Pieces of a Woman, Kornél Mundruczó’s (Jupiter’s Moon, White God) venture co-starring Vanessa Kirby (Mission Impossible: Fallout, The World to Come) and Shia LaBeouf (The Peanut Butter Falcon, Honey Boy), has the most excruciating half-hour of a film you’ll see this year. Expertly pieced together by the film’s editing crew is a single, continuous 23-minute scene meant to represent, likely, at least a few hours of a childbirth process. It’s intense, gutwrenching, fascinating, and heartbreaking all at once. As someone who didn’t know a thing about this film going in other than the first twenty seconds of its trailer that cemented my interest level, I thought for the entire 23-minute sequence that this would be the whole movie, likely sprinkled with flashbacks to a happier time.
Category Archives: Shia LaBeouf
Honey Boy (2019)
Ruthless, raw, and honest. That describes to a tee Alma Har’el (LoveTrue, 11/8/16) Honey Boy, the film based on writer Shai LaBeouf’s (The Peanut Butter Falcon, Borg Vs. McEnroe) own childhood experiences with his father. Showcasing events over two time periods, the 2005 version of Otis Lort (Lucas Hedges – Manchester by the Sea, Ben Is Back) is a 22-year-old, rising movie star who has had violent, alcohol-induced brushes with the law. His latest DUI has landed him in a court-ordered rehab, where he is diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), something which he steadily denies. As part of his therapy, he is pressed by his counselor (Laura San Giacomo – Havoc, Sex, Lies, and Videotape) to dig deeper and pen out the events in his life that have led him to this point. At this point, we continually go back and forth between the 1995 and 2005 timelines.
The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)
Sometimes, movies have dumb names or names that are so obscure that you can’t even remember the title. This is the case with first-time directors Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz in the sentimental surprise summer hit The Peanut Butter Falcon. Starring protagonist Zak (newcomer Zack Gottsagen), whose screen chemistry with Shia LaBeouf (Man Down, Borg Vs. McEnroe) is instantaneous, the result is a sort of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn between two pals trekking and floating down the fictional marshland in North Carolina.
Borg Vs. McEnroe (2018)
The 1980 Wimbledon Men’s Championship Match was one of the greatest tennis matches of all time. It featured the number one player in the world (Sweden’s Bjorn Borg) who was seeking his fifth street title in the most famous tournament in the sport against the upstart American John McEnroe, who had quickly climbed to be the number two player in the world. Young director Janus Metz captures the history of both men and their rivalry up to this point in their careers while centering on this all-important match. Fans of tennis, I think, will adore this match, and fans of any sports movie will find this to their liking. It’s a hold-nothing-back take on two of the most influential tennis players of all time. From groundstrokes to aces to backhand slices to overhead spaces, Borg Vs. McEnroe effectively captures the in-game action. Effective storytelling that contained tons of flashbacks of each player as a youth as well as the half dozen years before the tournament, as well as the other matches in the tournament that led to this culminating final, showed two true character studies that a rookie director effectively captured. While the non-sports fan might feel lost with all of the back and forth while the non-tennis fan might get confused about some of the particulars about the sport (particularly how the sport is scored), there is enough outside of the court that will keep the audience engaged as they try to figure out these two externally very different competitors who, I think, could relate to one another in ways that they could not relate to any other person on either. Forget the fact that you’ll never think that McEnroe isn’t Shia LaBeouf (Man Down, American Honey), Borg Vs. McEnroe is a must-watch movie for most movie fans and certainly for the fan of sports dramas.
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Man Down (2016)
Continuing the two themes of actors who I once didn’t really like but who, in recent films, has begun to win me over (Miles Teller) as well as films about characters suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after serving in wars in the Middle East (Thank You For Your Service) comes the critically panned Man Down, a movie that I don’t ever recall being in the theatre and didn’t know existed until a good six months after it was released. Earning a score of just 17% on Rotten Tomatoes, director Dito Montiel (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Fighting) delivers an emotionally disturbing uneven film about a character traumatized by a specific incident that happened on his single tour. Man Down stars Shia LaBeouf (Lawless, American Honey) in what might be his finest performance to date. He stars as United States Marine Gabriel Drummer, who, after a raid and clearing of a house gone wrong in a village in Afghanistan, tells his story to Captain Peyton (Gary Oldman – Darkest Hour, The Dark Knight Rises), a military superior. The critics said that this movie exploits PTSD compared to a more subtle movie like Thank You For Your Service (which also has the advantage of being based on a true story, something that Man Down lacks). While I can see that, especially in the film’s final act, I disagree as a whole. War is hell. It’s one of those things that we don’t have to experience firsthand to believe. But it is something we need to experience firsthand or be close to someone who experienced it firsthand to understand truly. When we can’t, we sometimes turn to books, television, or movies hoping that they will portray a true picture for us. I think that’s what Montiel did here, even if a vast majority of his critics disagreed.
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