Antigone

January 06, 2021 by Rosalie Leonard in reviews, deborah krieger

Written and directed by Sophie Deraspe
Starring Nahéma Ricci, Nour Belkhiria, Rawad El-Zein and Rachida Oussaada
Running time: 1 hour and 49 minutes

by Deborah Krieger

There are few plots more compelling, and resonant on a deeply personal level, than those about families. It’s why Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina opening line “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” has drawn in readers for over a century; it’s why The Godfather, Hamlet, Little Women, Shameless and even the increasingly convoluted machinations of the Star Wars “Skywalker Saga” have continued to draw in audiences and acclaim. When your family is all you have in this world, we are asked, what would we do to protect them? And what wouldn’t we do—what wouldn’t we risk, what norms or laws wouldn’t we break—to do right by them?

African Violet

August 18, 2020 by Rosalie Leonard in reviews, deborah krieger

Directed by Mona Zandi Haghighi
Starring Fatemah Motamed-Aria, Saeed Aghakhani and Reza Babak
Running time: 1 hour and 33 minutes

by Deborah Krieger

In a mainstream American film, the premise of the aging ex-husband coming to live with his former wife and her new husband (who is also the ex-husband’s ex-best friend) would be played as broad comedy. There’s the manly resentful chest-beating leading to a detente where they get drunk together at a bar, there’s a scene where the ex-husband walks in on the couple in flagrante delicto—it’s easy to envision.

Cunningham

January 03, 2020 by Rosalie Leonard in reviews, deborah krieger

Directed by Alla Kovgan
Featuring Carolyn Brown, John Cage and Ashley Chen
Running time: 1 hour and 33 minutes

by Deborah Krieger

In my time as someone who writes about movies, I’ve watched a fair few documentaries (or at least more than I would have ever seen in theaters), and written about them for this site. For the most part, I’ve approached documentary films as first an opportunity to learn about the subject matter, and secondly as art objects in their own right. If I learned something new, then great!—and then, onto whether I thought that new thing was presented creatively. So of all the documentary films I’ve reviewed, Alla Kovgan’s Cunningham best exhibits the inherent tension between these two objectives of documentary filmmaking. It’s essentially a showcase of several of the late, great modern dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham’s most famous compositions, presented in evocative new settings and calibrated for 3-D viewing.

Pokémon: Detective Pikachu

July 22, 2019 by Guest User in deborah krieger, reviews

Written by an ass-ton of people and directed by Rob Letterman
Starring Ryan Reynolds, Justice Smith and Kathryn Newton
Runtime: 1 hour and 44 minutes
MPAA rating: PG for action/peril, some rude and suggestive humor, and thematic elements.

by Deborah Krieger

I was never a Pokémon master. I didn’t play the video games (except for about a day’s worth of Pokémon Go hunting), and I was more interested in the Kids’ WB Yu-Gi-Oh! offerings than the adventures of Ash, Misty, and Brock. I did collect the cards with my brother; I’m pretty sure I still have a shiny original Vaporeon in a binder in my childhood bedroom. So while I’m definitely not the precise target demographic for Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, I’m familiar enough with the lore and the world-building to understand the strange beauty of a Pikachu with the voice of Deadpool, and to be entranced by a world where Pokémon look and feel like real better-than-pets you could live with. (Even if I was initially put off by the idea of such a fluffy-furred Pikachu.)

Us, Forever Ago

June 20, 2019 by Guest User in deborah krieger, reviews

Written and directed by Irina Varina
Starring Irina Varina, Andrea Clinton, Emily McLoughlin
Running time 1 hour 10 minutes

by Deborah Krieger

Us, Forever Ago is the kind of movie I was glad I could watch on my laptop at my leisure, because it’s complex and opaque enough, at times, to warrant a second or even a third viewing. Irina Varina, who wrote, starred in, and directed Us, Forever Ago, has crafted a fractured, occasionally muddled, but emotionally compelling quasi-fictional narrative about what it means to be an artist, and of Varina’s own artistic self-formation.

The Chaperone

May 01, 2019 by Guest User in deborah krieger, reviews

Written by Julian Fellowes
Directed by Michael Engler
Starring Miranda Otto, Haley Lu Richardson and Elizabeth McGovern
Running time: 1 hour and 43 minutes

by Deborah Krieger

The Chaperone has the problem of being about someone who is interesting-adjacent. Based on the best-selling novel by Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone is a fictionalized account of the coquettish and provocative actress Louise Brooks’ (Haley Lu Richardson) first summer in New York City, as seen through the eyes of the thoroughly ordinary wife and mother Norma Carlisle (Elizabeth McGovern). Before she was bob-haired Lulu in Pandora’s Box, Louise Brooks was a rebellious dancer who first came to New York from Wichita, Kansas, to study with the famed dancers Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. As was appropriate for 1922, she was accompanied by a chaperone, Alice Mills, about whom we actually know very little. The Chaperone, then, imagines this mysterious woman as someone who was touched, briefly, by liveliness and grace and talent, caught in the light of Louise’s shining star as she comes to New York for reasons of her own.

