There’s a war going on in Mother of George, not just among family obligations and societal pressures, but against the very film itself. On the one hand this is movie that tells an engaging story of a couple facing struggles when they can’t conceive a baby. Yet, on the other hand, this is a film so concerned with its visuals and being stylistic that it often gets in its own way. So then how does Mother of George fare in this war? Not well, I’m afraid. Though I want to recommend and champion this movie, the film left me so frustrated and robbed of a good experience that even on the nicest of days it’d be tough for me to give it my blessing.
If you have been following any movie news, you know that 12 Years a Slave, the new Steven McQueen film starring Chiwetel Ejiofer, Michael Fassbender and Lupita N’yongo, is tearing up the festival circuit, inspire all sorts of praise and talk of Oscars. It’s been interesting to see a film made by someone of a dark hue winning raves, but there’s another facet to the conversation surrounding the film that has been confounding me. It all started when Brad Pitt made a comment during a press conference about Americans not asking about why there aren’t more films about slavery and eventually saying that it took an outsider to be able to tell this tale.
The Toronto Film Festival is over, giving us a brief respite before the next festival, New York Film Festival and the race has started to take shape. 12 Years a Slave has all but ran away with the buzz and won the Audience Award, overwhelming other movies in terms of praise and is looking locked and loaded for some nominations. But can it win? ANd what does the film outlook show us given all the films that have now been seen? Let’s dig in with a new set of Oscar Predictions.
Review originally published at Awards Circuit during the Sundance Film Festival.
Kill Your Darlings is a perfect example of how one can tell a familiar story in a unique, fascinating way. Many are familiar with the Beats generation, but the way debut director Johnathan Krokidas and co-writer Austin Bunn see it you haven’t seen the definitive version of the tale till you see their film. Kill Your Darlings is a fascinating sojourn into the origin story of the Beats, kind of like The Avengers: Beats Edition set in the backdrop of the suffocating rigidity of 1944 Columbia University with a sharp script filled with an incredible social commentary. In short, it’s one of the best films I’ve seen so far at Sundance.
Review originally published during the SXSW Film Festival at Awards Circuit.
A Teacher, much like other films deal that with taboo subject matter, has the unenviable task of balancing the melodramatic aspects of the story as well as a need to justify every character’s motivations. And try though it may, it never seems to elevate itself from the basics of the story and the script moves from point A to point B without much in the way of shock. However, the tale is elevated by some incredibly nuanced acting from Lindsay Burdge and Will Brittain and just enough visual panache to keep the audience satisfied.
Though I love summer, it must be said that this year, summer felt like it was a million years long, with the films falling off in quality precipitously the longer the summer went on. Which is why I am happy that the fall movie season is upon us and if word out of Telluride is anything to go by, this is shaping up to be a doozy. So I decided to take a gander at the fall film slate and see what excited me. So without further ado, here all the fall films I’m most excited for and the empirical reasons why.