Drama

Shōgun – Anjin

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Shōgun – Anjin
  • IMDb: link

Shōgun - Anjin

The ten episode limited series begins with a starving ship of Dutch sailors crashing into the coast of Japan. One of the only survivors of what started out as a five-ship fleet, Major John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) is interrogated in the fishing village before taken to Osaka where more drama is afoot with four of the five feudal lords looking to oust Lord Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), the most loyal to the the child heir to the empire in a move to consolidate power. The third pivotal role in the series, Lady Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai), has the smallest role in the opener really on part of a sequence involving the honor and attempted suicide of another woman, but more about her character will be expanded as the mini-series continues.

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Varsity Blues

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Varsity Blues
  • IMDb: link

Varsity Blues

In West Canaan, Texas a back-up quarterback who cares more about his friends and his Ivy League scholarship than the weekly game gets thrown into the spotlight after the starter goes down. Earning more than three times its budget and holding the #1 spot at the box office for two weeks in January of 1999, Varsity Blues may not have been a runaway hit, but it did well enough to catch interest.

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American Fiction

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: American Fiction
  • IMDb: link

American Fiction

American Fiction would be a fun paring with The TV Set or Yesterday as a double feature. Jeffrey Wright stars as Monk, a lonely professor and struggling novelist whose work is often dismissed for not being black enough. After a dust up with a student forces an involuntary leave from the school, and while trying to avoid family drama he’s not ready for, an angry and bitter Monk writes a novel under a pseudonym mercilessly parodying the worst black stereotypes only to find publishers and even movie producers lining up for My Pafology.

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All of Us Strangers

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: All of Us Strangers
  • IMDb: link

All of Us Strangers

Writer/director Andrew Haigh offers a stylish and delicate tale of early romance between Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal as neighbors in a mostly empty apartment building featuring great performances from both its leads. So where does my problem with All of Us Strangers lie? Without giving too much away, it’s the shaky base of the film presented entirely from Adam’s (Andrew Scott) point of view which gets problematic as we learn he’s got a complicated relationship with reality.

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The Holdovers

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Holdovers
  • IMDb: link

The Holdovers

From director Alexander Payne comes this tale of an unlikely group of miserable people spending the holiday break together. In a Summer School-esque setup, we get Paul Giamatti as a frumpy history teacher at a prestigious New England boarding school dragged into filling in as the faculty member necessary to stay around while the rest of faculty and students return home for the winter holiday. Everyone’s least favorite teacher, Mr. Hunham (Giamatti) is paired with one of the school’s most unruly students (Dominic Sessa), abandoned by his family at the last-minute, and the school’s head cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) still grieving the loss of her son.

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