Drama

Little Women

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Little Women (2019)
  • IMDb: link

Little Women movie reviewGreta Gerwig becomes the latest to adapt Louisa May Alcott’s popular novel (over the years it has been adapted more than a dozen times to film and television as well as both a musical and opera). The semi-autobiographical tale follows the lives of the four March sisters (Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, and Eliza Scanlen) following the Civil War.

Saoirse Ronan gets the most screentime as the rebellious Jo, a writer with dreams and desires that don’t always fit the conventions of her time. Watson is perhaps underused as the elder and more conventional Meg, while Pugh sinks her teeth into the more complex Amy. Scanlen is put to good use as the tragic and talented Beth. And Timothée Chalamet smolders as the boy next door.

The film is divided into later years with Jo in New York and Amy in Paris with flashbacks to the family all living under the same roof. The structure allows Gerwig to highlight themes that repeat and keep coming back to the tight family unit even after tragedy and time have taken their toll on the March family.

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Uncut Gems

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Uncut Gems
  • IMDb: link

Uncut Gems movie reviewAs in 2017’s Good Time, the Safdie brothers offer a tale of a man whose world is crashing down on him. In Uncut Gems that man is jeweler, philanderer, and addicted gambler Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) whose life, in his opinion, is always just one-step away from the big score that can change everything. Howard has a dissatisfied wife (Idina Menzel) and kids, is sleeping with one of his employees (Julia Fox), owes markers all over town including to his brother-in-law (Eric Bogosian), bets any money he can get on sports, and has sunk much of his savings into an an uncut opal from Ethiopia. When his hero worship gets the best of him and he allows Kevin Garnett (playing himself) to hold onto the gem for a night, Howard’s life begins to unravel strand-by-strand.

Sandler’s Howard is the architect of his own failure. While I couldn’t find reason to root for or against his need to reach for one long shot after the other, Uncut Gems does offer an intriguing look at a man being crushed by his own bad choices. But, because I could never invest any emotion into the outcome of Howard’s various schemes, Uncut Gems effect on me was limited. Without a stake in success or failure, I simply watched events unfold with curiosity.

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Parasite

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

Parasite movie reviewA family of con artists living together a cramped semi-basement apartment set their sights on a wealthy and gullible family in writer/director Bong Joon Ho‘s Parasite. Ki-woo (Woo-sik Choi) is the first through the door as a tutor for the teenage daughter Da-hye (Ji-so Jung). Next comes his sister Ki-jeong (So-dam Park), as an art teacher and art therapist for the couple’s son (Hyun-jun Jung). Together the pair are able to replace the family’s driver with their father Ki-taek (Kang-ho Song) and the housekeeper (Jeong-eun Lee) with their mother (Hye-jin Jang) all while hiding the familial relationship behind the Parks’ (Sun-kyun Lee and Yeo-jeong Jo) new employees.

The insidious nature of the clan and their slow takeover of the household is fascinating to watch. What’s interesting, despite their lies and deceptions, each proves fairly good at their jobs. I won’t get into the film’s dark turn or reveal what happens in the film’s second-half other than to say the house of cards is threatened by a discovery deep in the heart of the Parks’ home in the dead of night leading to a climactic sequence of events playing out in the middle of a family celebration.

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Bombshell

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

Bombshell movie review Bombshell offers a matter-of-fact, but ultimately not all that illuminating, look at the sexual harassment at FOX News under Roger Ailes (John Lithgow). The film primarily focuses on three woman (Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, and Margot Robbie), only one of whom we see Ailes abuse his power to manipulate and harass (Robbie, in the film’s best, and most skin-crawling and heartbreaking, scene). Undercutting the film’s moral stance more than a little is the fact that the focus of the lawsuit that kicked-off the media storm that eventually led to Ailes departure was less about Gretchen Carlson (Kidman) being harassed and more about seeking revenge for her dismissal from the network due to creative differences.

While Theron gets far more screentime, Robbie steals the film as the naive Kayla Pospisil just starting out in the business who gets a harsh reality check at how things are done. Kate McKinnon has an intriguing role as her friend/lover whose balance of being a lesbian Democrat working at Fox News is actually far more interesting material than most of what is explored over the course of the film surrounding Ailes and the lawsuit. Lithgow is properly slimy as seedy Ailes who is incapable of admitting he’s done anything wrong.

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The Farewell

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Farewell
  • IMDb: link

The Farewell movie reviewBased on a true story, writer/director Lulu Wang‘s film showcases a major cultural difference between China and America in dealing with life-threatening illness. When the oldest member of the family (Shuzhen Zhao) is diagnosed with cancer in China, the family chooses not to reveal her condition. Instead, the family orchestrates a wedding as an excuse to bring the full family back to China. However, the gathering’s true purpose is to say farewell.

There’s a philosophical question at the base of the film that Wang refuses to loose herself in. While showcasing a very different view of medicine and death (even the doctors in China help the family to hide the old woman’s condition), Wang doesn’t attempt to argue one method is better than the other. Instead, the movie focuses on how Nai Nai’s (Zhao) condition, and the decision to hide her prognosis from her, effects the entire family – primarily her granddaughter Billi (Awkwafina) from America who isn’t brought over with her parents because her family fears her ability to keep the secret (but who comes anyway to spend time with the grandmother she loves).

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