[7] Steve McQueen (Shame, 12 Years a Slave) brings Lynda La Plante’s novel to the screen. Widows is about a woman who rallies the girlfriends and wives of her deceased husband’s gang of robbers, all of whom died in a botched robbery with her husband, to execute plans for what would have been their next heist. They all need to do this because their dead lovers …
[8] Rami Malek stars as Freddie Mercury in Bryan Singer’s (X-Men, Valkyrie) biopic about the formation and explosive success of rock group Queen. The film centers primarily around Mercury — his estranged relationship with his family, his homosexuality, his drug use, and eventual battle with AIDs — but without ignoring the other members of the band, played by Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, and Joseph Mazzello …
[7] Nicolas Cage stars as a third shift New York ambulance paramedic haunted by ghosts and clinging to his sanity in this grim, sometimes darkly comic film from director Martin Scorsese and Taxi Driver scribe Paul Schrader. Cage’s character gets a natural high from saving people’s lives, but he hasn’t saved one in months — and he needs his fix. A cardiac arrest case leads him …
[7] Meryl Streep stars in the true story of a plutonium processing worker who is purposefully contaminated with the lethal substance after she initiates a whistle-blowing campaign about the company’s safety standards. Kurt Russel plays the love interest and Cher plays the best-friend and would-be lesbian lover. As directed by Mike Nichols (The Graduate), Silkwood conjures a very specific and palpable setting — the impoverished …
[6] James Woods stars as the museum director taken to court when photographs from Robert Mapplethorpe’s 1990 exhibit were accused of being obscene in Cincinnati, Ohio. Diana Scarwid and Craig T. Nelson also star in this made-for-cable movie that incorporates Mapplethrope’s photos and interviews with political pundits and people who knew and worked with Mapplethorpe. I enjoyed the artist’s photos and the documentary interview bits, …
[7] Robert Altman directs this adaptation of David Rabe’s award-winning stage play about four young Vietnam draftees who let their fears and insecurities get the better of them after one of them reveals he’s gay. Streamers is a character study that takes place over two nights in a U.S. army barracks. Matthew Modine plays the all-talk tough guy, David Alan Grier plays the mediator of the …
[8] A father tries to save his son from drug addiction in this true story based on the lives and writings of David Sheff and Nic Sheff. Beautiful Boy opens on the father, played by Steve Carell (Little Miss Sunshine), waiting up all night for his son to return home. Two days pass while Carell phones local hospitals and police, getting more desperate by the …
[5] Ryan Gosling stars as an inner-city junior high teacher with a drug habit. When one of his students finds him in a crack-induced stupor on the bathroom floor, the two strike up an unlikely relationship. Gosling and the girl (Shareeka Epps) are both very good and writer/directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden (Captain Marvel) keep it real — real far from sentimental, that is. …
[8] I very much enjoyed Drew Goddard’s previous work on Cloverfield and The Cabin in the Woods, and I’m a big fan of single-location ensemble stories, so I was excited to see what Goddard had in store with Bad Times at the El Royale. Bad Times features about seven characters — the titular hotel’s front desk boy and six guests — who each have a …
[8] Director/co-star Bradley Cooper decided it was time for a fourth version of A Star is Born (previous versions were released in 1937, 1954, and 1976). I haven’t yet seen any of those versions, so I’m coming into this one without the burden of comparison. I was expecting a romance movie with a lot of singing. So I was expecting to hate the movie, honestly. …
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