821 Best Releases From the Genre Drama (Page 28)

It’s time once again to return to Sherman Oaks High as Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher’s bittersweet teen comedy Never Have I Ever returns to Netflix. Picking up right where season one left off, we reunite with Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), her friends, family, and the surprisingly rich cast of secondary characters.  Continue Reading →

Eleven months ago, nearly exactly to the day, I first fell in love with Ted Lasso—the show and, I suppose, the man too. As several people, including myself, have proclaimed, it seemed the perfect show for a population battered by the isolation and fear of what felt like a possibly endless pandemic at the time and, for Americans especially, the ugliness of a looming election. Lasso proved the wonderful good-hearted surprise so many of us were so in need of. Continue Reading →

The appetite for true crime stories can seem insatiable. Mountains of podcasts, TV series, and movies, the latter two sent directly to streaming services, have been released over the last decade, making it more difficult for these narratives to find a wider audience. Netflix’s newest documentary series, Heist, attempts to cash in on this trend to mixed results, telling three stories over the course of six episodes. Continue Reading →

Within the opening scene of The White Lotus, it’s revealed that someone will die at some point during the show. But the question of who that someone is and how will they die isn’t really the central plot, as the six-part miniseries is much more interested in the characters and their fascinating dynamics than the mysteries and all the events leading up to the impending death. Continue Reading →

*Peter Cullen Voice: On* Continue Reading →

Our coverage of Tribeca closes out with two international films that handle everything from the power of cinema to parental sacrifice. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival.) Last Film Show and Brighton 4th represent two international films of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival dedicated to sons that have disappointed their fathers. While Indian director Pan Nalin’s Last Film Show focuses on nine-year-old Samay, a boy falling in love with film, Georgian director Levan Koguashvili’s Brighton 4th eyes Kakhi, a father who travels to Brooklyn to aid his son. Two films about tradition and fatherhood, these movies paint different pictures of the father-son relationship in their respective cultures.  Continue Reading →

The New York-based Tribeca festival roars back to post-lockdown life with its usual solid lineup of future award winners and indie gems. While the pandemic didn’t put a complete halt to the film festival circuit, of necessity festival programmers were forced to do complete overhauls, creating user-friendly streaming platforms in just a few months. This year’s Tribeca Festival, after having to cancel entirely in 2020, is the first festival to open back up for in-person screenings, offering a hybrid selection of both theater runs and streaming access. While it was not without its bumps, 2021’s offerings are especially strong, particularly in documentaries and horror. The movies may not quite be back, baby, but they’re getting there. Though you should definitely check out our coverage of some of the bigger buzz titles, here’s a brief overview of some of the hidden gems at Tribeca: Continue Reading →

Adam Leon's foggy mood piece is as endearingly formless as its amnesiac protagonist, a moody reflection on creativity and youth. This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. There's no explicit explanation given for why Alina Reynolds (Vanessa Kirby), a short story writer of some recent renown, finds herself aimlessly wandering the streets of New York City sans memory in Adam Leon's hypnotic Italian Studies. But if anyone was to thrive in the Big Apple in such a remarkable fugue state, it'd be someone so preternaturally attuned to listening and observing as Alina. And that she does for the vast majority of Italian Studies' runtime, creating a listless yet engrossing fever dream about the unexpected gifts of curiosity. Continue Reading →

Mickey Reece's latest eases you into a darkly comic take on the typical possession film, before turning an ambitious 180 into more solemn territory. This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. Oklahoma City-based filmmaker Mickey Reece is as idiosyncratic as he is prolific; Agnes is his twenty-fifth movie in the past decade. And like his previous films (Mickey Reece's Alien, Climate of the Hunter), it's just as hard to categorize. Step into Agnes totally unfamiliar, and you might expect the typical possession-horror endemic of something like The Nun or, well, the obvious nod to Agnes of God. But right from its opening minutes, Agnes sets itself apart with a winningly dark humor; wait even longer still, and its halfway point will surprise you even further. Continue Reading →

