Category: 2021

REVIEW: ‘Spencer’ is a master class character study

Diana, Princess of Wales, has been portrayed on screen for decades, in everything from TV movies to the critically acclaimed series “The Crown.”

Perhaps no film has featured a portrayal as intimate and powerful as the one in “Spencer,” though.

Kristen Stewart stars as Princess Diana, who’s joining the rest of the British Royal Family in Norfolk at the Sandringham Estate for the holidays in 1991. The film follows Diana closely, from Christmas Eve through Boxing Day, showcasing her strained relationship with the rest of her family, her struggles with mental health and commitment to be a strong parent for her sons.

Where “Spencer” differs from other biopics about Princess Diana and other films about the royals is the hyper-focus. The movie centers nearly exclusively on Diana, and what she has to go through.

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REVIEW: ‘Belfast’ is a relatable, enjoyable black and white feature

The beginnings of the Northern Ireland Conflict are shown at a humble, micro-level, through the eyes of a young boy in this new film from Kenneth Brannagh.

The film is somewhat autobiographical, as Brannagh, who wrote and directed, grew up in Belfast, before his family relocated as the situation was heating up. The movie is told from the perspective of Buddy (Jude Hill), who lives with his family, which includes brother Will (Lewis McAskie), mother (Caitriona Balfe) and father (Jamie Dornan).

While his mother is always present, his father is mostly home just on the weekends, as he works as a contractor in England. The work situation comes into play heavily during the movie, as Buddy’s father sees moving the whole family to England as a good option with tensions heating in Northern Ireland.

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REVIEW: ‘Harder they Fall’ is full of western fun

Those who loved the scene in Django Unchained where a shootout had a 2Pac song playing over it should find a lot of enjoyment in this Netflix feature.

The protagonist of “They Fall” is Nat Love (Jonathan Majors), an outlaw who saw his parents killed in front of him as a young boy. Since then, he’s made it a priority to take out the people responsible, and by the time the movie gets underway, there’s just one left.

That individual is the dangerous criminal Rufus Buck (Idris Elba), who at the beginning of the film is imprisoned. However, during a train stick-up, Rufus is released. With news of Buck’s release spreading, Nat decides to go after the criminal and his gang with a group of outlaws he’s friends with.

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REVIEW: ‘CODA’ delivers with humor and plenty of heart

Sometimes a movie comes along and reinvigerates a person’s appreciation for a genre.

That’s what “CODA” has done for coming of age/teen drama films.

The title of the movie is an acryonym, meaning Child of Deaf Adults. The main character is Ruby (Emilia Jones), a teenager whose parents Frank (Troy Kotsur) Jackie (Marlee Matlin), as well as her brother Leo (Daniel Durant) are all deaf. On top of attending school, Ruby helps in the family fishing business, working on the boat and acting as a sign language interpretor for sales.

During her time at home, Ruby is a music lover and she expresses this on the boat with her singing. This inspires her to take up choir in her senior year of high school, where the film picks up. The movie then follows how she has to balance her job and her singing lessons, as well as her family’s reaction to her doing something they can’t enjoy or enage with.

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REVIEW: ‘Eternals’ is a low grade MCU entry

Director Chloé Zhao had had a great track record with 2017’s “The Rider” and last year’s “Nomadland,” the latter winning Academy Awards.

Unfortunately, her venture into the Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t as good.

This MCU entry features characters older than all of the heroes audiences have been introduced to since 2008. Those characters are the Eternals, a race of warriors with special powers created by a being known as Arishem. Their purpose is to protect life across the cosmos from dark creatures known as Deviants.

Their latest mission brought them to Earth at the dawn of humanity, where they defended mankind for centuries from Deviants across the planet. The movie picks up with the Eternals in the present day, living among humanity and waiting for future orders from Arishem. However, their now normal lives are upended when the Deviants, long thought defeated, come back.

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REVIEW: Quality is clear in ‘Titane’ but enjoyment can be modest

“Titane” is the French term for “titanium,” one of the strongest metals on Earth.

With that in consideration, the title “Titane” makes sense, as metal and strength are often tied to masculinity, which plays a major role in this feature.

The main character of the movie is Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), a young woman who works as an exotic dancer at a car show. Alexia seems mostly closed off, and has been so since she was a young girl, when a serious car accident resulted in her needing metal plates inserted.

As the first act reveals, though, Alexia has a dark hobby outside of her main dancing, job. This aspect of her life, as well as a sexual encounter she has one night after work, forces her to make a major change in her life, to the point where she has to assume a different identity. However, this action only leads to more complications.

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REVIEW: ‘Last Night in Soho’ sadly falters after strong start

Soho looks like a pretty fun place to visit in London, but if the main character in this movie is around, things might get a little to intense.

This film, directed and co-written by Edgar Wright, stars Thomasin McKenzie as Eloise. The young woman has recently moved from the country-side to a section of London to earn a degree in fashion. Immediately, Eloise finds herself fed up with her partying dorm roommate and decides to move into an apartment at an older building.

While it seems perfect at first, Eloise soon finds herself having visions of another young woman, named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), who lived in the same apartment and wanted to be a lounge singer during the 1960s. While the visions start off fascinating, they soon unveil a dark mystery from the past.

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REVIEW: ‘Antlers’ succeeds as a horror but let down by drama

It’s almost deer season in Minnesota, but those expecting a movie about hunting with “Antlers” should look elsewhere.

Instead this film is a horror about a mythical beast known as a Wendigo. The main character in “Antlers” is Julia (Keri Russell), an elementary school teacher who recently moved back to a rural Oregon town, where her brother is the sheriff.

Early on in the movie, Julia notices one of her students, Lucas (Jeremy Thomas) has been rather troubled. It turns out Lucas is having issues because his father was attacked in an abandoned factory recently by a shadowed figure and now appears to be changing into something monstrous.

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Halloween Adventures in B-Movie Horror 2021, Part 3

This year’s B-movie odyssey will come to a close with two niche horror genres.

One is a stylized Italian horror film, also known as a Giallo. The other is a shot on video, or SOV, movie, which were hyper low budget flicks often made with simpler cameras.

While both movies have quite a bit of blood shed, the two couldn’t be more different in terms of camera work.

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Halloween Adventures in B-Movie Horror 2021, Part 2

This edition of Adventures in B-Movie Horrors offers some throwbacks. On top of them being decades old, they also all feature things of a time gone by.

One of them takes inspiration from the classic “Frankenstein” story, another is a callback to 50s monster flicks and the third includes horror retellings of old fairy tales.

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