Year: 2024

January 22, 2024 · Watch the trailer

Courtroom dramas have become rare over time in American cinema as the genre has been so overexposed in television series that traditional “who-dun-it” legal stories are largely left to “Law and Order” spinoffs.

International filmmakers, however, have continued to craft intricate and compelling tales that keep the genre fresh in spite of this trend and director Justine Trier’s latest film, “Anatomy of a Fall,” is slated to become one of 2023’s most successful dramas and a major awards season contender with a relatively straightforward narrative after winning the coveted Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Acclaimed German actress Sandra Hüller stars as a writer whose husband is killed after falling from the third story window of their remote chalet and the ambiguous accounts of the incident from the couple’s visually impaired son Daniel drive authorities down a winding road questioning whether it was accident, suicide, or murder.

The film’s intentional ambiguity about what happens to Samuel leaves audiences at the edge of their seat as Sandra’s account comes into question. The pressure that this places on both Sandra and Daniel in the courtroom portions of the film test both actors’ ability to find intentionality in their performances while remaining ambiguous enough to keep viewers from fully believing Sandra to be innocent or guilty before the film’s final moments.

In a film that relies so heavily on its actors to maintain quiet subtlety, there’s a strength and power to Hüller’s Sandra that is intoxicating and captivating to watch and her ability to maintain composure as best she can while being interrogated by a law enforcement system breaking her down in both English and French. The bilingual nature of the entire feature is both a way in for American audiences, but also one that can also pull them out if they feel they have to disengage from the narrative to become reliant on subtitles.

Newcomer Milo Machado Graner wonderfully blends Daniel’s fragile physicality and emotional scars with a genuine warmth that helps keep the audience from falling totally out of love with either of his parents and perfectly reinforces the ambiguity of the narrative to keep viewers guessing.

Perhaps the strangest thing American audiences will discover about “Anatomy of a Fall” will be the unusual way that courtroom scenes take place with witnesses almost simultaneously being questioned by the prosecution, defense, and the judge, and yet, even more bizarrely, Sandra as the defendant is peppered with questions during other witness testimony.

This creates a ping-pong nature of dialogue where the film rapidly pivots back and forth throughout the courtroom between different characters with sharp editing and a crisp, awards-worthy screenplay keeping scenes afloat and preventing them from running completely off the rails. This more unconventional means of framing the back half of the film will be somewhat jarring to many viewers and may hinder their enjoyment of “Anatomy of a Fall” on an initial viewing although once audiences acclimate to Trier’s structure, the film becomes incredibly compelling in its bucking of traditional convention.

Bizarrely, “Anatomy of a Fall” is expected to earn a Best Picture nomination as well as Best Actress and Original Screenplay nods at this year’s Academy Awards but will not be eligible for a Best International Feature prize as France controversially chose to submit “The Taste of Things” instead for consideration.

While it’s unlikely that the film will receive the same acclaim that Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” did several years ago in sweeping the Oscars, the likelihood that “Anatomy of a Fall” is one of three Best Picture contenders with subtitles along with Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” and Celine Song’s “Past Lives” proves how diverse the voting body is becoming in showcasing world cinema on an American stage.

Though it doesn’t have cinematography that requires it to be seen theatrically, “Anatomy of a Fall” is still perhaps the year’s best foreign film and something cinephiles should certainly make an effort to rent on demand as they work to fill out their Oscar ballots this winter.

January 15, 2024 · Watch the official trailer

Whether audiences will like or burn the new “Mean Girls” remake is entirely dependent on what sort of film they believe they are walking into.

Fans who grew up with the 2004 original from Tina Fey starring Lindsey Lohan and Rachel McAdams might find this new iteration’s lack of dry, sardonic humor to be underwhelming or out of touch, while others who know this to be an equal translation of the 2018 Broadway adaptation and are ready for as much of a musical as a comedy will find it much more appealing.

The story remains relatively the same regardless of inspiration as “Mean Girls” follows a naïve Cady Heron as she moves from a homeschool life in Africa to enter the world of superficial, plastic American high school and is pitted between genuine outsiders Damian and Janice against the popular girls led by the infamous Regina George.

While it’s impossible for anyone who has seen the original not to compare these two films, this version of “Mean Girls” attempts to modernize and update the narrative both on a pop culture and thematic level as there’s a definite progressive pop rock style to the film’s presentation that’s grounded in the film’s musical numbers but also pervades the way in which directors Arturo Perez Jr. and Samantha Jayne film their tale as well.

In keeping with this twist on a revered comedy, the focus shifts from Cady as the traditional lead to showcase the magnetic, scene-stealing performance of Reneé Rapp as the villainess Regina George, who portrayed the character on Broadway and completely outclasses everyone else in “Mean Girls” with a lightly sardonic, twisted take on the character originated by McAdams.

While her traditional acting is on par with the cast, it’s clear that Rapp is a next level musical performer and the songs she’s featured on rise to the forefront of the film’s best moments. Though much of “Mean Girls” should be about wanting to see the story reimagined and hear classic jokes told in the new way, large chunks of the film feel like filler until Rapp can sink her teeth into another pop punk rock song.

