821 Best Releases From the Genre Drama (Page 26)

Tea Lindeberg and star Flora Ofelia Hoffman Lindhal craft a stupendous study of a young woman's struggle with her faith amidst horror. Perhaps the best film at TIFF was one of the first made available to audiences. A hidden gem from Denmark, Tea Lindeberg’s As in Heaven spins a stupendous picture from a quiet premise. The story of a young girl from a devout Christian farming family in Denmark set to break generations of tradition by going to school instead of shackling herself to her family’s land, As in Heaven is as wrenching as it is extraordinary. It’s a bleak picture to be sure, but it’s a powerful look at the ways religion and tradition starkly contrast with a slowly but surely changing world. Lise (Flora Ofelia Hoffman Lindhal) is an ethereal figure, bright and luminating with hope. That hope is quickly dashed by her father’s unhappiness – if not unwillingness – to send her to school. Moreover, Lise’s mother is about to have another child, growing their large family still further. Lise does housework and helps to entertain/wrangle her assorted younger siblings. She also has her eyes on a dashing tall young man who works on the farm named Jens Peter (Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt). As in Heaven’s genre-blending filmmaking offers a bleak, compelling, blood-soaked version of a Bergman-esque religious parable. Continue Reading →

(This review is part of our 2021 coverage of Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival./) Continue Reading →

(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Reeling International LGBTQ+ Film Festival.) Continue Reading →

The late, great movie star gives a stupendous performance in this winning odd-couple dramedy. (This review is part of our 2021 coverage of Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival.) Where do we go when we feel like we’ve reached the end of the road? Continue Reading →

Jeffrey Schwarz’s documentary on a never-was musical adaptation of Sunset Boulevard and its would-be makers is insightful if a bit scattered. (This review is part of our 2021 coverage of Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival) “After Salome, we’ll make another picture, and another picture” and then a musical, and then a musical based on writing the musical, and then a picture about writing the musical and the musical based on writing the musical! Maybe it’s not something Norma Desmond could’ve dreamed of, but Gloria Swanson certainly would have approved. Continue Reading →

The third season of Laurie Nunn’s raunchy, teen dramedy Sex Education kicks off with a montage of the characters engaging in all sorts of sexual activities—some with their partners, some with their secret lovers, and some with themselves. For a show that’s always had a positive attitude when it comes to sex, it’s a fitting choice. However, Sex Education has never been just about hormones and horniness. Since its first season, the show has also proven to be a charming, often heartfelt look at adolescence. In season three, it remains committed to that approach.  Continue Reading →

Despite its top shelf cast & capable direction, this drama about tourists behaving badly is nothing we haven't seen before. The Forgiven is a story about fantastically rich white people behaving badly in an “exotic” location, told by slightly less rich and hopefully better intentioned white people. So soon after HBO’s The White Lotus, it might be tempting to call this a new trend. But it’s probably more accurate to consider it business as usual.  This is not to say that it’s a bad film. The Forgiven is thoroughly competent in its writing, direction, and performances. It also happens to be — from its first scenes and the Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?-esque dynamic it establishes between its protagonists, to its ending which is  strongly foreshadowed to the point of telegraphing — an obvious one.  Continue Reading →

Ryusuke Hamaguchi adapts a Haruki Murakami short story & gives it additional depth & soul. Interpretation is a complex beast. In terms of language, not even the most literal one is left entirely untouched by the person making it. In the case of longer work, a translator can take on a far more hands-on role, making a novel or film in translation a product of its interpreter as well as its original artist. In some cases, this influence can be significant. Translators and editors have played such a massive role in the way that English audiences understand and appreciate Haruki Murakami that writer, translator, editor, and creative writing professor David Karashima wrote an entire book on the topic in 2020.  Interpreting prose for the screen comes with its own nuances, and its own symbiotic relationship between the writer’s vision and the filmmaker’s. Translating Murakami’s writing for the screen is perhaps even more complicated, given the nature of his stories and how he tells them (or at least how I understand them based on the English translations I’ve read). Continue Reading →

