Drama

The Power of the Dog

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Power of the Dog
  • IMDb: link

Sometimes a movie just doesn’t work for you. I didn’t hate director Jane Champion‘s The Power of the Dog but I’ll admit to being underwhelmed by the critical darling so many are quick to praise. Yes, it has a strong performance by Benedict Cumberbatch and some lovely scenery but it’s also saddled with a predictable plot and a host of single-note characters whom I never became invested in.  In fact, on my first viewing, the film literally put me to sleep.

Our leads are Benedict Cumberbatch as rough-and-tumble rancher Phil Burbank (the mean one), Jesse Plemons as his more genteel brother George (the bland one), Kirsten Dunst as inn owner and George’s new wife Rose (the female one), and Kodi Smit-McPhee as Rose’s nearly full-grown son Peter (the creepy one). The plot mainly involves Phil acting horribly to everyone and the eventual fallout of that behavior. The payoff of which, for me, wasn’t worth the time spent to get there.

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That’ll Do, Nicolas Cage

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Pig
  • IMDb: link

Nicolas Cage stars as former chef turned hermit and truffle hunter who is pulled out of his seclusion when his pig is kidnapped. With the reluctant help of the supplier (Alex Wolff) to whom he was selling his truffles, Rob (Cage) begins a search for his missing pig (who, despite the love Rob obviously has for the pig, doesn’t appear to have a name).

Pig is something like John Wick or Taken with all of the violence taken out (okay, almost all of the violence). The film relies on Cage’s performance and the atmosphere provided from the visuals of cinematographer Patrick Scola in exploring both Rob’s wilderness experience and also the underbelly of big city restaurants. Pig glosses over some nagging plot questions and supplies a not-completely-satisfying ending, but that don’t detract too much from Rob and Amir’s (Wolff) unusual journey.

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Drive My Car

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Drive My Car
  • IMDb: link

Movies find you in interesting ways. Drive My Car is the film I’d been searching for through all of 2021, a true cinematic experience that enveloped me, taking me on a completely unexpected journey built on strong storytelling and great performances.

Adapting Haruki Murakami‘s short story, writer/director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi delivers a beautiful look at loss, moving on, and the unexpected relationships that form when you least expect them. Our main character is Yûsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a stage actor and director. The script spends more than a half-hour developing his relationship to his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima), including some shocking discoveries by Kafuku, which works as backstory for the main film still yet to come, but is still presented with such care it could easily have been fleshed out into its own film.

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Mass

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Mass
  • IMDb: link

Written and directed by Fran Kranz, Mass offers an intimate setting to delve into two families’ pain. Six years after a school shooting, the parents of two children involved agree to meet in the basement of a local church. On one side we have Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton as the parents of one of the victims and on the other Reed Birney and Ann Dowd as the parents of the shooter who also took his own life. Both couples are still wracked with pain and seeking answers to a brutal event that changed both families forever.

Mass is a film designed to put its four characters, and the audience, through the wringer as both sides work through their pain attempting to make sense of a senseless crime as the family of the victim and that of the perpetrator discover a shared pain.

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The Card Counter

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Card Counter
  • IMDb: link

Writer/director Paul Schrader examines the worlds of gambling and torture, which turn out to not be as mutually exclusive as you may think. In terms of gambling, The Card Counter doesn’t offer any new information or insight we haven’t seen presented before by movies like Rounders and 21.

What makes the movie unique is William Tell’s (Oscar Isaac) past as a disgraced MP who served 1o years in federal prison for torture in Abu Ghraib. His past causes him to befriend a troubled young man (Tye Sheridan), hoping to dissuade him from taking vengeance out on a man (Willem Dafoe) both characters have reason to hate. The relationship between the pair is a peculiar one as Will takes accepts a job on the poker tour to help his new friend who wants a completely different kind of assistance from him.

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