Ready to call it a career, Frank James (Sam Shepard – Out of the Furnace, The Right Stuff) promises his brother Jesse (Brad Pitt – Legends of the Fall, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) one last train heist with the notorious James Gang. Then, Frank will drift off into the sunset and live out the rest of his life quietly. But what will happen to Jesse? Well, he will be assassinated by the coward Robert Ford. The film’s title gives the plot away unless somehow we are talking about the assassination metaphorically. We are not. So what keeps director Andrew Dominik’s (Blonde, Killing Them Softly) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford such an alluring watch for its nearly three-hour runtime?
Hope. Love. Tragedy. Despair. We desire the first pair of words. We dread the second pair. When we experience all five of these emotions in the order presented here, what comes after experiencing despair? Death? Rebirth? Complacency. If the suffering is deep enough, is any coming out of it? Do we even want to? Do we believe that we can find joy again? If we do, will we recognize it? Will we embrace it? In Mona Fastvold’s (The Sleepwalker) The World To Come, we spend 98 minutes with Abigail (Katherine Waterston – Mid90s, Alien: Covenant), a grieving mother who has spent the year before unsuccessfully trying to process her young daughter’s death.
I went into my viewing of Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s (Megan Leavey, Blackfish) Our Friend, knowing almost nothing. I hadn’t seen a single trailer or read even a sentence of a single review. All I knew was that the movie starred Casey Affleck, a drama based on a true story, and had both an audience and critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes that exceeded 85%. It was enough for me to give an unknown movie a chance. I was rewarded with a film that, while incredibly uneven, delivered in a deeply affecting way for which I was ill-prepared. This incredibly poignant movie is not for everyone. Bring your tissues. If you are a cancer survivor or were with someone during their successful or unsuccessful battle with cancer, be forewarned that Our Friend could bring on some incredibly intense emotions, some of which you have been consciously or unconsciously suppressing. Its final act strikes you at your core while also humbling you at the same time.
When you begin watching Light of My Life, you might feel like you’ve seen this movie before, or at least a variation of it. If you are like me, you’ll feel like this is a mixture of The Road meets Leave No Trace meets A Quiet Place meets Children of Men. After reading several different reviews, many other critics have a similar sentiment. Somewhere in the not-too-distant future, we are in a post-apocalyptic world where something horrific has already happened, and we are left with inventive survivors who are left to pick up the pieces and make a semblance of their new lives. In these types of movies, we learn that what has happened to get us to this point will slowly be revealed throughout the movie, often through flashbacks, one of the tools used in this Casey Affleck-directed film.
Ben Affleck’s (Argo, The Town) Gone Baby Gone is a classic film if you watch it once. But then comes the age-old question, “Does a movie stand the test of time?” And the answer to the question for this film is “I think so.” By this, I’m referring to the fact that if you watched it today for the first time, you would likely feel the same sentiments I felt on my first watch. You would think that it is an instant gem. But there are better movies for repeat viewings. Some films are great the second, third, and fourth time around. Gone Baby Gone is not one of those films. It’s a bit frustrating on repeat viewings. But I will ignore my most recent viewing of this film and write it from the standpoint that I had just seen it for the first time because that is the review it deserves.
Ready to call it a career, Frank James (Sam Shepard – Out of the Furnace, The Right Stuff) promises his brother Jesse (Brad Pitt – Legends of the Fall, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) one last train heist with the notorious James Gang. Then, Frank will drift off into the sunset and live out the rest of his life quietly. But what will happen to Jesse? Well, he will be assassinated by the coward Robert Ford. The film’s title gives the plot away unless somehow we are talking about the assassination metaphorically. We are not. So what keeps director Andrew Dominik’s (Blonde, Killing Them Softly) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford such an alluring watch for its nearly three-hour runtime?
Hope. Love. Tragedy. Despair. We desire the first pair of words. We dread the second pair. When we experience all five of these emotions in the order presented here, what comes after experiencing despair? Death? Rebirth? Complacency. If the suffering is deep enough, is any coming out of it? Do we even want to? Do we believe that we can find joy again? If we do, will we recognize it? Will we embrace it? In Mona Fastvold’s (The Sleepwalker) The World To Come, we spend 98 minutes with Abigail (Katherine Waterston – 
I went into my viewing of Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s (Megan Leavey, Blackfish) Our Friend, knowing almost nothing. I hadn’t seen a single trailer or read even a sentence of a single review. All I knew was that the movie starred Casey Affleck, a drama based on a true story, and had both an audience and critics’ score on 
When you begin watching Light of My Life, you might feel like you’ve seen this movie before, or at least a variation of it. If you are like me, you’ll feel like this is a mixture of 
Ben Affleck’s (