7 Best Movies To Watch After Milk (2008)
Ferrari
Adam Driver does insightful, searching work as auto legend Enzo Ferrari in the filmmaker's study of a pivotal year in his life. Michael Mann’s 21st-century work is, first and foremost, a cinema of feeling. When it comes to the details, he remains as much of a nerd as he was when he choreographed the thrilling terror of Heat’s climactic blowout. But Collateral, Miami Vice, and Blackhat pay special mind to the senses, to connection. It’s Colin Farrell and Gong Li finding a rare moment of joy as they dance to live music in Havana. It’s Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Tom Cruise taking in the stillness of daybreak on an L.A. train. It’s Chris Hemsworth and Tang Wei clinging to each other on a near-empty subway as they try and fail to block out grief for survival’s sake. In Ferrari, it’s Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz sitting across from each other, laying out what they need from each other in their business partnership and estranged marriage. But while Ferrari is unmistakably in conversation with Mann and his creative collaborators’ earlier work, it’s more emotionally reserved than much of his 21st-century filmography. While his John Dillinger picture Public Enemies is certainly a cousin (a period piece built on a specific period in the life of an iconic man), it’s as much about the time and place and the ensemble. Ferrari is, first and foremost, a character study. Continue Reading →
Priscilla
As daybreak bleeds from within the walls, Priscilla Presley (Cailee Spaeny) wakes up next to her husband, Elvis (Jacob Elordi). Her water’s broken and, as he calls for a car, she goes to the bathroom, where she applies the perfect fake eyelashes in silence. Continue Reading →
The Burial
Whenever a crowd pleasing movie hits theaters or streaming, people lament, “They don’t make ‘em like they used to.” Often, these people refer to middle-of-the-road movies from the 80s and 90s, the type of film that would play on cable television in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, something that people watch over and over again, simply because it makes them feel lighter. The Burial, the new courtroom drama from writer/director Maggie Betts, falls firmly into this category. It’s dad-fare, set in 1995 when it also likely would’ve had mainstream success in popular culture. Continue Reading →
A Million Miles Away
A Million Miles Away is one of those movies that live in the meaty part of the decent curve. Far too sturdy and well-made to be called bad. Too rote and predictable to really call good. It tells the true story of José Hernández (Michael Pena), an unquestionably inspiring man who did an impossibly difficult thing under impossibly difficult circumstances. Continue Reading →
Swan Song
When someone tells you they never lie to their romantic partner, don’t believe them. They may not tell real whoppers, like what they really did with the money that was supposed to go towards bills, but little white lies, and especially lies of omission, are fair game. Total honesty means having to hurt the people we love, and so we obfuscate, hide things, to protect their feelings. Benjamin Cleary’s Swan Song (not to be confused with the Todd Stephens film of the same name) tells the story of a husband and father who takes a lie of omission to eerie, heart-wrenching lengths. Continue Reading →
House of Gucci
There’s a word that exists in the Italian language that doesn’t quite have a counterpart in any other language: sprezzatura. What it essentially boils down to is the art of looking like you don’t care – a style of perfectly-studied imperfection. This idea goes back at least to the Renaissance, a time when the Gucci family earned its reputation as skilled saddlemakers to the rich and aristocratic. Or at least that’s how Aldo Gucci, the powerful and powerfully at-ease paterfamilias played by Al Pacino, relates the family history in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci. It is against this backdrop – of wealth, power, history, and above all, style – that Scott and screenwriters Roberto Bentivegna and Becky Johnston weave their story, an uneven yet compelling story about the only person who became a Gucci through their own making rather than by an accident of birth, and yet was forever an outsider. Continue Reading →
The Courier
Dominic Cooke's well-crafted spy thriller doesn't try anything new, but boasts winning performances & a zippy plot. In 2019, the buddy-car film Ford v Ferrari became the clear cut favorite of dads across American and Britain. Using well-matched leads in Christian Bale and Matt Damon, James Mangold’s film became a critical and commercial hit, showing that fathers still have the power to put a movie into the green. It looks like there’s a new dad film of 2020 though, with Dominic Cooke’s Ironbark taking its rightful spot upon the beer-bellied throne. Ironbark tells the story of Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch), a British businessman recruited by the government to become a spy-like courier in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Wynne agrees to keep this entire operation a secret from everyone, including his wife Sheila (Jessie Buckley), growing more invested and involved and spy-ish. Flanked by one British operative Dickie Franks (Angus Wright) and one American operative Emily Donovan (Rachel Brosnahan), Wynne begins meeting with a Russian source named Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze). Together, they smuggle nuclear information back into Britain and the U.S. in hopes of avoiding nuclear war, and eventually dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Continue Reading →