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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Beasts of No Nation is a new feature from Cary Fukunaga (True Detective), starring the always stellar Idris Elba. Beasts is an adaptation of a book by the same name by Uzodinma Iweala. Beasts follows an orphaned child soldier fighting with guerilla soldiers in an unnamed African country. This film was acquired by Netflix and was released this October simultaneously in theaters and on Netflix. Beasts premiered at the Venice Film Festival and the Telluride Film Festival. You can stream it on Netflix now! Make no mistake, Beasts is a brutal film. I highly recommend it, but it's no picnic. If you can, see it on the big screen. It's absolutely worth it. 5/5 This is Where I Leave You is an ensemble family-dramedy about a not-very jewish family whose mother (Jane Fonda) makes her grown children sit shiva after the death of their father. This movie is decent enough. It's not really much to write home about but its was enjoyable. The few good laughs really made me laugh. The stellar cast includes Adam Driver, Jason Bateman, Jane Fonda, Connie Britton, and Tina Fey. 3.5/5 Southpaw is a wholly predictable boxing picture in three acts that can be described in essence as a movie with a training montage set to an EMINEM song. This movie pulls out all the tropes. You've got the fall from grace, the struggle for redemption, and the comeback. Roll credits. Gyllenhaal is solid as the prizefighter, and widowed father. 2/5 Tig is a new documentary on Netflix about comedian Tig Notaro. The documentary focuses on Tig's career boost following a legendary set about being diagnosed with cancer, at Largo in LA, that unexpectedly went viral over night thanks to a tweet from Louis CK. (The set is fantastic and you can hear it as an album called "Live") This is an intimate film that touches on the sudden loss of her mother, her battle with cancer and double mastectomy, her work as a comic coming back from such a huge personal adversities, her blossoming love with her partner Stephanie, and their journey to become a parents. 4/5 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 It's impossible to say how many times I have seen Harold and Maude. When I worked at a video store I often put it on repeat during 8 hour shifts. It's my all time favorite and I have to admit that there's nothing that notable about the aesthetic of the filmmaking. For me, this is all heart and soul. My love goes back much further than the video store. It was a favorite as a kid, albeit hard to come by. This is the story of a May-September type, unusual relationship between morbid and depressed young Harold and the much much older fun-loving, eccentric Maude. This movie is super quirky and all around delightful. 5/5 |
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