Tag: anthony hopkins

Screening Room: ‘The Father’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Adaptations, Film - Awards, Film - NewLeave a comment

Florian Zeller’s adaptation of his play The Father is one of the year’s best-acted movies, thanks to Olivia Colman and Anthony Hopkins.

The Father is opening soon wherever movies play these days. Go find it. My review is at Slant:

A quietly terrifying drama about dementia, The Father starts off inauspiciously as a simple chamber piece in which a daughter spars in semi-comic exasperation with her retired father over his inability to live on his own anymore. Set in a tony London flat, the drama initially appears to take place inside the kind of tastefully cinematic milieu where nothing earth-shattering ever seems to happen. But before long, Zeller upends expectations by revealing the true depths of the father’s problems through dramatic perspective shifts that undermine any sense of cozy remove…

Here’s the trailer:

New in Theaters: ‘Noah’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

Every so often it seems that Hollywood gives the Bible epic another go. But there’s something about the genre that could well be so mired in the past that it refuses to be updated; Gibson and Scorsese couldn’t help but fundamentally remake it. Now comes Darren Aronofsky, last seen giving ballerinas nightmares in Black Swan, with his own unique take on the Bible story.

Noah is playing now everywhere. My review is at PopMatters:

In order to tell the story of Noah and the flood for over two hours, the movie erects considerable dramatic and political scaffolding, and in so doing, becomes a Biblical epic truly like no other. With its visionary asides and warnings of environmental apocalypse, it’s too idiosyncratic to make sense as mainstream seat-filler. But Noah is also a tamed thing, curiously lacking in daring for a director usually so eager to pluck an audience’s nerves like a violinist…

You can see the trailer here:

New in Theaters: ‘360’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

Fernando Meirelles’s new drama 360 looks on the surface to be another of those broad tapestry films like Babel and Crash—set as it is in multiple cities from Denver to London to Vienna and packing enough thespian firepower for one of those off-year Woody Allen misfires. But except for an unnecessary voiceover at the opening and climax, which tries to tie a loose ribbon around what we’ve just seen, it’s not nearly so self-important or desperate. Because of that, it will also (perversely) probably be much less popular than the films mentioned above, even though there’s life practically bursting out of every pristinely shot scene…

360 is opening today in limited release but should expand around the country fairly soon, given the Oscar firepower in the cast. My full, mostly positive review is at Film Journal International.

Check out the trailer here: