Film & Movie Archives
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THE PHOTOGRAPH
Mae Morton (Issa Rae) is a museum curator grappling with the death of her estranged mother, a famed photographer who leaves her daughter a letter explaining her journey. The letter leaves Mae unsure of how to proceed, until she connects with journalist Michael Block (Lakeith Stanfield), who is working on his own story about Mae’s mom. The story travels back and forth from present to past in a languorous mode, this is a film, not a movie. The film’s coloring takes on rich neutral tones, which allow the viewer to settle into a touching tale of love – between mother and daughter, romantic love, new love and being in love…
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HARLEY QUINN: BIRDS OF PREY
Then we have the Birds of Prey aspect: Rosie Perez plays detective Renee Montoya who’s trying to solve a mob hit case involving a missing diamond, in which Harley’s gotten embroiled. The Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is seeking revenge for her family also connected to the diamond. Black Canary’s (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) a night club singer for bad guy Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor) who mistakenly gets further involved in her boss’s goings on than she wants, after taking pity on Harley and helping her out of a jam. Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco ) a pick pocket kid from the hood, becomes a target once she picks the wrong pocket and…
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DOWNHILL (Sundance 2020 Premiere)
Is Downhill as good as the original? No, of course not. Although, I do remember there being a number of unnecessarily slow, extraneous scenes in “Force Majeure”, so co-directors and writers Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (Academy Award winners for The Descendants which they co-wrote with Alexander Payne) do create a tighter script in “Downhill”; yet the movie is also missing some of the subtleties of things farther under the surface, which foreign films seem to capture so well.
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SHIRLEY (Sundance 2020 Premiere)
The lighting & coloring of the film adds an atmosphere of unpredictability. The second lead Rose (Odessa Young) imbues her character with an off kilter sensuality; and of course Elisabeth Moss is just crazy watchable in anything and everything, remember she was the only saving grace of “The Kitchen”. Despite these favorable things, on the whole, I’m not crazy about SHIRLEY, as it takes too long to build to a dissatisfying ending.
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THE GO-GO’S (Sundance 2020 Premiere)
Director Alison Ellwood handles the interviews, pacing, images, 80s nostalgia deftly, but she doesn’t reinvent the wheel. There’s a standard template for rock-band disintegration and the Go-Go’s story fits within a basic music-doc rulebook, but that makes it no less fun. There’s nothing I love better than a tale of rising beyond one’s wildest dreams, peaking, then taking that terrible tumble, only to learn lessons and find your footing again.
