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Darkest Hour is one of those rare biopics that, for the most part, breaks free of formula to deliver an intriguing portrait of a complex and controversial figure. Similar to Phyllida Lloyd’s The Iron Lady, it pins its hopes on its central performance (by Gary Oldman at his chameleonic best). Whereas that film tried to … Continue reading
Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal’s latest collaboration (following The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty) is provocative, infuriating, emotionally exhausting, and entirely timely. Like those previous two films, it utilizes a gritty, no-punches-pulled docu-drama style to explore a brutal war zone — one within America’s own borders. The movie begins with the raid of an illegal … Continue reading
After 20 years of film-making defined by gritty Batman movies, twisty crime thrillers, and trippy science fiction, Christopher Nolan again re-invents himself with what is on the surface is a gripping war movie, but in actuality an exercise in heightened realism and a memorial to an event that ultimately shaped the world. For the uninitiated, … Continue reading
Martin Scorsese once said that the two most important things in his life were “my art and my religion.” Nowhere has that been more evident than in Silence, a passion-project in every sense, written and rewritten by Scorsese over the course of 25 years. An intense study on faith, the human condition, and what it … Continue reading
Writer, director, and actor Nate Parker’s ambitious telling of Nat Turner’s 1831 slave revolt is timely movie; it’s also a missed opportunity, a tepid tale hamstrung by Parker’s limited experience and the constraints of biopic filmmaking. The title itself is an audacious bit of trolling, seeing that it is shared by D.W. Griffith’s 1915 silent epic that … Continue reading
It’s almost impressive that director Timur Bekmambetov (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) had the gumption to remake a cinematic icon. Unfortunately, that’s the extent of his daring. He opts to play it safe and more than a little toothless with the godfather of Biblical epics, rather than going for broke with a more stylized interpretation. As a result, there’s not of … Continue reading
Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s (Birdman) fact-based frontier revenge saga The Revenant has an unnerving way of lodging itself in the back of one’s mind for days. Equal parts beautiful and brutal, it’s easily one of the most unsettling films of the past few years. It’s also one of the best. Its setting is a particularly harsh time … Continue reading
Ron Howard’s latest may strengthen the clichéd argument that “truth is stranger than fiction”, but it also suggests that it is often more boring, too. Howard and screenwriter Charles Leavitt half-heartedly adapt Nathaniel Philbrick’s novel of the same name, itself a fictionalized account of the true story of the ill-fated whaling ship Essex, the inspiration for Herman … Continue reading
A disarmingly effective blend of “a night on the run” thriller and historical/political drama, ’71 is one of those rare movies that catches viewers almost completely off-guard and leaves the rattled to the core. Writer Gregory Burke and director Yann Demange, both television veterans making their feature film debut, stick with the notion that less is more and … Continue reading
Believe it or not, the pseudo-sequel 300: Rise of an Empire manages to one-up its predecessor, in the sense that it’s even more gratuitous, over-the-top, and fetishistic than Zack Snyder’s stylistic adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the 300 Spartan warriors who held an invading Persian army of thousands at bay at the Battle … Continue reading
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