Ferrari
SimilarA Beautiful Mind (2001), Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), Almost Famous (2000), Apollo 13 (1995), Belle de Jour (1967),
Boys Don't Cry (1999) Brubaker (1980), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Crash (1996), Dead Poets Society (1989), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Enough (2002), Erin Brockovich (2000), Freedom Writers (2007), Gandhi (1982), GoodFellas (1990), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), M*A*S*H (1970), Manhattan (1979), Mississippi Burning (1988), Raging Bull (1980), Rosemary's Baby (1968), Schindler's List (1993), Shall We Dance? (2004), Sissi (1955), Stand by Me (1986), The Art of Racing in the Rain (2019), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), The Elephant Man (1980), The Godfather (1972), The Last Emperor (1987), The Pianist (2002), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Straight Story (1999), Titanic (1997), West Side Story (2021),
Watch afterLeave the World Behind (2023), Poor Things (2023), Saltburn (2023), The Killer (2023), The Marvels (2023), Wonka (2023),
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 →
Memory
SimilarAnnie Hall (1977), Ben-Hur (1959), Cape Fear (1991), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Enough (2002), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), From Russia with Love (1963), GoodFellas (1990), Hitman (2007), King Kong (2005), Léon: The Professional (1994), Lucky Number Slevin (2006), Manhattan (1979), Maria Full of Grace (2004), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Pi (1998), Poseidon (2006),
Shaft (2000) Sliver (1993), Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Taxi Driver (1976), The Apartment (1960), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), The Silent Partner (1978), The Terminal (2004), The Thirteenth Floor (1999), The Usual Suspects (1995), Twelve Monkeys (1995), War of the Worlds (2005), You Only Live Twice (1967),
Watch afterDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), Parasite (2019), Society of the Snow (2023), The Batman (2022), Top Gun: Maverick (2022),
StarringRay Stevenson,
Both the main characters in Michel Franco’s Memory are struggling to deal with the echoes of their past. Sylvia (Jessica Chastain), a recovering alcoholic and single mother to 13-year-old Anna (Brooke Timber), desperately wants to forget the unspoken traumas of her childhood. Saul (Peter Saarsgard), on the other hand, can’t grab a hold of his past. He’s powerless as early-onset dementia slowly but inevitably steals it from him. After their high school reunion, he wordlessly follows her home and spends the night standing outside her building. In turn, she visits him at the house he shares with his brother (Josh Charles) and niece (Elsie Fisher). Then she takes him for a walk and accuses him of participating in a rape that she endured at the age of 12, a crime that he has no memory of committing. Continue Reading →
National Champions
SimilarMatch Point (2005), Raging Bull (1980),
If you haven’t been keeping up with college sports lately, you might have missed some of the recent headlines about the fight for student-athletes to get paid. The argument boils down to this: what right do we have to insist college ball is for amateurs when it’s morphed into a multi-billion-dollar business? Is it fair to deny those actually doing the work a piece of the pie? National Champions doesn’t just aim to explore that question, it makes a firm case that players should unionize. As a primer on the issues, it’s excellent. As a movie, it fails. Continue Reading →
Greenland
Nothing heals a broken marriage like the end of the world. That’s one of the takeaways from Greenland, a disaster movie about a massive comet that has Earth, and Gerard Butler, in its crosshairs. Butler plays John Garrity, a structural engineer who finds his marriage to Allison (Morena Baccarin) falling apart, just like the giant comet (named Clarke) that’s breaking up into smaller pieces so it can spread its damage all over the planet before its big chunk hits, creating a mass extinction event. Continue Reading →
Songbird
Back in mid-March, Simon Boyes called Adam Mason about an idea for a pandemic thriller. The two writing partners quickly sketched out a plot outline, it began to pick up traction, and it was only a matter of days before Michael Bay came on to the project as a producer. The name would be Songbird. It’d also begin filming that July with Mason directing and come out in December, less than nine months after its inception. All of this said, it’s hard to dissect what’s worse: the fact that people exploited a global tragedy so quickly, or the final result. Continue Reading →