Carey Mulligan

Maestro

  • Title: Maestro
  • IMDb: link

Maestro

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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The Top Ten Movies of 2020

The Top Ten Movies of 2020

2020 was a hard year, and an unusual one for the movie business at large. In the void of many larger films being rescheduled and pulled from theaters due to COVID, the vacancies left room for many smaller films to garner more attention than normal. While the year may not have given us all that we wanted, and left several movie houses on the verge of bankruptcy, the quality of the movies did not diminish. The list includes all films released up until this date (so it does not include 2020 releases which won’t be available to the public until February or later). Here’s a look back the best films of 2020.

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Promising Young Woman

  • Title: Promising Young Woman
  • IMDb: link

Promising Young Woman movie reviewReferring to Promising Young Woman as revenge porn may be apt, but it’s also doing writer/director Emerald Fennell‘s devilish film a disservice. Mixing revenge, genuine dramatic underpinnings, and a dark sense of humor, the story twists and turns to squealish delight. Once promising medical student Cassie (Carey Mulligan) now lives with her parents and serves coffee at a small café. And in her spare time she targets men who take advantage of women in compromising positions.

Fennell is careful early on not to show us too much of Cassie’s tactics after she’s sprung her trap, allowing our imaginations to fill in the blanks about what this woman is up to as well about the reasons driving her behavior. The later is hinted at as the script drops breadcrumbs before confirming the events which led to Cassie leaving school. Cassie’s more general attacks become focused as she targets those connected to medical school (Adam Brody, Alison Brie, Connie Britton, and Alfred Molina). However, her plans are complicated by her first relationship in years and a boyfriend (Bo Burnham) who causes her to question the dark turns her life has taken.

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