This should not take away from the fact that Angourie Rice’s Cady is actually incredibly expressive in her physicality and she wears Cady’s naivety on her face at all times in a performance that is unquestionably better than Lohan’s original and further proves that Rice deserves a vehicle more suited to her talents than this awkward smash of music and comedy, neither of which she is entirely at home in.

The film’s ensemble cast does have quality moments, especially “Moana” voice actress Auli’I Cravalho in her first major film role to appear on screen in, giving a wonderful supporting turn as Janice that highlights her ability both vocally and as an actress in her own right, while Jaquel Spivey often provides the film’s most clever and funny line deliveries as Damian.

The other “plastics” Karen and Gretchen played by Avantika and Bebe Wood each also have their moments, but don’t rise quite to the same level as original cast members Lacey Chabert and Amanda Seyfried.

On the whole, “Mean Girls” can be fun, but the fatal flaws come from audiences being able to see the seams in the filmmaking as inexperienced directors Perez Jr. and Jayne don’t really know how to handle the mixture of tones between musical, comedy and drama.

They bring a lot of bright ideas to the table, especially visually. The cinematography and production design really provides an updated, stark contrast to the original and swings for the fences in both good and bad ways. Throughout the film cinematically, Regina is showcased on a level unlike any other character to the point where she receives her own aspect ratio to draw audiences into Rapp’s magnetic allure.

Overall, this iteration of “Mean Girls” is certainly something that younger audiences not as familiar with the original will find themselves attached to and it’s a decent enough movie for the dearth of January releases that could make it an early box office hit although there’s nothing so engaging about the film that it could be considered a must-see in theaters.

January 8, 2024 · Watch the official trailer

A man sits at the breakfast table with his sons and proceeds to publicly rank them from favorite to least favorite, making specific comparisons along the way while reminding them that “the rankings can always change.”

This narcissistic means of control becomes the catalyst for much of the lives of his sons, though surprisingly their relentless desire to please the father in admiration of him never lessens the brothers’ love and affection for one another, setting the stage for an intricate drama of success and tragedy that befell a prominent Texas family in the 1980s.

Though it is firmly set in the world of professional wrestling, writer/director Sean Durkin’s third film “The Iron Claw” is more demonstrably concerned with what happens outside the ring or on its periphery than what happens within the squared circle. It’s a story of family, love and loss that critically analyzes the psychological impact that a demanding father can have on his sons and raises vital issues about men’s mental health and how a code of silence hidden within strength can be used to mask inner turmoil and larger problems that many men will unfortunately never talk about until it’s too late.

Durkin uses the true story of legendary Texas wrestling family The Von Erichs, who lost several brothers in tragic circumstances, to bring to life one of the year’s most emotional and heartfelt dramas.

A film about brothers and brotherhood only works if the cast is able to form a unique bond and chemistry to make their family believable and Durkin has amazingly brought together perhaps the year’s best ensemble cast to populate his world.

In a career-best performance, Zac Efron has a lot of power in his physicality, but a humbling introspective grace in his emotional work that grounds “The Iron Claw” in Durkin’s more stoic drama.

Audiences are able to view the family through Kevin’s eyes thanks to the magnetic ways that Efron is able to portray complex emotion on his face and viewers grow to love the brothers because they can see how genuinely Kevin, and by extension Efron, loves them as well.

“The Bear” star Jeremy Allen White is equally transfixing in a different way as his ability to twist Kerry into whatever emotion is needed to round out a scene was done with a chameleon-esque gravitas.

Harris Dickinson and Stanley Simons round out the mix and perfectly balance the two more audacious brothers and gives the foursome the feeling that the depth of their bond is unbreakable despite tragedy and how much their father might want to pit them against each other like rivals in the ring.

As such, the so-called “bad dad” role can easily be overplayed to mustache-twirling levels, but Holt McCallany has a more matter-of-fact approach to the role of Fritz that exudes a mentality of “my boys are going to do what I say because that’s just how it is” frankness in his parentage that is never called into question despite how Durkin clearly shows his issues.

Conversely, the women of “The Iron Claw” are given thankless roles in the narrative with Maura Tierney absolutely crushing an underutilized and devastatingly emotional turn as a mother who watches her family face tragedy after tragedy.

Visually, Durkin approaches “The Iron Claw” as if it were a boxing film rather than a film about professional wrasslin’. There’s an intimacy in which Durkin approaches action in the ring that constantly keeps the camera focused on the family even if they’re simply watching from afar, which takes the drama and spectacle out of the fighting and contextualizes wrestling as just a piece of the family’s bond.

Although physicality in “The Iron Claw” is staged, the actors portraying the Von Erich brothers go for broke by doing the majority of their own stunts and taking real hits that wrestling requires, which can be incredibly intoxicating to watch, especially in a pivotal scene where Kevin’s psyche begins to break as he begins throwing himself onto the mat over and over again.

Perhaps the most difficult and challenging drama to get right tonally, Durkin is able to wonderfully weave the sadness with a heartfelt tale about brotherhood to make “The Iron Claw” a top-ten film to be released in 2023 and something cinephiles should make a concerted effort to see.