Streaming Review: "Worth"

By Ben Miller

With the 20th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks approaching, Sara Colangelo’s Worth paints a compassionate picture of the victims and their families while attempting to get into the heads of the lawyers in charge of assigning a dollar amount to the victims. While the lead trio are each superb, the host of character actors and actress recounting their lost loved ones tug at the heartstrings.  Poignantly acted and directed, the film lacks the flash and grandstanding of the usual Hollywood fare, but still delivers a heartfelt message on the value of life.

Following the 9/11 attacks, to stave off the potential of economically disastrous lawsuits against the airlines, the United States Attorney General assigns respected lawyer Kenneth Feinberg (Michael Keaton) as the Special Master of the fund allocated to compensate victims and their families of the attacks...

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I can't believe she won

by Cláudio Alves

To love the Oscars is to live in perpetual disappointment. The Academy can celebrate cinematic excellence and their choices may even serve as a gateway to a cinephile's love for the seventh art. However, more often than not, great artistry is left unrewarded while more conventional fare coasts by and triumphs. When it comes to actors, it isn't rare to find stupendous professionals whose labor was and will never be recognized by AMPAS. Perchance their filmography is too foreign, their style too outré or their directors too artsy. Whatever the reason may be, an Oscar obsessive quickly learns that a lot of their favorites will never get close to winning that little golden man.

Sometimes, though, there can be wonderful surprises. One such event took place in 2007. Quite frankly, all these years later, I still can't believe this happened…

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Yes No Maybe So: Beautiful Boy

by Ben Miller

After a seemingly endless tease, we finally got the trailer for one of the most anticipated films of the year: Amazon Studio's Beautiful Boy.  Based on the memoirs of journalist David Sheff and his son Nic, the film follows David struggling through years of his son's addiction. Oscar-nominated Steve Carell steps into the role of David, while freshly Oscar-nominated Timothee Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name) plays his son Nic. Let’s dive right in with another addition of Yes, No, Maybe So...

YES

• Love trailers that start out of nowhere!  My guess is that this diner scene is at least two-thirds of the way through the film

• Carell looks to be in a quieter grief-stricken dramatic role, like he had in Last Flag Flying last year.  If that performance is any indication of what to expect, I am in.

• Chalamet has really turned into a Hollywood wunderkind...

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Tribeca 2017: "Abundant Acreage Available"

Nathaniel R reporting from the Tribeca Film Festival

It's been 10 years since Amy Ryan broke through to "prestigious character actress" fame, whilst nabbing herself an Oscar nomination and critical hosannas for Gone Baby Gone (2017). In the years intervening, it's been fairly obvious that Hollywood didn't know what to do with her thereafter, often casting her in less than challenging roles as sympathetic wives (think Win Win or Bridge of Spies) or ex-wives (think Birdman). But she's finally no one's wife in the humble drama Abundant Acreage Available, and that lack of 'belonging to' is both writer/director Angus Maclachlan's (best known for the screenplay to the wonderful Junebug, 2005) and Ryan's own secret weapon, giving the movie its most appealing frictions...

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Review: The Infiltrator

Manuel here with a review of The Infiltrator which opened yesterday nationwide.

Fact: Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic is one of the most influential films of the 21st century. That’s not a qualitative assessment but an increasingly common thought that’s rankled in my brain. Can you believe Soderbergh actually struggled to get his film financed because Hollywood execs didn’t think audiences would want to watch an entire film about the drug trade?

Fast-forward to summer 2016 when USA is premiering Queen of the South, Netflix will bring us season 2 of Narcos, two competing El Chapo TV series are in development, and Bryan Cranston’s The Infiltrator joins an ever-growing list of films about the war on drugs that range from the sublime (Sicario) to the pedestrian (Blow) with everything in between (Savages, anyone?).

In Brad Furman’s The Infiltrator, the Breaking Bad actor plays U.S. Customs Service special agent Robert Mazur who, as is par for the course in certain genres, decides to take on one last job to go undercover as “Bob Musella.”...

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