drama – Page 38 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Personal Shopper

Personal Shopper (2016)
Written & Directed by Olivier Assayas

When they were children, Maureen and her twin brother Lewis made a promise that whichever one died first would send a message from the afterlife. Now in her mid-twenties, Maureen has come to France where her brother succumbed to their shared genetic heart condition. She works a day job as the personal shopper for a demanding model named Kyra and spends her evenings in Lewis’ old house hoping to make contact with him. One night a presence makes itself known to her, something angry and raging. The following morning she begins to receive text messages on her phone from a blocked number. The person on the other end of the phone appears to know a lot about Maureen, and she begins to lose her grip on her insanity.

Movie Review – Certain Women

Certain Women (2016)
Written & Directed by Kelly Reichardt

I was drawn the short story form in college. I think what excited me about this mode of storytelling was the urgency of the moment and way this specific event reveals a profound depth to a character. Authors I enjoyed when first discovering the short story were Raymond Carver, Andre Dubus, Steven Millhauser, among others. Today I still get no better satisfaction than from a well crafted short story collection, leaning more into fantastical writers of horror and magic-realism. However, if the stories don’t center on character, then they lose any potential magic. Filmmaker Kelly Reichardt loved the short stories of writer Maile Meloy and has taken three of them to weave into a meditation on a variety of women in complicated situations.

Movie Review – Jackie

Jackie (2016)
Written by Noah Oppenheim
Directed by Pablo Larrain

Jack was the third person Jackie had lost during her marriage. Two children, one stillborn and another passing two days after birth marked her journey to this ultimate tragedy, the one death that would resonantly define Jacqueline Kennedy for the remainder of her life. In this unique biopic, we follow the first lady through the four days after her husband was assassinated, focusing on her inner turmoil and the decisions around how she would send her husband off into the collective memory of America. There was a huge chance this film would diverge into empty melodrama; however, director Pablo Larrain chooses to not shy away from the darker, angrier aspects of this moment in Jackie’s life.

Movie Review – My Life as a Zucchini

My Life as a Zucchini (2016)
Written by Céline Sciamma (with contributions from Germano Zullo, Claude Barras, & Morgan Navarro)
Directed by Claude Barras

Icare, nicknamed Zucchini by his mother, lives in the wake of his father’s abandonment of the family. She has taken to binge drinking to self-medicate her increasing depression. Things get bad at home and Zucchini is picked up by a police officer, Raymond, who has deep empathy for the rough situation the boy is in. He delivers him to an orphanage where Zucchini meets kids who have ended up in this place due to parents being deported, arrested, succumbing to drug addiction, and physically abusing them. Despite their hardships, they form a makeshift family and learn how to feel empathy for each other and recognize the differences and strengths of each other.

Movie Review – Things to Come

Things to Come (2016)
Written & Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve

What we expect is not what we will get. This is a lesson for both the protagonist Nathalie and the audience. Life unfolds with surprises that are not necessarily earth-shaking but create ripples out through your day to day choices. After twenty-five years of marriage, Nathalie learns her husband is having an affair, and it’s decided with little bombast that they are divorcing. In the year that follows she has to deal with a mother that has severe depression and anxiety, her daughter gives birth to the first grandchild of the family, she struggles with her career as a philosophy professor, and reconnects with a former student.

Movie Review – Aquarius

Aquarius (2016)
Written & Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho

In 1980, Clara had survived breast cancer and celebrates her aunt’s birthday with her family in her home in the Aquarius apartment building. Her home in Recife, Brazil overlooks the beautiful beach, and she feels at peace with her husband, her children, and this renewed life she has having conquered cancer. Over thirty years later, she is a widow, still living in the same apartment with only her housekeeper as a regular companion. A developing company is attempting to buy Clara out so they can demolish the building and construct office high rises. Clara refuses and has become the only resident left in the Aquarius. We follow the aging woman for the next few months as the company, who already owns the remaining apartments, tries to drive her out and how Clara reflects on her life.

Movie Review – Elle

Elle (2016)
Written by David Birke and Philippe Djan
Directed by Paul Verhoeven

Elle is a deceptively simple film, jolting its audience by opening on the ending of a brutal assault and rape inside the home of Michele, an upper middle class older single woman. The rapist, his face covered in a ski mask, flees and Michele with almost mechanical automaticity takes a bath, puts makeup over her black eye, and goes about her day and the next with no reaction. It’s only the following evening at dinner with friends and her ex-husband that she casually reveals, trying to laugh it off, that she was raped. The viewer is meant to be unsettled by how cold Michele is through all of this with her friends and family acting as our stand-ins, utterly shocked at what happened.

My Favorite Bill Murray Films

Friday, June 14th marks the release date of Bill Murray’s newest film, The Dead Don’t Die, a deadpan zombie comedy directed by indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. That got me thinking about my favorite Bill Murray films and thus brings us to this list. As you’ll see I’m a bigger fan of the later Murray films, not so much his output in the 1980s. Without further discussion, here are my favorite Murray movies.

Movie Review – Ixcanul

Ixcanul (2015)
Written & Directed by Jayro Bustamante

It’s a deceptively told and shot tale, much like the camera pushing through the coffee plants, quietly and slowly, revealing secrets about our protagonist. Ixcanul is the story of Maria, a young woman, who is a Kaqchikel Mayan living the volcanic soil hills of Guatemala. She has been promised to Ignacio, the coffee plantation foreman for whom her father works. She secretly meets with Pepe, one of the workers, closer to her age and eventually gives up her virginity to him. Pepe half-heartedly promises to bring Maria along with him when he begins the daunting trek to cross the United States border. Of course, he slips away in the night, leaving Maria with a growing burden that will derail her parents’ plans for her.

Movie Review – Son of Saul

Son of Saul (2015)
Written & Directed by László Nemes

In the midst of the obscene and the profane does it make sense to eke out some small piece of the sacred? What value do rituals and beliefs have when confronted when the horrific abomination of humanity’s darkest hour? Do we need to shield these artifacts of faith, these dying flames from decimation? First-time feature director László Nemes chooses to film the story with an impressionistic style, almost every single scene so tightly focused on Saul, a Hungarian Jew imprisoned at Auschwitz. The background is nearly abstracted in nearly every scene, our protagonist being shoved along through a seemingly never-ending series of atrocities against humanity. Saul reaches out clinging to a practically useless ritual as a means to disconnect from what is happening around and to him.