Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
Writer/director Kenneth Branagh, best known for his Shakespeare adaptations, turns his attention from the Elizabethan era to late 1960s Northern Ireland in his new film Belfast. The time and place offer as much drama and conflict as anything by the Bard, but Branagh’s nostalgic film, a black and white period piece based on his own boyhood, feels lightweight and forgettable despite its dramatic context.
Given the excess of coverage and plethora of media portrayals of Diana, the late Princess of Wales, that Chilean director Pablo Larraín would choose her as the subject of his new film feels somewhat odd. Do we really need another look at Diana and the royal family and all their dysfunction? If you’re a fan of The Crown, you may already have had your fill, but if you’re still curious for even more on the inner workings of the Windsors and Diana’s psyche, then Larraín’s Spencer may be for you.
You’d be forgiven if, when you saw the poster or trailer for Last Night in Soho, you assumed it would be some sort of edgy, stylized, dark humor-filled picture. After all, the film’s director is Edgar Wright, of Baby Driver, Shaun of the Dead, and The World’s End fame. The film’s marketers seem to be seizing on fans’ perception of Wright to sell the film, but make no mistake – this movie is markedly different from the rest. Above all else, this picture is a horror movie, and an exceptionally bloody one at that, making its Halloween weekend release appropriate.
Effectively playing a character on screen is hard. Effectively playing two characters on screen is harder. Directing yourself playing two characters on screen is lunacy! Well, lets officially jot down Katie Boland as an artistic risk-taker because she writes, directs, and stars in dual roles in We’re All In This Together. Did I mention it’s also her feature film directorial debut? The list of accomplishments we can attribute to this project are endless, and should be celebrated, even if the end result isn’t fully emotionally gratifying or cinematically coherent. We’re All In This Together (or WAITT, henceforth) is a lean family drama that juggles too many themes and side plots to successfully fit within a short 85 minute running time, but Boland’s devotion to the filmmaking craft and her on screen performance nevertheless emerge strong.
Continue reading “Film Review: “We’re All In This Together””
Fox Searchlight has finally released Wes Anderson’s very long-awaited new film The French Dispatch, and this sentence pretty much sums it up: “Leutenant Nescaffier is emphatically celebrated among cooks, cops and capitaines, not to mention swindlers, stoolies and snitches, as the great exemplar of police cooking.”
If that sentence – with its very sneaky verb, its obviously overbalanced serial commas, its all too visible use of French terms, and finally, its curious “police cooking”- makes you smile, laugh, giggle, catch your breath, or even tingle, then this is your film. If not, then there’s nothing I, or this review, can do for you.
Husband and wife filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi have made two of my all-time favorite films in the past six years: 2015’s Meru and 2018’s Best Documentary Oscar winner Free Solo. They return today with The Rescue, which chronicles the recovery of a Thai boys’ soccer team from a flooded cave back in 2018, an event that transfixed the world. Chin and Vasarhelyi’s new documentary is just as engrossing as the original story, and with this picture the duo continues their streak of producing absolutely must-watch, enthralling films.
Nearly fifteen years ago, the world was introduced to Daniel Craig as James Bond in Casino Royale, the sixth actor to portray the iconic British secret agent (I’m not counting David Niven). Casino Royale portrayed Bond as a gritty, brutish, and most importantly, emotional character. It was a product of the time, a post 9/11 world where terrorism was no quipping manner and audiences desired “realism” over campiness, hence the popularity of the Bourne movies leading up to Royale. And now, the Daniel Craig era comes to a close with No Time To Die, his fifth film as Bond. No Time To Die is the perfectly fitting end in just about every manner, tying in all the familiar role-players from the previous films while finally bridging Craig’s emotional brutality with the campy, spy game action of previous Bond films. The opposing sensibilities don’t always gel. So the question is — will all audiences enjoy the precarious balancing act that director Cary Joji Fukunaga squeezes within a bloated 2 hours 45 minutes? No, definitely not. Like me, many will leave the theater entertained but also confusingly disappointed. However, No Time To Die’s value will appreciate over time. Even a week after viewing it, my acceptance and understanding of the film has grown.
“If you follow blindly, in the end all you are is blind,” Tammy Faye Bakker’s mother Rachel tells her daughter in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. As directed by Michael Showalter (The Big Sick; Hello My Name is Doris), the film, while heavy on the eye imagery, largely glosses over just how blind Tammy Faye actually was to her husband Jim’s defrauding of the couple’s vast televangelist ministry. Nevertheless, the picture is still a lot of fun, and features a showstopping turn from a nearly unrecognizable Jessica Chastain as Tammy Faye.
In Paul Schrader’s new offering The Card Counter, the venerable writer/director proves that exploring the question of why humans can never quite find real connection will always make for worthwhile, if somewhat challenging viewing. Continue reading “Film Review: “The Card Counter””
Sometimes a film comes along, for better or worse, too soon or too late, that captures current events and our collective state of mind. Together, the new film by Stephen Daldry (The Crown; Billy Elliot), may be THAT film for the COVID pandemic. While its 2020 relevance and verbose, stage play-esque script may turn off some viewers, the phenomenal performances by the lead duo and an honest, unflinching story about a romantic relationship in close quarters elevate this small film to more respectable heights.