Drama

In the Heights

/ / Home Video
  • Title: In the Heights
  • IMDb: link

Adapted from the stage musical, In the Heights follows the lives of several characters in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood. In a reverse of an immigrant chasing the American dream, our main character is a bodega owner (Anthony Ramos) saving his money to leave New York and return to the the Dominican Republic to restart his father’s beach-front business. Other characters include his crush (Melissa Barrera), Olga Merediz as the neighborhood’s matriarch, and the neighborhood’s brightest star (Leslie Grace) returning in failure from Stanford who can’t articulate her problems to her father (Jimmy Smits).

In the Heights is a story about dreamers. Each character is chasing a dream or trying to help others achieve their own. The eclectic neighborhood of Dominican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, and other nationalities is punctuated by vibrant musical numbers around dreams, love, and everyday life.

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Spencer

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Spencer
  • IMDb: link

Set at Christmas of 1991, Spencer offers a peek into the holiday with the Royal Family during a tumultuous time between Diana, Princess of Wales (Kristen Stewart), and her husband Prince Charles (Jack Farthing). With her husband’s affair and her marriage at a breaking point, Diana is forced into the traditions and expectations of the holiday which she begins fighting in her own way to try and avoid a death of one-thousand cuts.

The movie is most notable for the lovely performance of the fragile Diana feeling trapped on all sides and even haunted by Anne Boleyn (Amy Manson), whose similarities to her own situation have become a bit of an obsession. Stewart is perfect here in a role that requires a tremendous amount of vulnerability to carry a film with very little actual plot through until the end.

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King Richard

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: King Richard
  • IMDb: link

King Richard offers a different type of sports biopic with the focus not on the athlete, coach, or team, but on the father of a pair of promising young tennis players. The fairly conventional film showcases the unconventional path to tennis stardom Richard Williams (Will Smith) led his daughters Venus (Saniyya Sidney) and Serena (Demi Singleton) to while pissing off pretty much everyone in the tennis world.

Because of how early the film is set, ending on Venus’ professional debut (which doesn’t paint a flattering picture of her opponent Arantxa Sánchez Vicario played by Marcela Zacarias), and how little the Williams sisters played in junior tennis, the younger Serena draws the short straw here and we don’t get as much tennis as you may expect. What King Richard does offers is a character study of the often rigid Richard Williams and the environment that raised two tennis stars who would change the sport.

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Kung Fu – The Complete First Season

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Kung Fu – Season One
  • wiki: link

The CW’s reboot of Kung Fu casting Olivia Liang as Chinese-American Nicky Shen provided a solid 13 episode arc as Nicky discovers a destiny in a Chinese monastery of protecting sacred artifacts. Leaving, Nicky reengages (and discovers secrets about) her family as she returns to her home to California, while seeking to avenge the death of her mentor (Vanessa Kai) and putting her skills to use week to week in San Francisco helping those in need.

All episodes are collected on DVD and Blu-ray. The Blu-ray also includes digital copies of the episodes. Highlights of the First Season include the exploration of the motives of villains Kerwin Tan (Ludi Lin) and Zhilan (Yvonne Chapman), Althea’s (Shannon Dang) bachelorette party, Nicky’s search for her aunt, and the season finale big showdown between Nicky and Zhilan. 

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Belfast

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Belfast
  • IMDb: link

There’s a nostalgic feel to writer/director Kenneth Branagh‘s semi-autobiographical film about a young boy growing up in Belfast during the times of The Troubles as communities were torn apart by Protestant and Catholic sides over national rather than religious fervor. The lens which events are shown is the likable schoolboy Buddy (Jude Hill) who loves his home, neighborhood, and family despite the violence that rages around them to a point where soldiers deploy and barricades are erected.

Buddy’s family includes his mother (Caitriona Balfe), mostly absentee father (Jamie Dornan), older brother (Lewis McAskie), and grandparents (Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds). Despite the tumultuous setting, much of the movie centers around Buddy’s everyday life, his crush on a girl (Olive Tennant) at school, going to the movies with his family, and getting dragged into situations by an older neighborhood girl (Lara McDonnell) he isn’t ready for.

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