Score another victory for Netflix in its ongoing battles with Hulu, Apple+, Prime Video, Peacock, HBO Max, Disney+, etc. The original streaming movie streaming service has seen many peaks (and a few valleys) since it moved from its strictly digital base platform in 2007. Fifteen years later, with fierce competition, including the likes of Amazon and Apple, two of the most influential companies in the history of the world, the 1997 start-up company continues to be the clubhouse leader with both its quantity and quality of original content. Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre follows up The Mustang, her breakthrough directorial effort, with Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a heartwrenching retelling of the classic D.H. Lawrence novel.
Category Archives: Joely Richardson
Red Sparrow (2018)
Lots to unwrap with Francis Lawrence’s (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, I Am Legend) ambitious spy thriller Red Sparrow, a 2018 early summer release that flew, mostly, under the radar domestically ($46 million) but excelled internationally ($150 million). Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle) is, as of 2018, probably the actress who can command the most money per movie. If not number one, she’s pretty darn close. But, obviously, that doesn’t mean that every movie she does will earn her an Oscar nomination or earn $100 million. And she’s not exactly choosy. Since bursting onto the scene with 2010’s Winter’s Bone, the first of her four Oscar nominations and one of the best breakout performances in the last 25 years, Lawrence has gone on to star in more than 15 movies before the release of Red Sparrow. And while she can excel at portraying various characters, a Russian spy will not go down as one of her Top 10 performances of all time. It’s not that she was bad as Dominika Egorova, a Russian ballet dancer who is more or less forced into the life of being an undercover operative after a terrible leg injury ruins her dancing career and leaves her needing money to pay for her mother’s medical expenses.
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Thanks For Sharing (2013)
Stuart Blumberg’s Thanks For Sharing is a much softer and more humane look at the trials and tribulations of sexual addiction than is Steve McQueen’s 2011 Shame. Both movies broach this once taboo topic with relatively deep character studies. While both films tell fairly compelling stories, neither earned much at the box office. Together, the two movies generated just over $4 million domestically. I think that fact that these two movies were both made over two years and the two attracted stars like Mark Ruffalo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim Robbins, Michael Fassbender, and Carey Mulligan shows that there are those in Hollywood who want to bring the issue come to light even if the general public is still a little reluctant to make it to the theater to check out these movies on the big screen.
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