Bad Teacher. An Education. Bad Education. Bad Santa. As with a human being, one might say there is nothing more personal than a person’s name. However, it can get lost in the weeds when a movie doesn’t have a title that can be quickly associated with it. Furthermore, if the film isn’t memorable and has no recognizable title, it’s likely to get even further caught in the weeds. Such could have been, and likely was to many, Cory Finley’s (Thoroughbreds) Bad Education.
Category Archives: Drama
Licorice Pizza (2021)
Say what you will about Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, Magnolia). Whether you are a fan of his directing or not, his movies feel like they are so much longer than they need to be. Painfully so, sometimes. He hooks you with his rich characters (often played by some of the finest actors in the industry) and what feels like a soft, gentle story. But then his movies tend to drift aimlessly, going down so many different wormholes before finally arriving at an unsatisfying conclusion. Such is the case with Licorice Pizza, a boy-meets-girl coming-of-age story that is likely to earn some Oscar nominations despite its waning story and crawl to the finish line.
Riders of Justice (2020)
In a year when movies have been the worst of my lifetime, I have been pleasantly surprised by the originality of the three most recent films I have seen. Jockey, A Hero, and Anders Thomas Jensen’s Riders of Justice gave the year a late jolt of hope that it could amount to something more. However, it may be too late with only a dozen or so movies left to see (and even fewer than I am excited to see). Unlike the first two movies, Riders of Justice, while a neat little film, won’t make my end-of-year top ten, which I believe Jockey and A Hero will.
Jockey (2021)
2021 has been a year filled with disappointing movies. The pandemic has played a crucial role, with many studios opting to push back their release dates to 2022 (or 2023), hoping that theaters can lure audiences back once those who are more tentative feel safe again. Movies, as a whole, couldn’t get worse than the 2020 batch. Unfortunately, 2021 has proven to be worse. There are still a handful of films that I haven’t seen that I hope will elevate the year (Dune, Nightmare Alley, Belfast, Spider-Man: No Way Home, C’mon C’mon, Being the Ricardos, Licorice Pizza, Red Rocket, Spencer, Last Night in Soho).
A Hero (2021)
I recently took an annual leave day off from work. The plan was to attend my local independent arthouse theater and see a movie that would be nominated for an Academy Award. I watched an early-morning showing of Jockey, a quiet little film in its own right that I will review next. Upon leaving, I spotted a poster of A Hero. It was a film I had seen pop up in advertisements on some of my other frequently visited movie websites. It had intrigued me, but I knew it was a subtitled (Persian) movie. I need to be in the right mindset, or I’ll get distracted and miss everything. Still, I debated buying a ticket and doing a double feature. But then I saw it was an Amazon Prime movie. I looked up the film on my phone and noticed it was available on Prime starting that day. So, I decided to skip the theater viewing and watch it at home instead. I’m glad I did, but only because the film was a bit longer (127 minutes). I wanted to break it up into a couple of chunks (full transparency: I also took a quick nap between Jockey and A Hero… by the time I started the second movie, I was ready to go).