Matthew Liedke

REVIEW: Angelina Jolie is at her absolute best in ‘Maria’

For the third time in a decade, director Pablo Larraín has helmed a biographical film about a complex woman, and like the other two, it’s one of the year’s best.

Larraín previously directed 2016’s “Jackie” about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and 2021’s “Spencer” which centered on Princess Diana. His latest is about the opera singer Maria Callas (Angelina Jolie), though it takes place mainly after her illustrious career.

The movie focuses on the last week of the singer’s life, and explores how she was reflective of a career that she lost. Over time, her voice began to fail her, which caused her to leave her profession, and later her health began declining as well. The film is about the culmination of this, with her still at times trying to sing, while looking at the past and dealing with health issues.

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REVIEW: ‘Hard Truths’ has stirring drama but scope is limited

“Hard Truths” is a title that works for this movie. Others could have been “Mean Truths,” “Pessimistic Truths” or “Negative Truths.”

That’s because the main character in this film, Pansy Deacon (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), is dealing with depression, resentment and grief, which has manifested in aggression. Pansy is often in a state of frustration or anger, and it results in outbursts toward both family and strangers alike.

Much of this stems from conflicted feelings toward her late mother. This has caused a strain in her marriage to her husband Curtley (David Webber) and relationship with her son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett). The one person she still manages to confide in usually is her sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin).

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REVIEW: Gere lifts Schrader’s middling drama ‘Oh, Canada’

The film may be named “Oh, Canada,” but a great deal of the drama in this takes place south of that nation’s border.

“Oh Canada,” from director Paul Schrader, centers on documentary filmmaker and professor Leo Fife (Richard Gere), an American who moved to Canada to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War. The film picks up with Leo, now a terminal cancer patient, being interviewed by a former student.

Now a documentary filmmaker himself, Malcolm (Michael Imperioli), is interviewing Leo for a movie about the man’s decision to avoid Vietnam and his award-winning film career. However, as Leo begins to reflect on his personal life as he is asked about various points in his past.

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REVIEW: ‘The Piano Lesson’ is a well-acted but imperfect adaptation

As someone not familiar with the source material, I can’t say I at all expected a ghostly haunting in this period piece drama.

Based on a 1987 stage play with the same name, “The Piano Lesson” centers on the Charles family. John David Washington stars as Boy Willie Charles, a young man from Mississippi who’s traveled to Pittsburgh to pick up his family’s piano and sell it. His goal is to use the money to purchase the farm where his ancestors were enslaved and have his own land.

His sister Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler), though, is opposed to the sale, noting its importance to their family’s legacy and history. The two remain at odds through the film, and as tensions rise, eerie things start happening.

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REVIEW: ‘Babygirl’ is Lifetime Channel fodder with a bigger budget

Director Halina Reijn certainly isn’t creating a good track record with me.

In 2024, Reijn followed up her 2022 flick “Bodies Bodies Bodies” with an erotic thriller, “Babygirl.” The movie stars Nicole Kidman as the CEO of a major company that she built herself who has a seemingly good life with a husband (Antonio Banderas) and two kids.

However, she is unsatisfied in her sex life, which has resulted in her marriage becoming stagnant. The movie picks up with her meeting a young man named Samuel (Harris Dickinson), an intern at her company who catches her eye. Eventually, through acts of seduction from Samuel, the two begin an affair.

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REVIEW: ‘Room Next Door’ is a mixed confrontation of mortality

Sometimes a film can have a lot of interesting things to say, but the way it says it be muddled.

“The Room Next Door” from director Pedro Almodovar is such a movie. It stars Julianne Moore as an author named Ingrid who reconnects with an estranged friend and former colleague. That individual is Martha (Tilda Swinton), who’s suffering from a terminal cancer.

As Ingrid visits Martha in the hospital and rebuilds their friendship, she learns that the woman wants to end her life on her own terms peacefully. Martha then asks Ingrid if she will keep her company in her final days at a vacation home, where Moore’s character can stay in the titular room next door.

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REVIEW: Filming method makes ‘Nickel Boys’ a let down

Maybe RaMell Ross films just aren’t my thing.

After helming the Academy Award-nominated documentary “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” in 2018, Ross has directed a narrative feature. His latest film, “Nickel Boys,” is an adaptation of a book with the same name that itself was inspired by a real reform school.

Set in the 1960s, “Nickel Boys” centers on two black teen boys, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson). Both from different backgrounds, each boy finds themselves brought to a rough reform school called Nickel Academy. There the two become friends and try to make it through the system.

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REVIEW: ‘Sing Sing’ mostly succeeds with authentic emotion

Incarceration is meant to be rehabilitative, and stories of inmates finding resources to do just that are often compelling, as this film shows.

The movie is set at the real correctional facility Sing Sing in New York state, and centers on the prison’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts program. The RTA allows inmates to participate in a theater group where they’re able to put on various stage plays throughout the year.

John “Divine G” Whitfield (Colman Domingo), is imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, but has dedicated himself to working in the program as both an actor and writer. The film picks up with him and other inmates preparing to take on something new in the form of a comedy play, rather than a drama.

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REVIEW: ‘Emilia Perez’ is an awful, misguided Netflix entry

Wow, we got two crime drama musicals in 2024, and the one with the comic book clown was better.

Zoe Saldaña stars in “Emilia Perez” as Rita, a lawyer working for a defense attorney firm who’s unsatisfied with her career. After a recent major case, she gets a call from Juan Del Monte, the head of a cartel who is seeking her assistance. The kingpin is seeking to transition and wants gender-affirming care, before starting a new life and faking her death.

The path to becoming who she wants to be, Emilia Perez (Karla Sofia Gascon), is one Rita decides to help manage and plot in return for a big payout. But even once everything is set up, the future remains complicated for the two characters. Continue reading “REVIEW: ‘Emilia Perez’ is an awful, misguided Netflix entry”

REVIEW: ‘The Substance’ shocks, thrills and satirizes

French women are on a roll with body horror films lately with Julia Ducournau helming “Titane” in 2021 and CoralIe Fargeat crafting this flick in 2024.

The newer picture, “The Substance,” centers on actress and aerobics instructor Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore). Once a major player in the Hollywood scene, Sparkle’s career has faded a bit over the years and things get worse when she finds out her time as host of a morning aerobics show is coming to an end.

Through a series of events, though, she comes in possession of a serum that claims to create a younger, more beautiful version of the person she is. She ends up taking it and it works, creating another version of herself to live through (Margaret Qualley). However, as time goes on, the needed balance between her two selves begins to deteriorate.

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