Hey, Rewind That! The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

April 16, 2019 by Guest User in deborah krieger, hey rewind that

by Deborah Krieger

I’m inaugurating Moviejawn’s new column, “Hey Rewind That!” in which your favorite movie writers analyze movie details that made an impression and lingered in our minds long after the credits rolled.

The Invisibles

March 26, 2019 by Guest User in deborah krieger, reviews

Written and directed by Claus Räfle
Starring Max Mauff, Alice Dwyer, Ruby O. Fee
Running time: 1 hour and 50 minutes
MPAA rating: not rated

by Deborah Krieger

In terms of narrative technique, The Invisibles comes across as a sort of reverse American Animals. Both films combine documentary interviews with extensive staged reenactments of real events, going beyond the more usual methods (as seen in documentaries like 1971 where we aren’t meant to connect with the staged portions of the movie as much as they exist to give us a break from endless talking heads after the fact. Yet the choices made in how to balance reenactment footage—to allow it to make the movie almost a biopic—distinguish American Animals and The Invisibles, resulting in films of distinctly different quality. American Animals is mainly a fictionalized narrative film, and it only uses interviews with the real people who attempted to steal the Audubon book sparingly, chiefly to remind us that everyone involved has their own version of the story. Even the narrative parts starring Evan Peters (who was robbed of awards attention for this role) are told through a specific lens: the filmmaker’s. American Animals is as much about the unreliability of our own personal narratives as it is about a failed book robbery. The Invisibles, sadly, comes across as extremely didactic, as if it is inherently unsure of why so much of the movie is reenacted by professional actors.

Woman at War

March 20, 2019 by Guest User in deborah krieger, reviews

Written and Directed by Benedikt Erlingsson
Starring Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, Jóhann Sigurðarson and Juan Camillo Roman Estrada
Running time: 1 hour and 41 minutes
MPAA rating: not rated

by Deborah Krieger

Halla is, by all appearances, a model citizen of Iceland. An unassuming, independent woman in her late forties or early fifties, she works as a choir director, coaxing beautiful sounds out of her fellow singers, and rides her bike around town, always ready with a gentle smile for everyone. During her free time, though, she’s roaming the Icelandic wilderness with a bow and arrow and explosives to sabotage the aluminum plants that risk harming that beautiful landscape, accompanied by a fourth-wall-breaking three-piece band of horn, drums, and accordion that only she can see. If no one else will go to the extremes required to protect the environment, Halla reasons, why not she?

Ruben Brandt, Collector

March 04, 2019 by Guest User in deborah krieger, reviews

Directed by Milorad Krstić
Starring Iván Kamarás and Gabriella Hámori
Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes
MPAA rating: R

by Deborah Krieger

Stendhal Syndrome describes the phenomenon of being completely overcome with an extreme physical, mental, and/or emotional response to viewing a work of art. Symptoms include shortness of breath, dizziness, fainting, heart attacks, giddiness, dissociation, or even hallucinations, all triggered by experiencing something of particularly high artistic quality. The awe mingles with a sense of disorientation, leaving the viewer dazed and excitable and moved to agony. (People have been known to fall prey to these reactions when seeing Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling or the David.)

A Boy Called Sailboat

January 31, 2019 by Guest User in deborah krieger, reviews

Written and Directed by Cameron Nugent
Starring Julian Atocani Sanchez , Jake Busey and Elizabeth De Razzo
Running time 1 hour and 32 minutes
MPAA rating-not rated, but kid friendly

by Deborah Krieger

A Boy Called Sailboat is an astonishingly assured debut narrative film, managing to be heartwarming but not overly cloying, visually striking without seeming like a formal exercise, thoughtful but probably not too complicated for kids to understand. It’s a movie for the whole family, whether you’re a cinephile or a sucker for gentle, kid-friendly storytelling. The premise is simple enough, narrated by and shown entirely through Sailboat’s eyes. Sailboat (Julian Atocani Sanchez), a precocious young boy, and his parents José (Noel Gugliemi) and Meyo (Elizabeth De Razzo) live in a ramshackle, teetering house in a desert town on the United States-Mexico border. The entire area has been in a drought ever since Sailboat was born, with no rain in sight. One day, while playing in a junk heap, Sailboat finds a beautiful ukulele. When his abuela falls sick, she tells Sailboat to write her a song, and so he does, teaching himself to play his “little guitar” until he’s written the greatest song ever.

