Armageddon Time, James Gray’s (Ad Astra, The Lost City of Z) 1980 take on the pursuit of the American Dream, is a film with good intentions, but one that felt plagued by a plot that we’ve seen hundreds of times in cinema before. Even more detrimental to its predictable story was its attempt to impart wisdom to its audience, almost all of which we are already keenly aware of, especially in its release year of 2022. Unfortunately, The United States of America has been notorious for its class privileges, inequalities, and injustices. While we all have the opportunity to pursue the American Dream, specific paths often have far more obstacles to overcome than others. Gray successfully showcases this, but it’s hardly a discovery, and its overarching story has become quite a cliche.
Category Archives: Jessica Chastain
The Good Nurse (2022)
While Netflix offered its Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, a ten-part mini-series on, perhaps, America’s most notorious serial killer, the same company also brought to its streaming service, as well as to the big screen, a feature-lengthed film on lesser known, albeit more another prolific serial killer in Tobias Lindholm’s The Good Nurse. This review will undoubtedly contain spoilers. If you have yet to see The Good Nurse, I recommend a viewing, though I’ll caution that it operates slower than what you both wish and expect. I am uncertain if I would have given as invested in The Good Nurse had I watched it at home rather than at the theater. This is all to say that it deserves the attention the director, the writers, and the actors put into it.’
The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021)
Jessica Chastain (Molly’s Game, Zero Dark Thirty) is attempting to become the second actress to win a Lead Actress Oscar and a Lead Actress Emmy in the same year. After just two episodes of the five-part HBO miniseries Scenes from a Marriage, Chastain seems like a shoo-in to win an Emmy for her role as Mira, a middle-aged wife, opposite Oscar Isaac. The latter encounters some of the most challenging struggles a married person might ever have. It’s a hard-hitting, riveting drama that could sweep awards season in the miniseries category. Chastain further showcases her acting prowess as Tammy Fay Baker, the televangelist and our protagonist in Michael Showalter’s (The Big Sick, Hello, My Name is Doris).
Ava (2020)
2020 has been a year with many movies either delayed to later in the year or postponed entirely until 2021. Films considered for Oscar awards for the year are receiving an extension for when they need to be released. That extra time could be extended even longer, depending on events later this year because of the 2020 pandemic. Many movies have skipped theaters and gone straight to OnDemand. One of those movies that will need to worry about Oscar consideration this year is Tate Taylor’s (The Help, The Girl on the Train) Ava.
Woman Walks Ahead (2018)
Inspired by true events, Susanna White’s (Our Kind of Traitor, Nanny McPhee Returns), Woman Walks Ahead is a pretty good movie made worse by its Hollywoodization. The film takes true events and changes them for no real reason. The general moviegoer would never have known the difference between what transpired and what was fictionalized. But the fact that there was a differentiation between fact and fiction didn’t do anything but cheapen the movie. One of the hardest things for me to do when reviewing a movie is trying to determine if the liberties that were taken to strip a movie of its factual basis while still claiming to be based on a true story truly advance the movie past the point where it would have arrived to if it had just followed the facts. There is a big difference between Based on a True Story versus Inspired by True Events. Literally, almost anything can be inspired by a true event. To be fair, Woman Walks Ahead never says if it is based on a true story or inspired by true events. But then again, if you see a movie that features Sitting Bull, you probably would draw your own conclusion that the movie was based on a true event. We don’t need a caption at the start of the movie to tell us this. So you can do one of two things…enjoy the movie as it is, which does have a lot of factual aspects to go with its fictional elements, or pick at the movie about its discrepancies between fact and fiction until you get to the point where you can find no joy in it. I often try to go with the former than the latter, but it’s so hard sometimes…especially when you have a movie that would have been just as good had it used its factual components as it is with its fictional elements. From what I gathered from my research, Woman Walks Ahead would have left us with a similar feel at the end if it had followed the story more true to its actual form. Continue reading Woman Walks Ahead (2018)