Although it has some delightful elements, Last Christmas is an uneven mix of silliness and fun. Kate (Emilia Clarke) hasn’t exactly got her life together. She’s personable, but far from stable. She doesn’t see eye to eye with her overbearing mother, Petra (Emma Thompson), an immigrant from the former Yugoslavia. Nor is she disciplined enough…
“Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.”: Bill Shankly. The one-time Liverpool manager’s quip plays out on a far more profound level in The Keeper. And while football plays a significant role in Marcus H. Rosenmüller’s drama, it’s certainly not its sole…
Ricardo Darín (Wild Tales) and Mercedes Morán (The Motorcycle Diaries) play Marcos and Ana in An Unexpected Love. The long-married couple are led to question the true meaning of love after becoming empty-nesters. Their son Luciano (Andres Gil) is leaving his Argentine homeland to study abroad. When Marcos and Ana arrive at the airport to…
After is a film that knows its audience and delivers to it. Tessa Young (Josephine Langford) is a dedicated student and dutiful daughter to her single mother Carol (Selma Blair). She’s a loyal girlfriend to her high school sweetheart Noah (Dylan Arnold). When Noah and Carol drop off Tessa for her first year of college,…
What can I say about The French Photographer by Natasha Lester that hasn’t already been said? Natasha goes from strength to strength, delivering old fans and new immensely engaging stories one after another. I don’t know how she does it (although if you check her blog, she shares a lot of her process)! Here’s the…
Movies about weddings, with all their inherent potential for high drama and comedy, are a popular choice for both filmmakers and audiences. Top Wedding, directed by Wayne Blair (The Sapphires), should prove a crowd-pleaser in this country although whether it will translate to overseas audiences will be interesting to watch. Marketed as a romantic comedy,…
Experienced director James Kent (Testament of Youth) brings Rhidian Brook’s well-received novel to the big screen in The Aftermath. And while fans of the book will notice some glaring differences, the film nonetheless goes to some interesting places. Brook himself headed the scriptwriting team, collaborating with Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse to beef up the…
Director Barry Jenkins proves Moonlight was no fluke with another outstanding piece of filmmaking in If Beale Street Could Talk. This gorgeous, multi-facted film takes a seemingly simple story and builds it into something much more. Jenkins fits together basically three aspects of the black experience in America. First he examines the importance of family….
At First Light is a minimalist sci-fi movie from Canada. Although it offers a rather disappointing outcome and they could have done more with the powers Alex (Stefanie Scott) has at a certain moment, it’s still worth watching. For the umpteenth time, it’s clear you don’t need a huge budget to make a fascinating film….
Lady Bird and the Fox by Kim Kelly is one of the best historical fiction titles I’ve read in a long time, a claim boosted by the familiarity I felt with the setting (not far from where I grew up). This is the blurb: It’s 1868 and the gold rush is spreading across the wild…
