Karyn Kusama captures Nicole Kidman as we’ve never seen her before in the edgy crime drama, Destroyer. Washed up, jaded and broken LAPD detective Erin Bell (Kidman) confronts her shady past when a dangerous foe from her undercover days sends an ominous message and opens up old wounds. The narrative is enigmatically split between Erin’s present…
Continue reading ➞ ‘Destroyer’ Review
Rupert Everett has been tirelessly trying to make The Happy Prince for the past ten years. He secured Colin Firth and Emily Watson early on, which helped in shopping his sharp script around to different studios. While waiting for finances to pull through, he mastered his brilliant cinematic performance by playing Oscar Wilde on stage for two…
Continue reading ➞ ‘The Happy Prince’ Review
This article was originally published on Film Threat (August 2014). Judy Greer makes her delightful and distinctive directorial debut with the star-studded offbeat comedy, A Happening of Monumental Proportions. Individual crises converge as a diverse cast of characters experience a variety of challenges. In one life-changing day, an illicit office affair is exposed, an overbearing boss…
Continue reading ➞ ‘A Happening of Monumental Proportions’ Review
This article was originally published on Film Threat (April 18, 2018). David and Nathan Zellner wrote, directed, and star in the unconventional and off-beat comedic Western, Damsel. This quirky film is an acquired taste. Viewers enter the theater expecting the unexpected, yet it still manages to be stranger than imagined. Parson Henry stumbles into his new…
Continue reading ➞ ‘Damsel’ Review
This article was originally published on Film Threat (April 18, 2018). The tragic tale of Frankenstein’s Monster is greatly known. There have been several adaptations of the creature’s misunderstood torment over the years. Haifaa Al-Mansour’s Mary Shelley offers a refreshing and relatable take on how the monster mirrors Mary’s (and her similar peers’) struggle. After learning the…
Continue reading ➞ ‘Mary Shelley’ Review
Ophelia is a female-driven re-imagining of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which instills strength and hope into the despairing ingenue that has spawned countless melancholic portrayals in various forms of art.
Leave No Trace tactfully tells an equally heartwarming and heartbreaking story of the unconditional love shared between Will (Ben Foster) and his 13-year-old daughter, Tom (Thomasin McKenzie). Foster and McKenzie deliver raw, tender, captivating and transcending performances. The bond between them isn’t only compelling, it is inspiring. It is immediately evident that the actors and characters…
Emma Thompson is going to be very busy this awards season. She delivers an extraordinarily brilliant, intensely moving, enchantingly witty, and remarkably vulnerable performance as High Court judge Fiona Maye in The Children Act. She is one of those rare compelling performers that allows an audience to simply enjoy watching her think. The usually stoic Maye is fittingly…
Continue reading ➞ ‘The Children Act’ Review: A child’s life is on the line
Malin’s life gains new meaning when he is abruptly plucked from his career as a Russian Literature professor at the University of Havana and unexpectedly tasked with a gut-wrenching new job in Un Traductor. He has been assigned to the children’s ward of a local hospital that is treating victims of Chernobyl’s nuclear disaster. Every night,…
Michael Pearce’s spellbinding debut feature, Beast, captures the audience’s attention from beginning to end. This riveting, intense, unsettling and surprisingly funny film consistently challenges the viewer’s perception of the charismatic and suspicious protagonists, Moll (Jessie Buckley) and Pascal (Johnny Flynn). These kooky kindred spirits are drawn together by an undeniably steamy magnetism. Moll and Pascal are…
Continue reading ➞ ‘Beast’ Review: A Chilling Tale of Love and Suspicion
