Trapped is a new Bollywood arthouse offering starring the incredible Rajkummar Rao. Desperate to find suitable housing for himself and his fiancee, Shaurya takes an temporary apartment in a vacant highrise, only to have the broken door lock him in with no electricity or running water, no mode of communication, and no way out. Really this is a meditation on urban isolation and alienation, and it is riveting! You can find it on Amazon Prime. Rajkummar Rao is one of my favorite new actors, and one to watch for. 5/5 |
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Moonlight is exquisite. This astonishing film is the second feature from Barry Jenkins (Medicine 4 Melancholy, 2008). Told in 3 chapters Moonlight follows Chiron, a young gay man, from his schooldays in inner-city Miami, through high school, and into adulthood. Moonlight is based on the play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue by Tarell McCraney. This is the most beautiful, and important film of the year. I have never seen anything like this before. From the casting to the sound editing, Moonlight is stellar. Moonlight has won a lot of awards and I predict Oscars this coming February. Moolight is a MUST SEE! DO IT! 5/5 Beware the Slenderman is a very intense new documentary from HBO. It was was shot over the course of 18 months after a 12 year old girl was stabbed 19 times by her two classmates who were trying to please Slenderman. This film is terrifying. Not because "Slenderman" is scary, he's really just your average modern day boogie man; he's basic folklore. He's the Pied Piper... This film is terrifying because 1- teenage girls are just about the scariest creatures out there and 2- mental illness. This film gets 'real' very quickly. Beware the Slenderman follows the year long court case in which in would be determined if the two accused 12 year olds would be tried as adults or children. So, watching this as the mother of a teen girl I was simultaneously reminded I'm already somewhat living in a horror movie and that I would hate to see anything bad happen to my daughter or worse, because of her. Terror, indeed. Secondly, as a person with mental illness this documentary terrified me because of how we treat and deal with mental illness and criminality. This film sorta punched me in the guts in a way I was not expecting...at all. 5/5 Sonita is a very powerful documentary about a teenage girl living illegally as an Afghan refugee in Iran who is facing being sold into marriage. Instead, she breaks the law (women cannot sing) and she becomes a Hip Hop artist. Sonita's bravery is astonishing. I'm a big fan of Iranian cinema and this is no different. I'm a fan. This is an excellent documentary. Show your sons and daughters. 5/5 If you read my reviews you may have come to recognize that I gravitate towards what I describe as "quiet little films". Here's a lesser known fact about my tastes: I love Richard Gere. Gere is rarely in a quiet movie, he's often cast as bombastic upper-middle class, white-collar douchebags. [That said: Days of Heaven. Do it. 5/5] Time Out of Mind is another stellar, quiet, little film and Gere, going rather against type, is excellent. This is an American drama about an aging homeless man trying to pull his life back together. It follows Gere as he goes about his day trying to stay warm, get fed, find shelter, sleep without bothering anyone, and generally navigate the system. In no way does Time Out of Mind romanticize homelessness. However, at the end of the day, what we have here is another white, hetero, male perspective. As much as I love Gere, and he's wonderful here, this film could reveal so much more about homelessness if the protagonist was a trans youth, a teenage mother, or a veteran... you get the point. I'm in no way knocking the film. Not at all. It really works. 4/5 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 Anna Christie is based on the play by Eugene O'Neill about a young but bitter, alcoholic, former prostitute who quits the life, tracks down her estranged father, and moves onto his barge. After a while, they come upon 3 stranded sailors and Anna falls in love with one. Of course, her past torments her and so she wrestles with revealing her past to her father, and the sailor, Matt. In early Hollywood things were pretty lax until 1934 when the Hays Film Production code (film censorship) was implemented by Joseph Breen. The code feel apart in the mid 1950s and was replaced by the MPAA in the late 1960s. As a result, films before 1934 and between 1954-1968 often have darker, more adult subject matter. Anna Christie is pretty dark. Anna Christie was Greta Garbo's first talking picture, she starred in both this (English) version and the German language version, both in 1930. Her accent is a bit jarring, especially given that Anna is supposed to be from Minnesota. It's also very early talkie, and feels like one. Before subtitles became common place they used to shot multiple language versions of the same film for export. Most are lost but both the English and German versions of Anna Christie exist. 4/5 |
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