Every once in a while something really astonishing and fresh comes along and Thunder Road is both astonishing and fresh. It blew my mind! Jim Cummings deserves every accolade and more for this wonderful little micro-budget indie film. I'm a sucker for a good movie about mental illness. If you add in an element about parent/child bonds, family, or parenting alone then you've got me and I'll watch that movie. Thunder Road tackles loss, addiction, mental illness, masculinity, family bonds, and the stress of being a single-working parent, and yet somehow is a hilarious comedy. And it does all this without ever laughing at Officer Jim's mental breakdown. This film is filled with earnest love and pain and it balances all the feels and tackles tricky issues effortlessly. This is not a cringe comedy, it's all heart and soul. 5/5 MUST SEE! |
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Borealis is an enjoyable Canadian road dramedy about a gambling addict, single-father (Jonas Chernick) who takes his teenage, pot smoking daughter (Joey King) from Winnipeg to Churchill to see the Northern Lights before she goes completely blind. Of course Jonah, the father, owes money and so he's also on the lam with two gangsters (Kevin Pollack and Cle Bennett) hot on his tail. This is a delightful little Canadian film. King delivers as the daughter who is rapidly losing her vision. Chernick wrote and produced the film. This is the 5th collaboration between Chernick and director Sean Garrity. Ultimately, the film could have dispensed with the gambling debt/mob sub plot but truly, Pollack and Bennett are really enjoyable as Tubby and Brick. Give it a whirl. Support Canadian cinema. 4/5 I tend to shy away from biopics because of all the fictionalizing, romanticizing, and fabricating. Greetings from Tim Buckley is a solid biopic in that it preoccupies it's time by mainly focusing on one major event, the 1991 Greetings from Tim Buckley tribute concert at St Anna's Church in New York which marked son Jeff Buckley's first public performance in memory of the father he only met twice. Focusing on this one event dispels with unnecessarily dramatizing the back story and isolates the flashbacks to a fictionalized account of father Tim's philandering and wild ways. Penn Bagley holds his own, especially given that he sang live and Jeff's range and style are wide, tricky, and nuanced. 3/5 Right off the bat there are three excellent reasons to see Warrior. They are, in no particular order: Nick Nolte, Tom Hardy, and Joel Edgerton. Warrior is an excellent family drama about an estranged family comprised of two brothers, an AWOL but war hero Marine, an ex UFC fighter turned teacher, and their recovering alcoholic father. This is a very moving film about broken masculinities. This movie is really about the performances. Edgerton is phenomenal. He's one to watch for. I have always loved Nick Nolte. He's stellar here as the desperate, aging father. If you aren't already on the Tom Hardy train, get on! Also, check out Bronson, The Drop, and Mad Max: Fury Road. 4/5 I'm always up for a good biographical documentary, particularly about obscure, lesser known, often critically acclaimed outsiders artists. Those who though critically acclaimed, never really broke into the mainstream. The Harry Nilsson, Daniel Johnston, and Townes Van Zandt docs are fantastic. Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me is that kind of a doc, and the doc Big Star deserves. Now both deceased, there is a bit more attention paid to Alex Chilton's genius, and his lengthy and prolific career. There is also due respect to paid Chris Bell, as well as to the band's lasting influence and musical legacy. If you don't know Big Star, you aren't alone. Check this out. 5/5 Sid and Nancy (Alex Cox, UK, 1986) I'm a big Alex Cox fan. Repo Man and Straight to Hell are stellar little punk rock movies. Cox's Sid and Nancy, however, is more than that; it's a remarkable piece of cinema. Don't be mistaken, while based on real people and actual events, this is not really so much a bio-pic as a portrait of self-destruction. Cox did little research and fictionalizes quite a bit. The result is the raw and poignant story of young love through a drug and alcohol fuelled haze. Oldman and Webb are brilliant. 5/5 Amy is a new documentary about the late, great singer Amy Winehouse. This doc is comprised wholly of found footage, that is often set to off-screen interviews about Amy. There are no talking heads or experts in this film. These are the voices of Amy's friends, family including her father Mitch Winehouse, her ex-husband, and her a few colleagues including her former manager Nick Shymansky and producer Salaam Remi. The film focuses on Amy's rise to stardom, her short but impressive career, and her tumultuous personal life during those years. As such, it was a concise (at 2 hours and 8 minutes) portrait of the road to fame its subsequent path of destruction. It's about addiction, self-destruction, eating disorders, fame, talent, heart, and love. Along the way there are several impressive performances, though the documentary is not overly pre-occupied with performance footage. Amy is gut wrenching. I cried. 4/5 Cake is about a pill-popping woman with chronic pain, grieving her son, who becomes obsessed with the suicide of a woman in her support group. This is a really bleak film. It's pretty raw. Depressing isn't a bad thing. I think Aniston was pretty good. I like her here and there. She was also good in Friends with Money, Management, and The Good Girl. Adriana Barraza is fabulous as Silvana. Actually, everyone is good in this: Lucy Punch, Felicity Huffman and William H Macy, Chris Messina, Anna Kendrick... 3.5/5 Joe. Wow. So good. I'm not typically a Cage fan, but he's great when he's great. In Joe, he is great. Tye Sheridan. Wow, keep your eyes peeled. This kid is the real deal. Joe is his third film of, no doubt, many to come. You may have seen him in Mud (also stellar), and Tree of Life (again, stellar). I'm so pleased for David Gordon Green to come back to his Southern American Small Town thing after a strange journey through Franco/Rogen stoner comedies. If you caught Prince Avalanche, Joe capitalizes on the best part of that film here. That being, the one scene with the non-actor woman looking through the charred remains of her home. Joe is full of wonderful casting choices made up of non-actors. I'm so pleased that it seems Green is back where he left off with Undertow, which I though was a phenomenal film. Joe is about the friendship between a 15 yr old boy from an alcoholic/abusive home who works on a tree killing crew for an ex-con with a violent past. Joe's intense and quiet and brooding, and has a punch you in the guts kinda vibe overall. I loved it. 4.5/5 |
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