Drama

Maestro

/ / Movie Reviews
  • 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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Past Lives

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  • Title: Past Lives
  • IMDb: link

Past Lives

Writer/director Celine Song‘s Past Lives examines the haunting touch of love across time and distance. After introducing us to 12 year-old best friends Na Young (Moon Seung-ah) and Hae Sung (Leem Seung-min) on the verge of something more, Na Young’s family leaves South Korea for the United States, and we skip forward 12 years where Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) reconnects with Na Young now Nora (Greta Lee) over the Internet. Living on opposite sides of the globe, the two find their connection in place although the inability to physically connect becomes eventually too great and leads to another 12 year gap where the now married Nora is visited by Hae Sung in New York City.

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Nyad

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  • Title: Nyad
  • IMDb: link

Nyad

Based on true events, Nyad offers the attempts of retired long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad (Annette Bening) who in her 60s became obsessed with completing the swim from Havana to Florida which she failed to accomplish in her 20s. While in many ways your typical sports drama featuring an athlete overcoming impossible odds, and driven (and haunted) by personal experience, the film’s story is elevated by the performances of Benning and by Jodie Foster who plays Diana’s best friend and coach throughout her multiple attempts to make history.

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Rustin

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  • Title: Rustin
  • IMDb: link

Rustin

Director George C. Wolfe‘s biopic of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin (Colman Domingo) deals primarily with Rustin’s role in being the guiding force in organizing the 1963 March on Washington. The film is more notable for its performances that plot which doesn’t give us much information about the man other than how his homosexuality and former Communist leanings created friction with the NAACP who disowned him for a period of time before the 1963 march.

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They Shot the Piano Player

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: They Shot the Piano Player
  • IMDb: link

They Shot the Piano Player

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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