The latest from writer/director Hayao Miyazaki follows a familiar formula of a child dragged into an unusual and magical world. Based on experiences Miyazaki had as a child with loss, the film is a personal one for him with a message of striving to overcome grief and loss and the growth from childhood into adulthood by learning to unselfishly care for others.
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This study of the relationship between Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper, who also directs) and actress Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein (Carey Mulligan), gives us a peek at the woman behind America’s first great conductor, all the while keeping the Maestro firmly in the spotlight. The film’s first hour or so, much of it set in black and white, is often delightful with its playful and bawdy tone. Moving into middle age and the later years the film turns a bit mean and messy and eventually contemplative, focused on the hard realities of a complicated and compromised relationship between the pair that was, nevertheless, built on a foundation of love.
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Writer/director Kristoffer Borgli dives into the ups and downs of fame with the unusual prospect of an unremarkable college professor who begins showing up other people’s dreams. Mostly nothing more than an unassuming witness to the dream which otherwise has nothing to do with him, Paul (Nicolas Cage) becomes an immediate celebrity simply for the phenomena he has no control over. However, when his actions in the dreams of others become more explicit and violent the backlash becomes quite real leading to trouble at home, at work, and even attacks made against him.
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Single White Female meets The Talented Mr. Ripley in this psychological thriller about how the awkward Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) becomes infatuated with one of his classmates at Oxford, the beautiful, wealthy, and popular Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), and begins to wedge himself into Felix’s life, eventually getting invited to spend the summer at the palatial estate which gives the film’s its title.
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They Shot the Piano Player weaves together a fictional framework, true events, and real interviews to explore the disappearance of Brazilian pianist Francisco Tenório Júnior, and its wider implications, as well as the rising popularity of bossa nova music coming out of Rio de Janeiro in the previous decade. Originally writing a more lighthearted book about the the music of the period, our protagonist is introduced the work of a promising musician and begins pulling on the loose thread of Tenório’s life.
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