If nothing else, the new Disney+ program The Mysterious Benedict Society reaffirms that the hallmarks of Wes Anderson’s works have gone fully mainstream. As its first episode opens with a needle drop of Electric Light Orchestra’s "Livin’ Thing" plays over a montage of various adolescents living in perfectly arranged dollhouse environments, you’d be forgiven for wondering why Tony Hale is providing the opening narration instead of Bob Balaban. Like that Series of Unfortunate Events TV show, Benedict Society shows that Anderson’s style is something even kids are supposed to be aware of nowadays. Continue Reading →

Adapted from Matthew Logelin’s Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Loss and Love, written/directed by Paul Weitz, and co-written by Dana Schwartz, Fatherhood follows Matt (Kevin Hart), a father forced to raise his daughter alone when his wife Liz (Deborah Ayorinde) dies just after giving birth. Hart’s first big foray into dramatic acting has some heartwarming moments but is too bogged down by an awkward script and lack of dramatic weight. Continue Reading →

Dan Chen's documentary starts as a celebration of Black success but pulls back the curtain to ask more enticing questions about racial inequities in education. This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. We've all seen those viral videos that circulated Instagram and TikTok a couple years back -- thrilling, giddy footage of young Black and Brown students crowded around another student with a laptop, bursting into cheers and elation when that student learns they're accepted into a prestigious Ivy League school. It's a moment of tremendous uplift, especially considering the dramatic divides in college acceptance rates between white and nonwhite students (to say nothing of the Ivy League). Continue Reading →

Isabelle Furhman's relentless lead performance as an obsessive aspiring athlete propels the Tribeca rowing drama forward. “Rhythm is everything,” a crew coach tells Alex (Isabelle Fuhrman) at one point during The Novice, which won awards for best U.S. narrative feature, actress, and cinematography at the Tribeca Festival this week. The coach could well be explaining how this movie, about a college student with an obsessive drive to be the best at varsity rowing, differentiates itself from Black Swan (the movie about a young woman with an obsessive drive to be the best at ballet) or Whiplash (the movie about a young man with an obsessive drive to be the best at jazz drumming) or The Social Network (the movie about a college student with an obsessive drive to be the best at something, even if it winds up destroying the world, in part because there’s no way that he can row crew)—all of which The Novice resembles in content, and sometimes form. Writer-director Lauren Hadaway’s rhythm is her own, distinct from Darren Aronofsky’s, David Fincher’s, and Damien Chazelle’s, the triumvirate of dude directors who made those previous, excellent studies in obsession. Perhaps informed by her own college rowing experience, Hadaway keys into a relentless push-pull, especially as Alex drives herself further, further, and further still before picking herself up off the floor. Continue Reading →

The formula isn’t a new one: the hot, hyper-competent wife who gave up her master’s track to marry the boorish, underachieving man-child. Just add three cameras and some annoying in-laws/neighbors, and you could be watching King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, or (God forbid) According to Jim. Some shows have put a unique spin on the formula, the most successful being Gloria Calderon Kellett’s One Day at a Time reboot. But overall, when you see a three-camera sitcom, you usually know what you’re getting. It’s like gas station coffee or dinner at Applebee’s. It’s just there. Continue Reading →

Two indie romances act as unlikely companion pieces, in both good ways and bad, in this year's Tribeca festival. Mark, Mary & Some Other People and God’s Waiting Room don’t have a lot in common beyond the fact that they’re both tumultuous romances, of a sort, that happen to be playing in the U.S. Narrative Film at this year’s Tribeca Festival. Yet they feel, somehow, insistently compatible, in their later-stage failings moreso than their early-going successes.  They also both raise some provocative questions about indie cinema, albeit not necessarily ones that the filmmakers intended. Mark, Mary & Some Other People asks: has there ever been a good movie about a couple experimenting with an open relationship, swinging, or any other kind of multi-partner sexual situation? It’s been the basis for so many indie comedies that try to offer something transgressive before beating a hasty retreat back to traditionalism that portrays non-monogamy as a kind of hellish obstacle course, even as the characters try their best to articulate why monogamy is unnatural. Continue Reading →

