170 Best Releases From the Genre Romance (Page 6)

As if chomping at the bit to show its true self, Annette immediately disrobes. Director Leos Carax, off-screen during the opening credits, tells the audience to stay silent. Audio tracks spray over shots of Los Angeles and, in a studio, he asks his musicians, “So, may we start?” He’s now speaking not to us but Ron Mael and Russell Mael of Sparks. Both of them share a story by credit, the latter having written the screenplay, and already, the film has dived feet first into its own joke. But Carax’s latest doesn’t just strip itself naked. It takes off its own skin, as a rock opera and as a movie. Continue Reading →

While author Jojo Moyes doesn’t confine herself to the romance genre, her works do share a rosy bloom. Light-heartedness and melodrama and historical settings and yes, love, all abound. So without even reading it, you’ll probably have some idea of what to expect from the newest adaptation of her work, The Last Letter from Your Lover. There’s the French Riviera and 1960s fashion and mystery and a torrid love affair—the works. And director Augustine Frizzell doesn’t seem too interested in taking this tale off the tracks.In short? It’s your classic Netflix weepie, though perhaps a little more star-studded than usual. Felicity Jones (Rogue One) stars as Ellie, a modern London reporter with a bad case of heartbreak and a crappy attitude. While researching a basic assignment, she stumbles upon an old love letter that’s so intoxicating she becomes determined to track down who it belongs to and what happened to the couple in question. In between scenes of Ellie’s search, we see the romance play out. Jennifer (Shailene Woodley, Big Little Lies) is a 1960s housewife with a husband who doesn’t seem to know or care that she exists. So when she meets dashing reporter Anthony (Callum Turner), it isn’t long before the two become swept up in each other and fall madly in love. But you won’t know if their romance ends in tragedy or happily ever after until Ellie gets to the bottom of it. 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 →

The director-writer & star of Asia talk death, love & the immigration experience. A mother, her rebellious teen daughter, and an illness. It’s a story that’s been done and redone so many times that it’s basically become a subgenre. But in Ruthy Pribar’s feature directorial debut Asia, a tender and devastating character study about motherhood and loss, everything about the subgenre gets rejuvenated. Not because it breathes a new life into it, but because it tells the story in an understated way, with a level of realism that recalls the works of the Dardenne brothers more than it does The Fault in Our Stars. The titular character, Asia (Alena Yiv), is a 35-year-old single mother who immigrated herself and her daughter from Russia to Israel years ago to start a new life. By day (and sometimes night), Asia works tirelessly as a nurse. But when she’s not taking care of her patients, Asia likes to spend time at a bar, drinking alone and flirting with strangers, or having sex with her colleague in his car as if she’s still a teenager.  Continue Reading →

During his sophomore year at Wesleyan University in 1999, Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a draft of his debut play. At first, he “had one song and a title: In the Heights.” Soon after, the musical would premiere at the school’s student-run theater. John Buffalo Miller and Quiara Alegría Hudes helped revise it in the following years, and then it snowballed. It premiered off-Broadway in 2005, went to Broadway in 2008, and had international tours throughout the 2010s. A film adaptation felt like the natural next step, and over two decades after its inception, it arrives with a screenplay from Hudes and Jon M. Chu directing. Continue Reading →

The Carnivores is almost funny. It’s almost funny in the way a dull gag, or a spout of awkwardness, or some cruel cosmic joke is. The thing is that The Carnivores isn’t a comedy. It’s too emotionally distant as well as, in a lesser impact, visually so. When the two main characters aren’t together and talk with others, it can feel as if someone is bound to wrap up the interaction in a way that’s more banal than anything else. “Oh, that’s funny,” one would expect them to say, largely out of obligation. They never do. Continue Reading →

Over the past decade, writer-director Christian Petzold has delivered three near-perfect features-- 2012’s Barbara, 2014’s Phoenix, and 2018’s Transit. His work isn't showy, but what he pulls off is challenging - making artfully crafted, sumptuously romantic stories focusing on lonely, easy-going characters finding connection with one another. His latest, Undine, follows in that tradition, and it’s one of his best. Continue Reading →

