[5] Gregory Peck is Captain Ahab in John Huston’s adaptation of Melville’s classic novel. Peck is reliably charismatic in the role, and the movie is at its best when it stays with him. Huston’s style is not an overly romantic one — which I think would have suited the movie better. I enjoyed the first thirty minutes the most, up through Ahab’s introduction and his …
[7] Elia Kazan directs a trio of Oscar-nominated performances in this adaptation of the Cid Ricketts Sumner novel. Jeanne Crain (State Fair, A Letter to Three Wives) stars as Pinky, a light-skinned African American woman returning to her impoverished southern hometown after finishing nursing school in the north. Her pious grandmother (Ethel Waters) insists that Pinky take care of the dying rich white woman who …
[7] Director Justin Kurzel tells the true story of Australia’s most notorious serial killer through the eyes of his teenaged accomplice. Teenager Jamie (Lucas Pittaway) falls in with his mother’s new boyfriend, John Bunting (Daniel Henshall). Bunting becomes a father figure to Jamie and preys on the boy’s feelings of insecurity, transforming him into his own private henchman. First, they scare a molester out of …
[7] Spike Lee directs the stranger-than-fiction true story of a black Colorado police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. John David Washington stars as Ron Stallworth, who struck up a relationship with local KKK members over the phone and acted through a white surrogate for face-to-face encounters. Adam Driver plays Stallworth’s partner in the investigation. Just how much is truth and …
[5] Shawn Hatosy stars in this coming-of-age dramedy written and produced by The Farrelly Brothers (There’s Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber). Hatosy plays a motherless ne’er-do-well teen whose father (Alec Baldwin) sends him to prep school after he smokes weed and crashes into a parked cop car. At Cornwall University, he gives the administration grief, falls in love with Amy Smart (who wouldn’t?), and …
[8] Nick Robinson (Jurassic World, Kings of Summer) stars as a closeted high school student who carries on an anonymous email relationship with another closeted student, all while trying to gather the courage to ‘come out’ to his family and friends. There have been many ‘coming out’ stories in independent cinema, but they’re usually sad, dreary affairs. Love, Simon, directed by Greg Berlanti (TV’s Everwood and The …
[4] Gerard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell star in this subdued, kinda boring rom-com from Peter Weir (Dead Poets Society, Witness). Depardieu plays a Frenchman trying to enter the U.S. by marrying an American woman. It’s an under-the-counter sort of arrangement that profits both parties, so long as the government doesn’t find out their marriage is a sham. Of course, the government does find out, and …
[3] It’s the 1600s and Europe is torn apart by religious warfare. Omar Sharif plays a Catholic villager who must help his people get along with their Protestant occupiers, led by Michael Caine. Caine’s militia have the power to wipe the Catholics out, pillage, rape and do whatever they like. But Caine takes a liking to Sharif and vice-versa. So everybody just gets along and hopes …
[8] Margot Robbie is Oscar-calibre as disgraced Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding, who was stripped of her titles and banned from the sport after her husband spearheaded an assault on her competitor, Nancy Kerrigan, in 1994. I, Tonya paints the picture of a young girl growing up poor and fatherless, with only a ruthless monster of a mother to guide her. Allison Janney (The West Wing) is in …
[6] Thomas Horn stars as an nine-year-old boy who searches New York city for the lock to a mysterious key owned by his father, one of the victims of the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001. I can’t make up my mind if it’s clever or overly-sentimental that Horn’s character has Asperger’s syndrome. On one hand, his lack of emotional perception keeps the …
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