If you graduated high school before, say, the new millennium, you’ll likely recall such phrases from television as “pinch an inch,” or “a shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, and then a sensible dinner.” You may remember a “diet candy” unfortunately named Ayds. You might even recall, with a grimace, the popular OTC supplement Dexatrim, which was basically speed. All of this was in service of encouraging already thin women to either stay thin, or get even thinner, before it was replaced by the slightly less destructive, but no less obsessive exercise craze spearheaded by celebrities like Cher and Jane Fonda. Annie Weisman’s dark comedy Physical takes place during the early 80s cusp of the transition from fad dieting to fitness, and is a scathing look at ambition and the lengths we go to in order to maintain a very specific image. Continue Reading →

Disney/Pixar's latest, Luca, is a deeply charming fish-monster-out-of-water story about two buddies, a Vespa, and the freedom to follow your path. It's a low-stakes tale about embracing your individual identity and the differences of the collective, with more than a few cute moments to sell its engaging atmosphere. It also suffers from a lack of clarity, which frustratingly keeps Luca from staying fully buoyant. Continue Reading →

Roshan Sethi (mostly) overcomes the stigma of the dreaded "sheltering in place together" movie with two lovely lead turns and a heaping helping of cultural specificity. This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. To attend a film festival in 2021 is to endure a veritable wave of films that either a) make a big deal of being filmed under COVID-19 restrictions or b) even worse, try to glom the pandemic onto an existing genre to mine bittersweet drama from our once-in-a-lifetime hell. We've seen plenty of attempts at a "couple sheltering in place learns to live together" story in Locked Down and SXSW's The End of Us, but first-time director Roshan Sethi's 7 Days manages to break the mold in a few important ways. It's not perfect, but it makes use of its particular context to make space for two comic actors long overdue for dramatic (and romantic) consideration. Continue Reading →

Ayten Amin’s intimate drama makes good use out of excellent performances and blocking. The best scene in Souad is when the titular lead (played by Bassant Ahmed) and her sister Rabab (Basmala Elghaiesh) try on makeup and take selfies on top of a roof. The forbidden nature of their activities adds a cloud of danger to their actions, but the primary emotion in this scene is joy. Souad especially revels in the opportunity to put on vibrant lipstick and pursue what she wants. Director Ayten Amin keeps the camera close to both of these girls to create an intimate atmosphere. The quiet but no less powerful joy felt here is beautifully realized. It’s one of several spots in Souad where Amin makes the internal emotions of her characters so thoughtfully realized on-screen. Such moments come in a plot that’s divided up into three sections, each of them named after a principal character in the film. First is Souad, which focuses on this girl juggling her ambitions with the restrictive desires of her parents. Then there’s Rabab, which chronicles her coming to terms with a family tragedy. Finally, there’s Ahmed (Hussein Ghanem), which follows an encounter between Rabab and the titular social media star that Souad has a crush on. Continue Reading →

It can’t be overstated how much the mid-90s belonged to Jim Carrey. Largely a stand-up comedian and supporting actor at first, Carrey shot to stardom thanks to In Living Color, and the grotesque characters he played on it, including the disfigured Fire Marshall Bill, and ponytailed lady bodybuilder Vera de Milo. His leap to leading roles in comedy features was swift and wildly successful, with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask and Dumb and Dumber all released the same year. There hadn’t been a comic actor much like Carrey before, someone who did childish things like pretend to talk out of his butt, but also had a wild look in his eyes that suggested a hint of danger with the body contorting nonsense. Continue Reading →

No Man of God, Amber Sealey's Ted Bundy picture, is well made but does not successfully distinguish itself from its fellow study-of-a-serial-killer films. In the days leading up to the Tribeca premiere of No Man of God, there was a brief dustup in the media when its director, Amber Sealey, did interviews in which she appeared to be taking potshots at recent films that had also been centered on notorious serial killer Ted Bundy for utilizing approaches that she suggested glorified him by depicting him as this brilliant and wildly charismatic character. This didn’t sit well with fellow filmmaker Joe Berlinger, who made Bundy the subject of his Netflix documentary series Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019) and the dramatic film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019), in which Bundy was portrayed by no less a figure than one-time teen heartthrob Zac Efron. He responded in kind by suggesting that Sealey was deliberately misrepresenting his work in order to pump up interest in her own film.Both Sealey and Berlinger have their points, I suppose. But as it turns out, this controversy may ultimately prove to be the most interesting thing about No Man of God in the end. Continue Reading →