I first watched Sam Raimi’s (Spider-Man 2, A Simple Plan) For Love of the Game in the fall of 1999. It was the day after Virginia Tech defeated Clemson at Lane Stadium on ESPN’s Thursday Night Football. My dad had come down for the game. The day after, we went to see the Kevin Costner-led (A Perfect World, Field of Dreams) baseball drama. I’m a sucker for films that seamlessly incorporate flashbacks to advance the story better. For Love of the Game did just that, perhaps, at the time, in a way that I hadn’t seen before. 23-year-old me left my viewing thinking that it was one of the top 10-15 movies I’ve ever seen.
Category Archives: Drama
Babygirl (2024)
One of the most divisive films of 2024 was Halina Reijn’s (Instinct) Babygirl. Much of this may be due to the film being Reijn’s follow-up to the highly successful Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, while some of this may be due to the film’s taboo topic of a workplace affair between a superior and subordinate, revolving around domineering and submissive sex. Some filmgoers likely lined up on opening night to see this much-talked-about movie since its 2024 Venice International Film Festival screening. For many others, this would be a film they could never watch. While I am willing to give most films a fair chance (at least 10-15 minutes), Babygirl is not one I would have felt comfortable watching with someone else. It’s a film that takes a far-too-taboo subject for most social settings and groups to discuss and gives it a home. However, while the film felt genuine and honest, Babygirl did not venture into the lanes we may have wished for. Presumably, what we thought would occur did exactly that. While it did those things well, many may be disappointed that it didn’t aim for something more profound. I lay somewhere in between.
Far and Away (1992)
There have only been a handful of movies I’ve been able to call my favorite of all time. From 2015 to the present (February 2024), it has been The Revenant. The Town had a few years’ run before that. Before that, the honor belonged to The Shawshank Redemption, holding it for many years after wrestling it away from Braveheart, which had an equally long run. It dates back to the 1980s, The Goonies, and a surfing movie called North Shore, until Young Guns took the title in 1987. The ’90s were when my favorite film changed hands the most, full of some of the first Rated R movies I saw in the theater, including Flatliners, True Romance, Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, and Ron Howard’s (In The Heart of the Sea, Rush) sweeping romantic adventure, Far and Away.
The Brutalist (2024)
Brutal. That was how I had already decided how I was going to describe Brady Corbet’s (The Childhood of a Leader, Vox Lux) The Brutalist, regardless of what I thought about it. With a runtime of three hours and forty-five minutes (plus a 15-minute intermission), I asked myself before my theater viewing, “Why am I seeing this?” The answer is not because I had any interest in seeing it but because it had been nominated for ten Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Lead Actor (Adrien Brody – The Pianist, The Jacket), Best Supporting Actress Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything, On the Basis of Sex), and Best Supporting Actor Guy Pierce (Memento, The King’s Speech). I saw it in the theater because content creators I follow told me the viewing experience had to be there, since Corbet shot the film on VistaVision. This process involves shooting the film horizontally on 35mm film stock to achieve a higher-resolution image for large screens. I wouldn’t have noticed a difference if I had not learned this beforehand.
It Ends With Us (2024)
It Ends With Us, the 2024 film from director Justin Baldoni (Clouds, Five Feet Apart), is another example of a film movie that had the potential to be great but ultimately tried to do too much or incorporate too many elements that weren’t otherwise needed in an attempt to want to be more than the movie was capable of delivering. While there is quite a discrepancy between critics and audiences (55% vs. 89% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), it’s tough to dispute that this touches on issues significant in today’s society, including a conclusion that feels murky and haunting, but also honest and authentic, and one that I haven’t seen before in movies or shows about the subject matter. It Ends With Us does have trigger warnings. Proceed cautiously before deciding to watch or read my review.