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).
Category Archives: Drama
Blue Bayou (2021)
Blue Bayou was a film I knew nothing about three days before my viewing and one I have been incredibly excited about since. I love a well-crafted, heavy drama, and this film told me, after watching the first 45 seconds of the trailer, that this was something that I would see opening weekend. The Rotten Tomatoes scores enhanced my excitement about the movie (73%, 96%).
CODA (2021)
CODA stands for ‘Child of Deaf Adults.’ It’s a perfect name for Sian Heder’s (Tallulah) feel-good movie of the summer. While, at times, it feels like a sappy Hallmark or Lifetime original, CODA is held together by its protagonist Ruby (Emilia Jones – What We Did on Our Holiday, Two for Joy), a seventeen-year-old high school senior, who is the only non-deaf member in her eccentric, but loving, deaf family.
Flag Day (2021)
n a film he directed, Sean Penn (The Indian Runner, The Crossing Guard) picked a fine time to put himself in front of the camera for the first time. Flag Day is just Penn’s sixth directing effort and only his second since 2007’s Into the Wild, which he has openly admitted is the pinnacle of his Hollywood career. That is a crazy thing for someone who had won an Oscar for Best Actor just a few years prior (Mystic River) and again a year later (Milk). In an interview promoting Flag Day, I read that Penn had written two books and would have continued to write more had they had the same success. However, with those novels faltering, perhaps he felt directing gave Penn more autonomy than directing and that this is how he wanted his accomplishments to be with his work behind the lens rather than in front of it.
Joe Bell (2020)
Sometimes, when producing a movie, it is based on having a great story, while at other times, it is based on having a great cast. Of course, many other factors can make or break a film, but let’s concentrate on these first two and ask a simple but essential question. What happens when you potentially have the first two, but they conflict? I believe that director Reinaldo Marcus Green (King Richard, Monsters and Men) likely faced that decision in Joe Bell. Here, he had the true story of a father walking from his hometown in Oregon to New York City to raise awareness for bullying after Jadin (Reid Miller), his openly gay 15-year-old son, committed suicide after being repeatedly tormented at school because of his sexual orientation.