3 Best Releases Like Smokin Aces 2006 on Netflix
Kneecap
“Every fucking story about Belfast starts like this…” star Mo Chara bemoans in the opening lines of Kneecap as a barrage of footage from the Troubles flashes by on screen. “But not this one,” he adds with a smirk we can feel. And it seems writer and director Rich Peppiatt is taking the same stance when it comes to music biopics, tossing the playbook solidified by movies like Walk the Line in the trash. Instead, we’re going to get a stylish, sexy, political, and hilarious story about how the Irish-language hip-hop trio Kneecap was formed that cares less about being accurate and a lot more about the fight for Irish identity in a world where only around 71,000 people call themselves daily Irish speakers. Set in 2019, right when the Official Languages (Amendment) Bill 2019 was first introduced, tensions between Irish and English speakers in Northern Ireland are high. Street hoods Mo Chara (himself) and Móglaí Bap (himself) are petty drug dealers and wannabe hip-hop stars. After a scuffle, Mo Chara is arrested and questioned by the police, but he refuses to speak English with the cops, and JJ Ó Dochartaigh (himself) is brought in as an interpreter. Continue Reading →
Hit Man
I have to admit, I wasn’t really on board with Hollywood’s attempt to make Glen Powell the Next Big Thing. I thought there was something a little generic and forgettable about him, like he had been grown in a laboratory that specialized in manufacturing blandly handsome blonde actors. But I’m not too proud to admit that I was wrong, at least as far as Hit Man is concerned. Powell may at first blush be little more than a chiseled jaw delivery device, but as it turns out he has a lot of charm to spare, and a witty sense of humor, if the script he co-wrote with director Richard Linklater is any indication. It’s a fun, spicy comedy thriller for adults that might just give the struggling film industry a bit of juice, but of course in this era of truly baffling decision-making by those who earn far more money than they deserve for such things, it’s only getting a limited theatrical release before going direct to Netflix. Like Linklater’s criminally underrated Bernie, Hit Man is loosely based on a Texas Monthly article, this time about Gary Johnson, a Houston-area philosophy teacher who worked a side gig with the local police, passing himself off as a killer-for-hire in dozens of sting operations. Powell plays Johnson, an unassuming dork who lives quietly with two cats and considers a day of birdwatching to be the peak of excitement. Continue Reading →
May December
In such films as Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, Velvet Goldmine and I’m Not There, filmmaker Todd Haynes has taken the stories of famous people and utilized what we know—or think we know—about them to explore ideas about celebrity and our all-consuming need to render their often-complex stories into straightforward narratives. That strange compulsion to explain, understand, and commodify the lives of real people is at the heart of his latest work, May December, and it certainly seems to have sparked something in him because the end result is the strongest work that he has done in quite some time. Continue Reading →