Drama

Cruella

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  • Title: Cruella
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Cruella movie review

I think if Disney made a movie about Hannibal Lecter it would be about how great a psychiatrist he was before he started indulging in other appetites. The ill-conceived, and lengthy, Cruella offers a look at the origins of the paper-thin villain from One Hundred and One Dalmatians who wanted to steal and murder dogs to skin for fur coats. Honestly, did anyone really need more than two-hours to explore extra layers and motivations of a character like Cruella De Vil?

The film is certainly stylish, and does offer its share of memorable moments over a 136-minute running time which also includes an unexpected The Devil Wears Prada plot about 70s fashion. Emma Stone stars as the orphan who would grow up to be a thief, a fashion designer, and eventually notorious celebrity known simply as Cruella. The screenplay also brings back Jasper (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser), the two henchmen from One Hundred and One Dalmatians, reimaging them as childhood friends and fellow thieves who she eventually takes for granted when Cruella’s ambitions get the better of her. And, because it is a Disney movie, we also get a pair of dogs with inspirationally long lifelines and their dog tricks.

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Shithouse

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  • Title: Shithouse
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Shithouse DVD reviewDespite it’s raunchy title, Shithouse is more college dramedy than raunchy comedy. The film pairs up the lonely college freshman Alex (Cooper Raiff, who also wrote and directed) with his Resident Advisor Maggie (Dylan Gelula). A relationship of convenience, the question Shithouse asks is whether or not these two lonely souls could be more to each other than transitory companions.

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Misbehaviour

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  • Title: Misbehaviour
  • IMDb: link

Misbehaviour movie reviewMisbehaviour looks back at both the 1970 Miss World competition in London and a handful of women involved with the women’s liberation movement who achieved overnight fame by invading the stage and disrupting the live broadcast. The script by Rebecca Frayn, who also directs, and Gaby Chiappe is a bit more nuanced than I expected. While the film certainly points out the numerous issues with the pageant objectifying the contestants for the public, it also showcases the good of Miss World offering opportunity to women all over the world and allowing both the panel’s judges and its audience the opportunity to consider beauty in different forms.

Keira Knightley stars as a college student and new member of the more disruptive chapter of the WLM (Jessie Buckley, Ruby Bentall, Lily Newmark, among others). The 1970 pageant was memorable both for the protest, which disrupted the live telecast, and for the fact that Miss Grenada (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) became the first black woman to win. Greg Kinnear is a bit hammy playing Bob Hope, who the organizers (Rhys Ifans and Keeley Hawes) recruit as this year’s celebrity. But, to be fair, he is playing Bob Hope.

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The Father

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  • Title: The Father
  • IMDb: link

The Father movie reviewThe Father offers a view at the world through the eyes of an 83 year-old man (Anthony Hopkins) fighting Alzheimer’s and dementia. Events and characters are jumbled due to Anthony’s (Hopkins) confusion about where he is living, and even the identity of the the people around him who are only sometimes recognizable. Events are often incomplete and shown out of order, to allow the audience to stumble through Anthony’s reality with him before enough is finally revealed to piece together more of his reality than he seems capable of fully understanding.

Olivia Colman, Olivia Williams, Mark Gatiss, Rufus Sewell, and Imogen Poots all come and go throughout the film as Anthony struggles to remember who each is as his frustration leads to anger and resentment. Hopkins is the glue which holds the film together, but each actor adds another level to the Anthony’s distorted world. Director Florian Zeller adapts his own award-winning play Le Père for the screen offering a heartbreaking account of one slowly loosing their grip on reality that is often soul crushing in its honest and bleak examination of dementia and how it affects an individual as well as those around him.

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The Mauritanian

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Mauritanian
  • IMDb: link

The Mauritanian movie reviewBased on the true experiences of Mohamedou Ould Salahi (Tahar Rahim) being held by the United States Government for years for suspected ties to 9/11, director Kevin Macdonald‘s film chronicles his stay in Guantanamo Bay and the work of his lawyers (Jodie Foster and Shailene Woodley) to earn his release, not because they believe he is innocent but they believe what happened to Salahi was unconstitutional.

The cast is stellar. We also get Benedict Cumberbatch as the prosecutor with personal ties to the case and Zachary Levi as a sort of shady government agent who doesn’t want the methods for extracting information revealed. Much of the film examine how hard it is to go up against the United States Government in court, especially when Federal Agencies have the power to redact and deny information. The film chooses to make Salahi’s innocence, and in some ways the character himself, of secondary importance over a legal argument that almost never sees the inside of a courtroom. It also relies on big shocking emotional reveals not unlike screenwriters call-out both the Government and the people of the United States for their frenzied reaction to 9/11.

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