80 minutes into Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor, the titular surprise attack finally arrives. It is, without a doubt, one of the most virtuosic action set pieces ever committed to the screen, a flawlessly orchestrated symphony of carnage that burns for close to 40 minutes. Everything that you could possibly hope for from a maximalist, hyperkinetic blockbuster spectacle is here. There’s fire cascading, plumes of black smoke rising, bullets and bombs raining down, planes tumbling from the skies, boats being torn asunder, and bodies being flung about like ragdolls. Annihilation and national tragedy have never looked so stunning or—and it feels gross saying this—felt so exhilarating. Continue Reading →

Film Comment used to run a semi-regular feature entitled “Guilty Pleasures” in which they would invite someone to write a piece about films that have often been ignored or reviled by critics and the public but for which they still maintain a deep love for any number of reasons.  These articles were always fun to read but I must confess that the notion of a so-called “guilty pleasure” is one to which I have never quite subscribed. My feeling is that if a movie gives you some form of pleasure—either because it is genuinely good or because of its camp value—you should be able to celebrate it without feeling any guilt over whether or not it conforms to general standards of artistic acceptability. Continue Reading →

Even early in his career, Philip Seymour Hoffman is too good for this dull shoot-em-up. Before he passed away at the age of 46, Philip Seymour Hoffman starred in 52 feature films. Starring roles, character pieces, chameleon work—he left a legacy nearly unmatched in both quality and quantity. Now, with P.S.H. I Love You, Jonah Koslofsky wafts through the cornucopia of the man’s offerings. When you think of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s frequent collaborators, Alec Baldwin probably doesn’t come to mind. Yet these actors found themselves in the same movie on multiple occasions, appearing opposite each other three times. Their collaborations got better as time went on, with their most successful pairing coming in the genuinely funny Along Came Polly. Before that, Hoffman and Baldwin co-starred as a writer and a pervy actor, respectively, in David Mamet’s State and Main. Unfortunately, their original convergence is a rancid waste of time.  Continue Reading →

The best way to enjoy MTV’s Carmen: A Hip Hopera is with the subtitles on. That way you can catch every outrageous word of Sekani Williams’ singular lyrics. 20 years after its release in 2001, Carmen: A Hip Hopera remains unique, in a genre all its own. Continue Reading →

Come back to a simpler time. A time when people were left shocked and awestruck when a remarkable pop culture event occurred, one that dumbfounded many and helped inspire a cultural shift, one where viewpoints that had previously been derided and ignored were placed at the center of an increasing number of narratives.  Continue Reading →

PBS presents a fresh & engagingly modern take on the timeless tale of star-crossed lovers. Filmed over 17 days on a closed stage due to the global pandemic, Romeo and Juliet is an intimate and compelling production of a familiar story. The beats are all there: star-crossed lovers find each other amidst the bitter enmity of their families, people party, people die, the most convoluted plan in all of playwriting history is hatched, more people die. There have been, roughly, over 200 on-screen adaptations alone of the play, ranging from full-length movies to thematically appropriate TV episodes. The titular couple has been vampires and gnomes. What does a new version have to offer an audience who have known this story all of their lives? How do you film the most-filmed play of all time?  The National Theatre’s new Romeo and Juliet film (aired in the U.S. by PBS’ Great Performances) stars two familiar faces as the titular couple: The Crown’s Josh O’Connor and Fargo’s Jessie Buckley, but the pair vanish into their roles with ease. They are backed up by the strong supporting cast, including Fisayo Akinade as Mercutio and Tamsin Grieg as a chilling Lady Capulet. Directed by Simon Goodwin and adapted from William Shakespeare’s play by Emily Burns, the film shifts between playful cast moments in a rehearsal setting and fully staged scenes, though even the latter maintain a sparse Our Town-type feel. Romeo’s home-in-exile in Mantua is a bare storage room, which both throws his stark mental state into clear view but also feels a little on the nose. Maybe a chair? Or a blanket?  Continue Reading →

We Broke Up wastes no time cutting to the chase of its own title. The first scene quickly and efficiently introduces the breezy, playful dynamic between longtime partners Doug (William Jackson Harper) and Lori (Aya Cash) as they banter in a restaurant while waiting for takeout. By the end of the scene, Doug pulls a proposal out of nowhere and Lori proceeds to vomit right then and there. It's one of the few times We Broke Up even tries to push the comedy into its supposed rom-com format.  Continue Reading →