On the Basis of Sex

December 21, 2018 by Guest User in deborah krieger, reviews

Directed by Mimi Leder
Written by Daniel Stiepleman
Starring: Felicity Jones, Armie Hammer, and Justin Theroux
Running time: 2 hours
MPAA rating: PG-13 for some language and suggestive content

by Deborah Krieger

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is everywhere these days, as she should be. The “Notorious RBG” memes and Kate McKinnon impersonations on Saturday Night Live serve as catchy pop-culture testaments to her importance as one of the more progressive members of the United States Supreme Court in an era where civil rights are being eroded away. She breaks a rib and half the country holds its breath; we want to cocoon her in bubble wrap to keep her and her passionate sense of justice on the bench for as long as humanly possible. Hyperbolically (and likely quasi-sincerely), we offer her our organs, our limbs, our beating hearts. Facebook keeps encouraging me to buy earrings shaped like her famous lacy “dissent” collar. In the absence of a sense of common decency in the other branches of federal government, a nation turns its eyes to the second female Justice appointed to the Supreme Court to supply us with the food for the soul a stirring dissent or witty, spot-on remark can provide.

Maria by Callas

December 04, 2018 by Guest User in deborah krieger, reviews

Directed by Tom Volf
Starring Fanny Ardant, Joyce DiDonato and Maria Callas
Running time 1 hour and 53 minutes
MPAA rating: PG for mild thematic elements, some smoking and brief language

by Deborah Krieger

I vaguely remember being lulled to sleep as a child by the harmonies of the Flower Duet from Lakmé, and I’ve seen The Barber of Seville and Porgy and Bess performed live, so my knowledge of opera is existent, but quite slight. Because of that, I have to think that Maria by Callas is for people who would consider themselves genuine opera enthusiasts aching for one of its most prominent stars, Maria Callas, in her own words and not really for me. Maria by Callas has no interviews about her with prominent opera singers, music critics, or historians reflecting on her life and legacy, as in conventional documentaries about famous people. After a laborious, multi-year process that involved getting his hands on letters, home video footage, and photographs, director Tom Volf has compiled a nearly two-hour summary of Maria Callas’ life on her own terms.

Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable

October 29, 2018 by Guest User in deborah krieger, reviews

Directed by Sasha Waters Freyer
Starring Geoff Dyer, Susan Fraenkel, Jeffrey Fraenkel and Erin O’Toole
Running time: 90 minutes
MPAA rating: NR

by Deborah Krieger

It’s quite a phenomenon to watch a documentary film about a modern photographer that is rather postmodern in its aims and intentions. If I were writing a fancy essay about Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable, the new documentary by filmmaker and Virginia Commonwealth University professor Sasha Waters Freyer, calling the film “postmodern” would be a good way to summarize how precisely and unforgivingly the film is dedicated to tearing down the aura of the modernist Great Man of Art and Culture that has come to define so many (male) artists and auteurs from the twentieth century. In that sense, it’s very clear that Freyer approached this project as a scholar as well from a filmmaker’s perspective, because in less critical hands, All Things are Photographable would have come across as a fawning appreciation of a Great Man, rather than the bracing and refreshing analysis it is. Learning that Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable won the “Special Jury Recognition for Best Feminist Reconsideration of a Male Artist” at the 2018 South by Southwest Film Festival is the exact opposite of a shock (unless you count my surprise that there actually is an award for “Best Feminist Reconsideration of a Male Artist.” How very 2018.).

The Song of Sway Lake

October 17, 2018 by Guest User in deborah krieger, reviews

Directed and co-written by Ari Gold
Starring Rory Culkin, Robert Sheehan and Isabelle McNally
Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes
MPAA rating: R for language, graphic nudity and some sexual content

by Deborah Krieger

“Dearest Charlotte, you begged me to freeze time. I’ll do anything, even that.” Mingling in the waters of a mist-glazed lake, Charlotte (Mary Beth Peil) and Hal (Brian Dennehy), an army man away at war, exchange epistolary love notes, essentially spelling out the message and themes of the movie about a minute or so into an ninety-minute movie. As we immediately learn from a well-executed faux-1940s newsreel, Charlotte (Charlie) and Hal are members of the Sway family, whose private lake retreat has all the glamour and prestige of a West Egg hot spot. Their son swims in the beautiful waters of the lake as a newscaster-style voice croons, “So, Timmy, are you going to be a hero like your father?” We then immediately cut to Sway Lake in February, 1992, as frozen and bleak as a tundra, where the adult Timmy Sway promptly drowns himself in that unforgiving abyss. A needle settles into the grooves of an LP; the lights of the lake house are on, but no one is coming home.

