Drama

Tim Burton’s “Big Eyes” and the Torture of Dishonesty

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There is a superficial idea championed by some movies that dishonesty sells.  Heist films like Hell or High Water or Ocean’s Eleven suggest that a caper can handsomely reward the protagonist, if it’s properly executed.  White lies can tell a person, “exactly what they need to hear” as a plot contrivance for furthering a character’s … Read more

“Train to Busan”: The Best Ethics Course Featuring Zombies

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You’d generally forgive a zombie movie for being shallow and uninventive, as long as the story generates the proper tone and mood.  Writer-director Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan deserves commendation for not only nailing the bleakness of and terror of a zombie apocalypse, but for infusing such a story with genuine heart, emotion, and intriguing … Read more

“Spartacus”: the Three-Headed Triumph of Douglas, Trumbo, and Kubrick

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The third essay in a year-long analysis of the films of Stanley Kubrick.  Check out the schedule and explanation here, where you can also find links to all the completed pieces. Introduction Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, starring Kirk Douglas and written by Dalton Trumbo, may be the best Swords-and-Sandals story ever put to film.  The film … Read more

“I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore” Announces Macon Blair as a Burgeoning Directorial Talent

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I Don’t Feel at Home in the World Anymore captures that peculiar modern feeling that the world is a frustrating and mean place – but that ordinary folks can stand up and push back, though sometimes with hilarious and awkward results.  Writer-director Macon Blair’s film contains bleak humor, affecting drama, and a bumbling crime story.  … Read more

Stanley Kubrick’s “Paths of Glory”, the Politically Powerful, and the Absurdity of War

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The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour.The paths of glory lead but to the grave. -Thomas Grey, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,1751 Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory is often celebrated as the director’s first true masterwork.  Adapting a novel of the … Read more

Verhoeven and Huppert Combine to Tell a Singular Story of Feminine Strength in “Elle”

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Paul Verhoeven’s Elle opens with a blank screen and the sickening sounds of sexual assault.  The first image of the film is of a cat, casually witnessing the rape.  Only after this introduction does Verhoeven confront the audience with the actual struggle:  a man clad in dark clothing and a ski mask, dominating an older woman and having his way with her.  Once he is gone, we’re introduced to Michèle Leblanc (Isabelle Huppert) wordlessly; she picks herself up, straightens her clothing, cleans up some broken glass, and then takes a bath.  The blood floats up from between her legs to color the bubbles with a crimson wisp.

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“The Founder” Allows the Spectator To Interpret the Life and Success of Ray Kroc

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It is practically impossible to create a biopic without passing judgment on some axis, but director John Lee Hancock comes pretty close to presenting an unbiased view of McDonald’s “founder” Ray Kroc in The Founder.  The film details the story of Kroc discovering the original McDonald’s restaurant, the brainchild of brothers Mac and Dick, and expanding the McDonald’s empire through an aggressive franchise model.  As McDonald’s restaurants pop up everywhere, Mac and Dick lose control of the endeavor, and Kroc eventually muscles the two away from the business.

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“Silence” and the Personal Perdurability of Faith

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Silence is vintage Martin Scorsese.  The master’s techniques are evident in practically every frame, and his return to a religious subject matter is both fascinating and complex.  Nearly three decades ago, The Last Temptation of Christ showed that Scorsese was capable of delivering a nuanced treatise on spirituality, and he has done the same with Silence.  These topics are seldom tackled by Scorsese, so we should count ourselves lucky when the director is inspired by a story such as Silence, which has been in pre-production in some form for the last 25 years or so.

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“Hidden Figures” Chips Away at Bigotry with Intelligence

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There are specific and powerful images throughout Hidden Figures, but none exemplify the central theme of Theodore Melfi’s film more than two shots of a piece of chalk held by the main character.  This pregnant extension of Katherine Goble’s (Taraji P. Henson) brilliant mind is both an invitation for her to prove herself as a black woman in a world of white men, but an implicit challenge by those same men that she could never be their equal.  Though they are not connected dramatically, her struggles and successes are thematically connected with the successes of her peers, so that each separate woman’s respective strides become reverberations of the others, until the resulting din screams a single poignant truth:  the quality and content of a person’s mind is not determined by race, gender, or anything else so superficial.

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Fantastic Catharsis in J. A. Bayona’s Phenomenal “A Monster Calls”

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In J.A. Bayona’s A Monster Calls, the director mixes the hyper-reality of the agonizing struggles of a young boy named Conor O’Malley with a vibrant fantasy world involving a titanic tree monster.  Like in Bayona’s previous feature El Orfanato (The Orphanage), reality and fantasy are blended together in fascinating ways, until it is not quite clear precisely what we are looking at.  Though certainly a daunting task, Bayona and his performers manage to tell an engaging coming-of-age story about grief, coping, and the power of storytelling.

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