Molly's Game

December 23, 2017 by Guest User in melissa strong, reviews

Directed by Aaron Sorkin (2017)
by Melissa Strong

Molly's Game is the 2017 holiday release that alternates action with pathos grabs, entertaining enough and safe to see with relatives who don’t get your taste in film. It is similar to other December releases, such as American Hustle (2013) and The King’s Speech (2010): star-studded and based on real events, with an occasionally intrusive score and a triumphant hero. It does the average Christmas release one better by including a female protagonist and a few more people of color. However, Molly’s Game is less successful in its attempts to be topical and profound.

From Animated Features to Subtitles: Siblings Coming of Age

August 24, 2017 by Guest User in melissa strong

by Melissa Strong

Growing up with a sibling means always having an alibi, plus someone else to blame for broken stuff. It means always competing for attention from parents. And it means worrying about your brother hiding Michael Anderson in your closet to watch you change clothes. Okay, maybe that last one is just me. Because my sibling’s birth occurred a year and a half after my own, I cannot remember a time when he wasn’t around. We grew up together, from preschool Play-Doh to high school They Might Be Giants shows.

Celebrations of Regionalist Film: A Mixtape

July 31, 2017 by Guest User in melissa strong

by Melissa Strong

Regionalism is a style and mode of expression that has helped to distinguish American arts by celebrating what makes our country special and unique. Regionalism resists a homogenized, “melting pot” conception of American culture, instead recognizing that American identities and experiences differ depending on place but also class, race, ethnicity, and gender. Equally important, regionalism usually attempts faithful renderings rather than caricatures, unlike shows such as Swamp People; the best regionalist artists dignify, not degrade, their subjects.

A Streetcar Full of Lies

May 16, 2017 by Guest User in melissa strong

by Melissa Strong

A Streetcar Named Desire is a hotbed of deception, full of characters lying to one another and to themselves. Viewers may feel deceived too as they piece together the story of the indelible Blanche DuBois and her relationships with her sister Stella and the men in her life. Streetcar is a masterwork of American drama and an important movie that continues to resonate in the twenty-first century. Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) is a case in point: this well-received drama/thriller reinterprets characters and rehashes situations right out of Streetcar. Wait, what? Before we go there, let us first examine Streetcar’s lies.

Under the Skin

April 14, 2017 by Guest User in melissa strong, reviews

Directed by Jonathan Glazer (2013)
by Melissa Strong

“The best adaptations riff a little,” asserts TV writer Alessandra Stanley, reimagining not just minor details but also sensibility. Stanley points to the show Homeland as an example: it reinvents Prisoners of War by moving to the U.S. from Israel with a female C.I.A. operative at its center rather than three male soldiers. She may be right about that, but books often suffer when they are adapted to film.

Best Visible, Vocal, and Real Grown-Up Female in Hollywood

March 07, 2017 by Guest User in melissa strong

by Melissa Strong

The award for Best Visible, Vocal, and Real Grown-Up Female in Hollywood goes to Carrie Fisher. Fisher’s death in January is a fitting occasion for an appreciation of her life and works. She may be best known as Princess Leia, but Fisher gave many other notable performances, from Marie in When Harry Met Sally to Dr. Evil’s therapist in Austin Powers. Equally important, Fisher was a talented writer with a terrific sense of humor about her performance in Star Wars as well as her fame and its dramas.

The Space Between Us

February 03, 2017 by Guest User in melissa strong, reviews

Directed by Peter Chelsom (2017)
by Melissa Strong

What is your favorite thing about Earth? This is not a question most of us consider, and it may prove as difficult for you to answer as it does for the Earth dwellers in The Space Between Us. Gardner Elliott wants to know, because he was born on Mars in the near future and has spent his entire 16 years there. Gardner is charmingly played by Asa Butterfield, but The Space Between Us suffers from insufficient development of plot and character, compounded by generic schizophrenia -- does it want to be a sci-fi movie? A teen romance? A kid’s search for the parent he never knew, which results in finding himself? A dangerously ill character’s life-affirming road trip, with car chases and explosions for good measure?

Dark Times with a Few Sexy Creeps

January 11, 2017 by Guest User in melissa strong

by Melissa Strong

Creeps are unpleasant, deviant, and disturbing people. Real-life creeps tend to be repellent. Movie creeps, however, can be weirdly alluring. Some are even sexy in a sinister, disconcerting way. Sexy creeps are a longstanding tradition with strong ties to film noir, with their elegant femme fatales and dashing hard-boiled detectives. They can be psychologically manipulative, like Gregory Anton in Gaslight (1944); inscrutable with terrible secrets, like Maxim de Winter in Rebecca (1940); or violent, like Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), who makes wearing a t-shirt look both menacing and hot.

The End of Us: Post-humans on Screen

December 05, 2016 by Guest User in melissa strong

by Melissa Strong

Practically since the invention of the motion picture, movies have imagined worlds where humans are threatened, surpassed, and replaced by androids, cyborgs, hybrids, and machines. Metropolis (1927), the seminal silent film written by Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou and directed by Lang, anticipates Blade Runner’s replicants as well as the alt- and post-humans that follow in the twenty-first century.

Thrills and Chills in Period Films

October 27, 2016 by Guest User in melissa strong

by Melissa Strong

Period movies offer creepy psychodrama and mysterious plot twists perfect for Halloween viewing. If you enjoyed The Witch and The Woman in Black, consider The Others (2001): the time, 1940s. The place, Jersey, U.K. The literary connection, Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. A woman isolated with her sickly children and weird servants in a remote country house. Strange occurrences ensue. Things are not what they seem, and someone isn’t telling the truth. Who is haunting whom? Directed by Alejandro Amenábar, starring Nicole Kidman.