Let’s be clear from the start: there is nothing especially unique about Monday’s plot. Chloe (Denise Gough) is an immigration lawyer from America planning to return home from Greece in just a few days. Mickey (Sebastian Stan) is another ex-pat, well-rooted in Greece by now, DJing and waiting for more time with his young son. Mickey’s uncouth privileged by birth friend Argyris (Giorgos Pyrpasopoulos) introduces them in the worst way at a dance party. Mickey’s interested but embarrassed by his friend’s behavior, while Chloe is offended, but a little bit drunk and a lot angry at her ex, Christos (Andreas Konstantinou). Despite starting as a fairly ill-advised one-night stand, the two hit it off and begin to alter their plans and rearrange their lives to make a go of it. Continue Reading →

By the end of the 1970s, Francis Ford Coppola was on top of the world. He'd just come off a string of films that weren't just critical and commercial successes, but masterpieces that defined cinema as an artform: The Conversation, Godfathers I & II, and Apocalypse Now -- the kind of run that basically guarantees you carte blanche to do whatever the hell you want. With that kind of blank check, Coppola didn't just set out to make an intensely personal swing for the fences: with Zoetrope Studios, and One from the Heart, he sought to revolutionize the way movies were made and carve out a space for auteurs to make intensely personal projects that didn't require four-quadrant appeal. Continue Reading →

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, 2046 feels undeniably otherworldly. The sumptuousness of the imagery, the fractured timeline, the computer-generated cityscapes of the future, the fact that everyone speaks in different languages and dialects, and yet there exists no communication confusion—all of it melds into a truly transporting experience. Like many of Wong Kar-wai’s works, however, the film roots itself deep in honest feeling. Thus, no matter how much it seems to be unfolding in a world far from our own, the viewer can understand every emotion the characters experience. Continue Reading →

Though My Blueberry Nights has been largely left untouched in the renaissance of Wong Kar-wai’s work like the pies at its center of the film, it’s finally time to cut a slice and see what can be savored. From the outside, it looks like a Kar-wai blueberry pie. It has a sugar crisped lid that’s inviting and promises hidden depths. Yet, as our fork reaches the bottom, we find it soggy.  Continue Reading →

As we continue the bleak discourse about how well pop culture of the past has aged (or hasn’t, rather), it’s probably safe to say that the vast majority of 80s comedies aren’t going to hold up to present day scrutiny. Hobbled by casual racism, sexism and homophobia (not to mention rape gags, if you’re Revenge of the Nerds), to watch many of them now is to cringe in discomfort. Teen comedies didn’t often escape it either, as evidenced by the vastly different Porky’s and Sixteen Candles, both of which aged like milk. It’s interesting that the comedies that addressed “dark” subjects, like Fast Times at Ridgemont High (abortion) and Heathers (suicide) are the ones that managed to survive relatively unscathed. Continue Reading →

If repression is the ultimate aphrodisiac, there are few films that make such a case for it than Wong Kar-wai’s sumptuous 2000 masterpiece In the Mood for Love, one of the most passionate, delicately rendered on-screen odes to yearning cinema has ever produced.  Continue Reading →

Welcome to the Criterion Corner, where we break down some of the month’s new releases from the Criterion Collection. #1070: Secrets & Lies (1996), dir. Mike Leigh Secrets & Lies - Criterion One would be hard-pressed to find a more keenly-observed chronicler of everyday life than England's own Mike Leigh. While some of his films dabble in the historic and histrionic (Topsy-Turvy, Mr. Turner, Peterloo come to mind), it's in his modern-day profiles of the workaday Briton -- Life Is Sweet, Naked, Career Girls -- where his quiet, observational eye holds the most purchase. 1996's Secrets & Lies might well be the purest distillation of Leigh's kitchen-sink dramas; he touches on social issues of class and race, but only slightly, with none of the preachiness Ken Loach is occasionally guilty of. And in so doing, speaks volumes about those very issues while keeping its focus on its individual characters and how they navigate those spaces. Secrets & Lies is about two worlds colliding: one belongs to Hortense Cumberbatch (Marianne Jean-Baptiste, masterful in her quiet calm), a successful middle-class optometrist who takes an interest in tracking down her biological mother after her adoptive one dies. The culprit, we learn, is Cynthia (a Cannes-winning performance from Brenda Blethyn), a brittle, middle-aged factory worker falling apart at the seams at her advancing years and her fractious relationships with her daughter and brother (a steady Timothy Spall). Hortense is Black; Cynthia is white -- dynamics that cause first confusion, then strife in these family dynamics, as Cynthia eventually brings Hortense into the explosive relationships around her. Continue Reading →