2017’s The Greatest Showman is a musical drama whose popularity I struggle to understand. For all its huge setpieces and hyper-stylised choreography its narrative and thematic substance was cloying and often faux, with overwhelmingly bland songs – minus Rewrite the Stars – to boot. Director Michael Gracey at last returns …
There are few subjects more emotive than motherhood, but a story about a new way to enable motherhood/parenthood should not have taken why that is as granted. On stage before the world premiere of Joy at the London Film Festival, director Ben Taylor and star James Norton both spoke about the …
Reality Winner (yes, that is her real name) is a veteran of the United States Air Force, but she’s best known for leaking classified government documents to the media. Those documents regarded Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. It was a story that dominated talk shows and news stations …
After a botched limited theatrical release, Joachim Rønning’s Young Woman and the Sea is now available for all to view on Disney+. Strangely enough, the film never received any theatrical footprint in Canada, the next-door neighbor to the United States, and was announced as a ‘Disney+ Original’ when it made …
Musical biopics consistently earn a reputation as a simple path to awards seasons and other accolades. In recent years, there have been examples in Bohemian Rapsody, Maestro, Elvis, and The United States vs. Billie Holiday, among others. It is a genre that has been repeating itself constantly and delivering mediocre …
Not much is known about Josef Mysliveček – the 18th-century composer at the center of writer and director Petr Václav’s lavish historical biopic The Bohemian – in the English-speaking musical world. It is known he was on good terms with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as the two composers vied for recognition …
Directed by the Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov, Limonov: The Ballad premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where the film competed for the Palme d’Or in May 2024. Serebrennikov also co-wrote the name with Ben Hopkins and Pawel Pawlikowski. The film is based on Limonov, a 2011 book by Emmanuel Carrére …
Disney’s newest sports-inspiration film, Young Woman and the Sea, may not be the most artistic film ever made, but it knows what it’s supposed to be doing and does it well. Directed by Joachim Rønning, the biopic follows Trudy Ederle (Daisy Ridley), a New Yorker born in 1905, as she …
How do you illustrate for the screen a life lived with physical limitations? You illustrate the life of the mind. In this biopic of writer Flannery O’Connor (Maya Hawke), the inventor of the ‘southern Gothic’ genre of literature, director Ethan Hawke (also the producer, co-writer, and Ms. Hawke’s father) chose to enact sequences from …
It seems you can’t turn a corner at the moment, whether online or in your social circles, without someone mentioning Netflix’s new hit Baby Reindeer, a psychological thriller-cum-dark comedy about a man and his stalker. The show, which chronicles the ‘true’ story of protagonist Donny Dunn (Richard Gadd), a failing comedian …
Judee Sill is the musical icon that time has forgotten. A new documentary from filmmakers Andy Brown and Brian Lindstrom seeks to change that. LOST ANGEL: The Genius of Judee Sill is the definitive history of the female vocalist and musician. Sill was a transformative artist but also had a troubled life that tragically ended too …
I consider biographies – better known as biopics – to be one of the most challenging narrative types to adapt for the big screen. From the inevitable bias towards the usually eponymous person, especially if the production involves family members, to the common trap of only telling what best serves …
Amy Winehouse was arguably one of the greatest singers of the 21st century. Her remarkable voice, combined with her ability to tap into emotional authenticity, made her a force to be reckoned with in the modern music scene. At 27 years old, she left this world far too soon, leaving …
In 2023, we saw a movie based on the Holocaust taking the world by storm. Yes, we are talking about Jonathan Glazer’s haunting masterpiece, The Zone of Interest. It gave a very different perspective about an event that changed the world. Now, months later, we have another project revolving around the Holocaust. James Hawes’ One …
Specific true-life stories demand the big-screen cinematic treatment. In some cases, those true stories can go on to earn Academy awards (Braveheart, Schindlers List). In other cases, some films can dishonor those stories’ legacies. Adapting those stories can be some of the most challenging films to make. The story of the …
Biopics about popular celebrities can be difficult to create, largely in part because they will try to capture the scope of one’s whole life rather than the key elements that made them who they were. It’s not necessarily an incorrect approach to the genre, but for every fun or creative …
J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is the focal point of the new film Oppenheimer from writer and director Christopher Nolan. It is the story of the top mind behind the Manhattan Project, known as “the father of the atomic bomb.” Most everyone knows the Manhattan Project was an operation the United States …