Three features at the Toronto International Film Festival turn the spotlight on the best and brightest in African filmmaking. African Cinema has produced some fantastic gems over the past several years that nearly no one will mention in their end of year lists. From mythical fables like Kati Kati, Luwalu, and Mimosas to political tragedies like The Fig Tree, Clash, Wulu, and Our Lady of the Nile, to films on identity and alienation like The Wound, to personal reflections of land and colonialism like Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s two films Mother I am Suffocating, This is My Last Film About You and This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection – both masterpieces – this is a continent creating some of the best of the world’s cinema right now and with good volume. So naturally, I had to seek out a few African films this year, starting with The Gravedigger's Wife.  The Gravedigger’s Wife functions similarly to Ousmanne Sembene’s classic Mandabi, where a husband’s struggles with money is at the whims of both an economy that’s over his head and at the mistreatment and deception by his own family members. Guled (Omar Abdi) is a gravedigger who needs more money for his wife Nasra’s (Yasmin Warsame) cancer treatment. He is willing to go to the village where his family is but his wife is distraught at the thought, so he looks around for work nearby. He lives in the outskirts of Djibouti, struggling to find adequate pay for odd jobs.  Continue Reading →

There’s a certain reaction one has when watching a movie that opens with the Chicken Soup for the Soul logo, and that is a labored sigh. The company that made its fortune publishing collections of inspiring true stories about overcoming adversity and beating the odds quietly moved into the movie producing business some years back. You’d be forgiven if up to this point you hadn’t heard of anything they produced--the vast majority of their projects seemed to have been created specifically for the direct to streaming market, with titles like 12 Dogs of Christmas and Paris Countdown. After a recent deal with Redbox, however, they’re looking to move into more prestige fare, starting with the comedy-drama Best Sellers. Continue Reading →

Kenneth Branagh directs a moving film about a working class Irish family impacted by the Troubles. Historical films — especially those about devastating and traumatic events — require a precarious balance. If you focus too much on the events themselves, you risk erasing the humanity of the people who experienced them, coming across like a dry textbook. Dive too deeply into the personal — especially if your characters are fictional or fictionalized — and there’s always a chance you’ll make a maudlin melodrama that uses history as little more than a backdrop. This balance becomes exponentially more difficult to maintain when your audience’s main point of access to your story is the eyes of a child, because you’re at constant risk of nostalgia muddying up the proceedings.  Given the subject matter of Belfast and Kenneth Branagh’s deep connection to it (although the film is not a memoir, there are a great deal of similarities between the fictional family and the Belfast-born writer and director’s own), he could have easily faltered with this particular story. It would have been easy to forgive him if he did. Hell, he probably would have made a decent film even if it got too sentimental. This is Kenneth Branagh we’re talking about, after all. But what he’s done instead is craft a film that’s as measured as it is miraculous.  Continue Reading →

Twelve years after her last film, Jane Campion returns to the scene of feature-length filmmaking with the slow-burn, neo-western The Power of the Dog. Based on Thomas Savage’s 1967 acclaimed novel of the same name, the movie is a character study of repressed desire and masculinity that operates like an unnerving Greek tragedy. The story takes place in 1925 Montana — though the Kiwi-born filmmakers shot the film in her native New Zealand, where big hills and thick clouds create a sense of isolation — and it centers on two rancher brothers who share no resemblance in their personalities. Continue Reading →

Why are some stories animated instead of live-action? There are a variety of good reasons: introducing fantastic or surreal elements, making characters more expressive, or experimenting with genre. Netflix’s new adult animated comedy Chicago Party Aunt, however, doesn’t seem to have any reasons at all for being a cartoon instead of a more traditional sitcom. And even more disappointingly, with laugh-out-loud jokes and memorable characters few and far between across all eight episodes made available to critics, it’s hard to think of a good reason why it was made in the first place. Continue Reading →

