Category Archives: Drama

TÁR (2022)

tar movie posterCate Blanchett is the female actor version of Daniel Day-Lewis. Daniel Day-Lewis is the male actor version of Cate Blanchett. Tomato Tomahto. While Day-Lewis may be a little more selective in his roles than Blanchett, resulting in fewer Oscar nominations (six – all in leading roles) than Blanchett’s seven (four in a leading role, three in a supporting role). Day-Lewis has won three Oscars, to Blanchett’s two (The Aviator and Blue Jasmine). Day-Lewis (65 years old at the time of this post) has said he is retired, finishing his career in 2016, carrying an Oscar nomination for Phantom Thread with him. However, Blanchett is anything but finished. In the discussion for the best in her craft, Blanchett is a sure-fire lock for her eighth Oscar nomination and the early leader for her role as Lydia Tar in Todd Field’s (Little Children, In the Bedroom) meticulous-crafted and timely TÁR.

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The Good Nurse (2022)

the good nurse movie posterWhile 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.’

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On the Count of Three (2021)

on the count of three movie posterThe opening sequence of Jerrod Carmichael’s feature-length debut On the Count of Three shows a revolver being pointed inches from the face of Kevin (Christopher Abbott – It Comes At Night, First Man), a thirty-something man with swollen eyes and a twitching mouth that suggests that something terrible is about to happen to him. Then, the camera shifts to Val (Carmichael – Neighbors, The Disaster Artist), who has a similar firearm in his hand, pointing it at Kevin. Are these two men adversaries, attempting to make the other lower their gun with the threat to shoot?

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Till (2022)

til movie posterAs I watched the beginning of Chinonye Chukwu’s (Alaskaland, Clemency) true story Till, my mind kept returning to two different thoughts. The first was the film’s timeframe, thinking about my grandparents and realizing that the film’s lead character, Mamie Till-Mobley (The Harder They Fall, The Devil to Pay), was about the same age as my grandparents when the film took place (mostly) in 1955. The second was how I thought Till felt like a stage play, as much as it did a feature-length movie. I pondered how a live experience might feel. Sadly and shamefully, I only became aware of Emmett Till’s story for the first time when I saw the trailer. While I knew there were parts that I knew would be brutal, it was it wasn’t until we got to the film’s second act that I truly began to understand the story’s magnitude and felt that this story would be nearly impossible to pull off as a stage performance because of how draining it might be for the actors to go through the experience repeatedly, as well as how a live performance might devastate unprepared attendees.

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The Woman King (2022)

Living Legend Viola Davis (FencesMa Rainey’s Black Bottom ) captivates each scene she’s in, regardless of the movie. With as much range as anyone in Hollywood, Davis has earned her share of accolades, amassing four Academy Award nominations in the last 13 years. But she’s never had the opportunity to headline a big-budget movie on her name alone. In Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball, Beyond the Lights), The Woman King, Davis gets the opportunity to do just that. Davis’s performance well could earn her a sixth Oscar nomination (in a very competitive year). The film, filled with epic battle scenes, told an important true story. Ultimately, though, The Woman King failed to live up to my expectations.

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