm.

Actor turned screenwriter Taylor Sheridan proved he had a knack for conveying the rhythms and feeling of the American southwest with his award-nominated debut feature screenplay for last year’s gritty drug smuggling crime drama Sicario. The success of that debut was no fluke, as we see here in Hell or High Water, Sheridan’s new, follow up screenplay. A similarly southwest-set blend of western and crime drama, the picture rivals the Coen Brothers’ Best Picture winner No Country for Old Men as a modern day, quintessentially American morality tale.
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Film Review: Bad Moms

**The moms may be Bad, but their film has its moments**

Exhausted and overextended moms Amy (Mila Kunis, l.), Kiki (Kristen Bell), and Carla (Kathryn Hahn) decide to cut loose.

A few weeks ago, we learned that Mike and Dave need wedding dates, and now today, in Bad Moms, we find that some stressed out moms need to cut loose. In the summer’s second booze-soaked, raunchy-but-sweet comedy to open this month, Josh Lucas and Scott Moore, the co-writers of the Hangover trilogy, also pick up the director’s reins to bring us this similarly over-the-top, often very funny film that has a lot of predictable heart under its R-rated laughs.
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Film Review: Seoul Searching

Charming picture captures the heart and Seoul of the best of John Hughes

The film’s publicity still (used on the movie poster) lets us know it’s Breakfast Club, Korean-style.

“Don’t you forget about me,” Simple Minds implored us in John Hughes’s 1985 coming of age classic The Breakfast Club. Korean-American writer/director Benson Lee makes sure that doesn’t happen in his new 1986-set similar film Seoul Searching. Less a blatant rip off of the original and more of an unapologetic and utterly affectionate homage, Lee pays tribute to the Hughes films of his youth while bringing a unique, fresh, and charming perspective to the genre.
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Film Review: Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

Winning cast brings solid laughs to predictable picture

Mike (Adam Devine, l.) and Dave (Zac Efron, r.) are aghast after being chastised by their parents for their boorish behavior at family events.

Back in the pre-Internet days, an old creative writing teaching technique used to be to have students read the classifieds and generate a short story based on gems they found there. Screenwriters Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien obviously understand the imaginative gold of such an assignment, since, for their post-Neighbors 1 and 2 screenplay, they’ve turned an actual Craigslist ad into the decently funny picture Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. Directed by TV comedy director Jake Szymanski in his first feature film foray, Mike and Dave is neither no more nor no less than what you’d expect from a raunchy-but-sweet summer comedy.
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Film Review: The American Side

Buffalo-set film noir attempt falls flat

Detective Charlie Paczynski (Greg Stuhr) is on the case in Buffalo, NY.

“You had me at death ray, “ one character says to another in writer/director Jenna Ricker’s new film The American Side, expressing his interest in an unfolding mystery. Too bad the audience won’t feel the same way while watching this convoluted, ridiculous attempt at modern film noir, set against the awe-inspiring backdrop of Niagara Falls (hence the title).
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Film Review: Money Monster

**Foster’s uneven Monster lacks bite**

Lee (George Clooney, l.) tries to reason with upset investor Kyle (Jack O’Connell).

With Money Monster, the actress Jodie Foster wears her feature film director’s cap for the first time since 2011’s Mel Gibson-helmed The Beaver (she’s done TV work in the interim, including Orange is the New Black and House of Cards), and the result, unfortunately, is nowhere near as good as an episode of either of those shows, and only slightly better than that odd Gibson picture. Here, Foster seems to want to make a cutting-edge indictment of a global financial system that is rampant with corruption and inequality, à la The Big Short, but what she ends up with falls, well, short. Big time.
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