The country soundtrack kicks in. The plain, honey-coated lens flairs coat the screen. A truck parks and out steps Mike Milo (Clint Eastwood), met with the distance of his once-good friend Howard (Dwight Yoakam) who, like a soda machine someone’s kicked loose, dispenses copious exposition about Mike’s past. The man was a great rodeo rider before dabbling in pills and drink, and, according to his old pal, his rising age doesn’t help either. Howard wants fresh blood, but it seems the movie doesn’t. The delivery, the detachment, Yoakam’s thoroughly disinterested performance—the film borders on worrying at first. Continue Reading →

For many, present company included, tales of alternate realities contain an undeniable hook to them. As people, after all, we start with so many choices to make, so many avenues to pursue. Sometimes, no matter how happy you might be, one can’t help but ponder how things could be different. What if you attended that other school? What if you went on that one blind date? Those questions sit at the center of NBC’s newest offering, Ordinary Joe. Continue Reading →

Kira Kovalenko's Unclenching the Fists, which won the Un Certain Regard prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, is a troubling, frustrating film to sit through. Like many movies that draw their emotional power from their central character's suffering—Robert Bresson's Mouchette being the best example and Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark the worst—Kovalenko's film operates from a point of seeming inescapability from its bleak parameters. Protagonist Ada (Milana Aguzarova) is portrayed as a feeble, helpless figure and its tension is drawn from her painfully awkward attempts at communication and a suffocating existence she always seems just a little too weak to break out from. With that said, unlike Dancer in the Dark, Unclenching the Fists does not hold its audience hostage or insult their emotional investment in its characters. Continue Reading →

Michael McGowan's film, adapted from the novel of the same name, undermines strong performances by clinging too tightly to its source material. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.) Content Note: All My Puny Sorrows deals heavily with suicide. Continue Reading →

Kin, AMC+’s new crime drama, follows in the footsteps of those underworld sagas that came before it. Set in Dublin, mostly in the homes of members of the Kinsella family, Kin focuses on warring Irish families deep in the drug trade. While its story rarely exceeds expectations for subject matter, brutality, or surprise, its performances are excellent, thanks to a team of veteran actors who have numerous scenes full of ample, chewy dialogue to showcase their talents. Continue Reading →

Olivia Munn's spirited performance elevates what otherwise feels like a moralistic, obvious self-help treatise on trauma and accountability. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.) There has been a significant shift in filmmaking and scripting recently where buzzy ideas like ‘trauma’ and ‘accountability’ have been explored in a very lazy and uninspiring surface-level fashion. The need for movies to be some sort of active moral life lesson and perhaps worse, a form of therapy, has overtaken the artistry with which human emotions and connections can be conveyed through the moving image. Continue Reading →

Julia Ducourneau's followup to her stunning debut Raw makes for brutal, beautiful, brilliant body horror. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.) Titane begins with the pluck of banjo strings and an extreme closeup of chrome. It’s a clash that’s jarring and compelling: the earthy, fire-and-brimstone howl of David Eugene Edwards’s take on the American folk standard “Wayfaring Stranger” set against an almost voyeuristic tour through a car’s inner workings. Continue Reading →

Eva Husson directs Odessa Young to a stupendous performance of a young woman's birth as a writer in a story about the lingering impact of love. An adaptation of Graham Swift's 2016 novella of the same name, Mothering Sunday begins as a story about wartime loss and forbidden love. Directed by Eva Husson from a script penned by Alice Birch, it mostly takes place over one spring day in 1924 England, just five years after the end of the first World War. It's Mother's Day and the orphaned Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young), who works as a maid in the Nivens (Olivia Colman and Colin Firth) household, is given a day off. Since she doesn't have a mother to celebrate the holiday with, Jane decides to spend the day with the only person in her life, her secret lover Paul Sheringham (Josh O'Connor). The couple makes plans to meet at Paul's house. But on this very special day, Jane doesn't have to sneak in from the backdoor like usual. Paul's parents are not home—they're lunching with the Nivens and the Hobdays, whose daughter Emma (Emma D'Arcy) will marry Paul in about two weeks. As the three families gather at the lunch table near a beautiful river, Jane and Paul seize the opportunity to express their love for each other. They're aware that this afternoon will most likely be the last time they get to be in each other's company, so they make the most of it. Continue Reading →