“People never make films about ordinary people who never do anything.” “They’re out there…” That first meta-statement comes from Naomi (Emily Browning), an Australian twentysomething with a work visa, a temp gig as an archivist’s assistant and the sort of youthful bloom that attracts both wanted and unwanted attention. The …
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Gary Oldman is one of the greatest actors on the planet – and he proves it again as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, director Joe Wright’s rip-roaring take on the celebrated Prime Minister’s first tumultuous month in office in May, 1940, when France and Belgium are a whisper away from …
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You can’t watch a frame of Jason Hall’s Thank You for Your Service, about Iraq war veterans suffering from PSTD, without believing the film’s intentions are honorable. Points for that, for sure. Yet as filmmaking – this is Hall’s feature directing debut – Thank You for Service seems too timid …
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If you’ve been to the movies any time over the last century, you’re familiar with men like Eric Marsh. They’re hard-ass guys, often stoic but capable of being sensitive and, in rare cases, prone to sentimentality. Their flaws and temper-flares are balanced out by their virtues: staunch professionalism, a salt-of-the-earth …
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Before you start yawning and think you’d rather die than sit through a dutiful, drowsy, ever-so-virtuous biopic about Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to hold a seat on the Supreme Court, get a grip. Marshall, directed with spiky humor and propulsive drive by Reginald Hudlin, is nothing like that. Drawn …
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