Alan Rapp

The Boys in the Boat

  • Title: The Boys in the Boat
  • IMDb: link

The Boys in the Boat

As director, George Clooney has tackled period pieces before (see Leatherheads, The Monuments Men, and the terrific Good Night, and Good Luck). This time Clooney follows the journey of Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) who joins the University of Washington junior varsity rowing team not out of any love for the sport but as a way to help cover his tuition during the lean years of the Great Depression. Rowing, or crew, isn’t the most cinematic of sports, but the screenplay by Mark L. Smith which adapts Daniel James Brown’s non-fiction novel, plays on the intense conditioning, hard work, and teamwork of the sport with the JV crew the underdog team at a university of underdogs with much to prove to themselves and others.

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Wonka

  • Title: Wonka
  • IMDb: link

Wonka

The attempt to tell the origin story for Roald Dahl‘s famous eccentric chocolatier is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand we get Timothée Chalamet as the still naive young man seeking his fortune creating chocolate for the world to enjoy which provides the heart of the film. There’s enough here that we can see the possibility of this version of Willy Wonka growing into the far more gruff character we see played by Gene Wilder. On the other hand we’re left with a script that turns out to have little to do with chocolate and more to do with crazy antics, involving bumbling bad guys, really only suited for small children.

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