Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan star as New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor on the scent of a story centering around movie producer Harvey Weinstein‘s sexual and emotional abuse towards women his company, and Hollywood at large, were to willing to ignore and cover up for 25 years.
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More Shakespearean tragedy than super-hero film, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever wears its bruised heart on its sleeve mourning the loss of King T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman). Taking the idea of arrive late, leave early, to extreme, we open with the death of T’Challa (off-camera and from causes never fully explored). After glimpses of his funeral, we advance a full year to look in at the state of his family and his country in the world still mourning their lost hero.
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RRR is a revelation. The Telugu-action/drama is insane in all the best ways. Writer/director S.S. Rajamouli offers a fictional account on two historical figures (N.T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan) each fighting against the early Twentieth Century British imperialist control of India in their own way.
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The first feature from writer/director Eamon O’Rourke has some interesting ideas and a solid enough cast to explore them. Sadly, Asking for It never quite figures out what it wants to be or how to get there. While there are flashes of a revenge story following the previously-cheery Joey (Kiersey Clemons) joining a group of militant women (Alexandra Shipp, Vanessa Hudgens, Leslie Stratton, Radha Mitchell, Leyna Bloom, and Lisa Yaro) on an Indian reservation after being date raped by a longtime acquaintance (Casey Cott), Asking for It isn’t a revenge story. It also isn’t a character study or drama. It’s easy to focus on what the film isn’t, but much harder to nail down what Asking for It is.
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2016’s Hands of Stone is your typical biopic offering highlights of the life and career of professional boxer Roberto Durán (Edgar Ramírez). Writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz‘s by-the-numbers approach doesn’t offer much in the way of surprises or insight into Durán, but the film’s cast is solid beginning with a strong performance from Ramírez with some effective boxing sequences covering some of the biggest fights of the first-half of Durán’s career.
Robert De Niro as Durán’s trainer, Ana de Armas as his wife, and Usher in some inspired casting as Sugar Ray Leonard, highlight the supporting cast. De Niro is in grumpy old manger mode butting heads with his fighter for most of the film while Ana de Armas steals some scenes into Durán’s personal life. While at times the film seems to think of her as an afterthought, she’s stunning here often beautifully framed by cinematographer M.I. Littin-Menz.
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