I have been a film critic for nearly 20 years and worked professionally, as a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association for the past 9 years. My favorite movie of all time is The Big Lebowski because it always feels new.
The illegal immigration drama No Man's Land has good intentions going for it. And that's about it. This story about a budding sports star who accidentally kills a Mexican child crossing the Mexico-Texas border, lacks the strength to carry such a weighty subject. The problem is achingly bland leading man Jake Allyn. Allyn captures an appropriately deer in the headlights manner for his character, Jackson, but that's about it.
Brothers by Blood is yet another in a long line of dreary, mopey crime movies. Not that crime movies should be sunny by any stretch. Rather, I just feel as if I suffer more of these dreary, sad, gray, grimy crime movies year after year after year and no one making them ever seems to find a way to liven up the proceedings. Brothers by Blood has a funereal pace that is the exact opposite of lively.
“She didn’t flinch.” That’s the reason that professional killer, Joe Doyle (Daniel Zovatto) gives to his mother (Cathy Moriarty) for why he didn’t kill a witness to a murder he committed. It’s based off of a superstition passed down to Joe from his father (Steven Bauer), himself a killer. Joe’s father once let a man go because that man, whom Dad was going to kill, didn’t flinch. To Joe’s dad, that meant that the man had something in him, something to live for.
A poignant time-shifting look at grief, loss and friendship, the new drama, Our Friend, is deeply moving. The film features star turns from Casey Affleck, Dakota Johnson and, in perhaps the most unexpected and nuanced performance from funnyman Jason Segal. Segal has done dramatic work before, he very well portrayed the loss of a father on the TV series How I Met Your Mother and, in 2017 he stood out playing legendarily troubled author David Foster Wallace in The End of the Tour.
In the first of what we can imagine will be a spate of movies involving lockdowns and the Coronavirus, HBO’s newest original film, Locked Down stars Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor. It’s London at the start of the pandemic lockdown. For those not aware, England’s lockdown was much more strict than here in America. Thus when married couple Linda and Paxton decided they were going to separate from each other, things got held up by the virus.
Outside the Wire stars Damson Idris as Lt Thomas ‘Harp’ Harper, a headstrong drone pilot. When a mission appears to be going sideways and a missile laden vehicle appears ready to wipe out an entire platoon, Harp violates orders and uses his drone weapons to eliminate the threat. However, the cost is the lives of two Marines that the platoon was attempting to save before the drone strike came. Harp killed two men in order to save 36 and that is all that saves him from a court martial for violating orders.
Love Sarah tells the story of three generations of women coming together to honor a late mother, daughter and best friend. In a masterful opening salvo, Love Sarah begins with a lovely series of scenes introducing Sarah as she is running late to the first day that she has access to the space that will become her very own bakery. In the course of 5 minutes we find that she has a daughter who loves her, a mother whom she is estranged from and a best friend who is to be her business partner.
The Wake of Light stars Rome Brooks as Mary, a woman from a small town who has remained in this town to take care of her ailing father. When she was six years old, Mary’s father, Stanley (William Lige Morgan), collapsed in a field from a stroke. Since that time, he’s been mostly unable to speak and has had minimal function other than walking from the bedroom to the kitchen to the living room on a day to day basis.