Category: drama

Movie Review – Lady Bird

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Lady Bird (2017)
Written & Directed by Greta Gerwig

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Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson is a high school senior living with wanderlust in the suburbs of Sacramento circa 2002. She has a strained relationship with her mother, Marion who is forced to play the bad guy while her father, Larry deals with issues of employment and finances in the background. Lady Bird is an incredibly strong personality with ambitions of attending one of the mid-tier Ivy League schools of the East Coast. She’s pointed in the direction of the theater when seeking out extracurriculars to add to her C.V. It’s doing theater that pushes her into her first complicated romantic relationship.

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Movie Review – The Florida Project

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The Florida Project (2017)
Written by Sean Baker & Chris Bergoch
Directed by Sean Baker

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Moonee is a six-year-old girl living in Kissimmee, Florida with her young mother, Hailey. The pair stays at the Magic Castle, a low rung motel where Moonee pals around with her friends Scooty, Dicky, and Jancy getting into tons of trouble The hotel manager, Bobby, tries to keep things in line but finds the girl and her mother to be incorrigible. The kids are desperate for fun over this long summer and discover it where they can. Hailey keeps her daughter in the dark about their money problems but finds the stress growing.

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Movie Review – The Disaster Artist

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The Disaster Artist (2017)
Written by Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber
Directed by James Franco

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Struggling actor Greg Sestero has a problem bringing out emotion in his performances. Then one night he witnesses Tommy Wiseau, a quiet man in his acting class delivers an embarrassingly over the top monologue from A Streetcar Named Desire. Greg and Tommy strike up a friendship that brings them to Los Angeles to pursue their dreams. Tommy becomes jealous as Greg gets a girlfriend, an agent, and acting parts while he struggles. This pushes Tommy to write the script for The Room which, against all the odds and logic, he produces and goes on to become a modern cult classic.

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Movie Review – The Levelling

The Levelling (2017)
Written & Directed by Hope Dickson Leach

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Clover is a veterinary student estranged from her father, Aubrey. She has returned to the family farm in Somerset Levels wetlands in the south west of England in the wake of her brother, Harry’s death. Clover can tell right away that her brother’s death was a suicide despite Aubrey’s insistence that this was just an accident with a gun in the bathroom. The farm has been in decay since a massive flood which the insurance company would not pay out damages for. As Clover seeks the truth about what drove Harry to kill himself, she finds the tension between she and Aubrey growing.

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Movie Review – Fanny and Alexander

Fanny and Alexander (1982)
Written & Directed by Ingmar Bergman

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At the start of the 20th century, the Ekdahl family are living a luxurious and free life. Helena is the matriarch of this clan, followed by three sons at various stages of life. Gustav is a boisterous restauranter, Oscar manages the theater Helena and her husband used to own, and Carl has fallen into ill repute as a result of a drink. The family is seen through the eyes of Oscar’s son Alexander during their last Christmas Eve as a complete unit, and then tragedy strikes. A series of rash decisions leaves Alexander and his sister Fanny in a dire situation and their family grieves while trying to find a way to reunite them all.

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Movie Review – Good Time

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Good Time (2017)
Written & Directed by Benny & Josh Safdie

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Connie Nikas is convinced that his brother, Nickie is just fine. This is despite the fact that Nickie is deaf in both ears and lacks some essential cognitive functions. Connie pulls Nickie from the program their grandmother enrolled him in. The young man has plans to rob a bank so he and his brother can run away from the city and be free of what he perceives as authority crushing them. However, many details are overlooked in this plan, and Nickie ends up caught and sent to Rikers Island. Connie spends the next day desperately manipulating, lying, and stealing to save Nickie.

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Movie Review – Super Dark Times

Super Dark Times (2017)
Written by Ben Collins & Luke Piotrowski
Directed by Kevin Phillips

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New York’s Hudson Valley in 1996 is the setting for this story of a deadly accident and the eventual breakdown of the teenagers who caused it. Zach and Josh are standard bored out of their mind teenagers, regularly unsupervised which allows them to get into a moderate amount of trouble. While hanging out with obnoxious classmate Daryl, the accident as mentioned above occurs and leaves the two friends scrambling. They fail to support each other, and as a result, the guilt slowly overtakes them leading to a horrifying climax.

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Movie Review – The Book of Henry

The Book of Henry (2017)
Written by Gregg Hurwitz
Directed by Colin Trevorrow

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Henry Carpenter is an 11-year-old boy living in the Hudson Valley who is practically perfect in every way. He wows his schoolteacher, his mom, and pretty much everyone he comes across. He has taken over managing the family’s money while his mother works part-time as a waitress and writes/illustrates children’s books. But Henry has also discovered a terrible secret about the girl next door. She is in an abusive situation, and Henry feels as if he is the only person who can do something about this. So Henry begins to devise a plan.

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Movie Review – Paint It Black

Paint It Black (2016)
Written by Ed Dougherty and Amber Tamblyn
Directed by Amber Tamblyn

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Set in the late 1980s, Paint It Black follows the story of Josie (Alia Shawkat) in the wake of her boyfriend’s unexpected suicide. These traumatic events put her at odds with his mother, Meredith, who believes Josie is responsible for what happened. The two women clash in an increasingly dark and strange series of encounters. Josie becomes more dependent on self-medication to cope which makes her increasingly vulnerable to Meredith’s manipulations.

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Movie Review – Brigsby Bear

Brigsby Bear (2017)
Written by Kevin Costello and Kyle Mooney
Directed by Dave McCary

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James (Kyle Mooney) spends the majority of his days absorbed in his favorite television series since childhood, Brigsby Bear. New episodes are delivered in supply drops to his family’s bunker in the desert, and each chapter imparts essential life lessons, particularly in academics. However, James spends almost too much time absorbed in the world of Brigsby, while his parents wish he would spend more of his effort on developing his mind. James has spent his entire life inside this bunker and only communicates with the outside world through his decades-old computer on the Brigsby forums. He even has a crush on the young lady companion of the title bear hero. Then a revelation occurs the upsets James’ entire understanding of his life and throws him into a world he doesn’t know how to fit into. Brigsby seems to the be the one thing that can keep him afloat and help him come to terms with what his life really means.

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