Colette

October 04, 2018 by Guest User in deborah krieger, reviews

Directed by Wash Westmoreland
Starring Keira Knightley, Eleanor Tomlinson and Fiona Shaw
Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes
MPAA rating: R for some sexuality/nudity

by Deborah Krieger

The thrust of Colette’s plot can be summed up in a single, momentary shot: As Colette (Keira Knightley) and her husband Willy (Dominic West, looking frightfully like Kenneth Branagh as Poirot), ride a tandem bicycle. Sitting in front, Willy lifts his feet from the pedals in a moment of playfulness, while Colette continues pedaling away, keeping them both moving forward. As the ghostwriter of Willy’s bestselling Claudine novels, Colette steadily works to pay the bills, while Willy enjoys the popularity and acclaim that result—until she’s had enough of being a tool, of being an attraction on Willy’s arm, of being half of the Brangelina of Belle Époque Paris. For every Watson and Crick, there’s a Rosalind Franklin.

Sierra Burgess Is a Loser

September 14, 2018 by Guest User in deborah krieger

Sierra Burgess (admittedly a clever way to adapt the name “Cyrano de Bergerac” into something that sounds natural in 2018) is the classic nerdy outcast, flanked by her best friend Dan (RJ Cyler), who never once ascends beyond the played-out trope of the Black Best Friend.

The Bookshop

August 28, 2018 by Guest User in deborah krieger, reviews

Written and Directed by Isabel Coixet
Starring Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighyand Patricia Clarkson
Running time: 1 hour and 53 minutes
MPAA rating: PG for thematic elements, language, and brief smoking

by Deborah Krieger

The Bookshop is a lovely-looking film, but that’s really all there is to recommend it. I’m not familiar with the acclaimed novel upon which this adaptation is based, but the experience of watching The Bookshop is like taking in a version of Chocolat without any of the latter film’s vitality, emotion, or sensuality. The original novel actually predates Chocolat (and its respective source text), but the forty-year gap between The Bookshop book and The Bookshop movie only serves to make nearly every plot point and character beat seem incredibly clichéd and played out. We have the weary, earnest widow Florence Green (Emily Mortimer), who decides to open a bookshop in her dreary little English village; we have the wealthy, petty, manipulative Violet Gamart (Patricia Clarkson) who wants to stop her; we have Christine, the precious, devilishly charming child who helps Florence at the shop (Honor Kneafsey); we have Mr. Brundish, the mysterious, reclusive benefactor who supports Florence in her cause (Bill Nighy); and, most importantly, we have the expected coterie of small-minded, suspicious, incurious townsfolk who, ultimately, let Florence (and the cause of literary appreciation) down. There’s even an overly-explanatory narration that turns out to have been a recollection by the aforementioned child the entire time.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

August 04, 2018 by Guest User in deborah krieger, reviews

Written and Directed by Casey Wilder Mott
Starring Rachael Leigh Cook, Paz de la Huerta, Avan Jogia, Ted Levine
Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes
MPAA Rating: Not Rated

by Deborah Krieger

When it comes to modernized Shakespeare adaptations, I am inclined to say, “the more, the merrier!” Adapting texts, especially classic ones, from stage to screen can, and should, allow the filmmaker to reshape the text and tell the story from an often completely unexpected new perspective. So Casey Wilder Mott’s Kickstarter-funded adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is right in my wheelhouse of what I want to see in a Shakespeare adaptation. While it keeps the vast majority of the storyline and the original text, it remains true to the surreal, mystic quality of the play’s story by placing it in a setting that contemporary audiences will read as appropriately surreal and mystic: Athens is played by Los Angeles, California, and her forested and beachy environs. It’s why I’ll always argue for the use of contemporary music in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, because it gave the audiences who saw his movie the immediately-understandable equivalent of what those Roaring Twenties parties were like: lush, vivid, hedonistic.

Custody

July 31, 2018 by Guest User in deborah krieger, reviews

Written and Directed by Xavier Legrand
Starring Léa Drucker, Denis Ménochet, ThomasGioria, Mathilde Auneveux
Running time 1 hour 33 minutes
MPAA rating: not rated
Trigger warning: this film contains scenes of domestic violence, which are discussed in this review.

by Deborah Krieger

The first fifteen minutes or so of Custody (Jusqu’à la garde in French, directed by Xavier Legrand) are a bit of a red herring in terms of what kind of film we’re going to get. In an ordinary meeting room, Miriam (Léa Drucker, Le Bureau des Légendes) and Antoine (Denis Ménochet, Inglourious Basterds), along with their respective black-gowned attorneys, present their cases before a slightly-exhausted looking judge and her assistant. They’re waiting for the judge to weigh their statements and make a decision, but they’re also making their cases to us, the audience, who are meeting them for the first time, and are, like the judge, hoping to glean as many truthful details as possible.