Nicole Kidman

Aquaman

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Aquaman
  • IMDb: link

Aquaman Blu-ray reviewJason Momoa stars as the title character in this origin tale about how the son of a human father (Temuera Morrison) and an Atlatean mother (Nicole Kidman) would grow up to become the hero needed to unite the two realms. While at first feigning no interest in Atlantis, Aquaman is convinced to help by Mera (Amber Heard) and the actions of his half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) who is preparing for a war against the surface world.

The script by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall is burdened by an abundance of narrative that doesn’t fit all that neatly into a single film. Along with the origin and hero’s journey, the movie also features a love story, an adventure to the inner Earth, politics and war among the various Atlantean tribes, brotherly jealousy over the crown, and an odd sequence where the film becomes National Treasure for about 20 minutes. Oh, and there’s Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who is included for some reason.

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The Killing of a Sacred Deer

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Killing of a Sacred Deer
  • IMDb: link

The Killing of a Sacred Deer movie reviewWriter/director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster) is known for unconventional storytelling, and his latest certainly fits that bill. Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) is a respected surgeon with a wife (Nicole Kidman), two children (Raffey Cassidy and Sunny Suljic), and secretive relationship to the son (Barry Keoghan) of a former patient with an equally strange mother (Alicia Silverstone, in a surprisingly small role). When Steven’s son develops odd symptoms that can’t be explained, the doctor is confronted by Martin (Keoghan) who makes veiled threats while suggesting that he is somehow responsible.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a frustrating movie. The film is visually stunning with a haunting score, but every time an actor delivers a torturous line-reading (more appropriate to a group of lonely souls reading publicly from their Twilight fan fiction) the spell is broken. There’s a stiltedness to every performance, no character speaks naturally, and even their reactions, movements, and manners are so affected it will make you wonder if you missed the note explaining that everyone in the film is autistic.

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The Beguiled

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  • Title: The Beguiled
  • IMDb: link

The Beguiled movie reviewThe Beguiled is a remake of 1971 film starring Clint Eastwood as a wounded soldier brought into and tended by the residents of a Southern all-girls boarding school. Choosing to remake the film more from the perspective of the women rather than the male intruder in their lives, Sofia Coppola‘s version of The Beguiled is highlighted by strong performances all around but it’s sadly also the least-interesting movie of the talented director’s career.

The remake casts Colin Farrell as Union Corporal McBurney who is found by one of school’s tweens (Oona Laurence). With the bleeding soldier loosing consciousness on arrival, the headmistress Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman) chooses to tend to the soldier’s wounds. As he heals the charming man makes effort to separately woo the various women of the house (whose number also include Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Angourie Rice, Addison Riecke, and Emma Howard) winning them all over to his side. However, the soldier certainly can’t keep his empty promises to all the girls which leads to a dark turn and lots of conflict in the film’s final act as the women discover the fox they’ve let into their hen house.

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Lion

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  • Title: Lion
  • IMDb: link

LionOnly two films in 2016 offered a profound emotional reaction that forced me to tears. The first was a sobering documentary of an athlete struggling with the onset of an incurable and debilitating disease. Like Gleason, Lion has its basis in fact as director Garth Davis‘ film dramatizes the truth story of Saroo Brierley (Dev Patel) and his long journey to find home.

Offering us two films for the price of one, Davis expertly balances two threads set in different locales with completely different casts. This is no easy task, yet the film weaves both together into a compelling narrative about a sense of self, home, and place in the world.

Starting in the country outside of Calcutta, we meet a young Saroo (Sunny Pawar) and his older brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate). Separated in the city from Guddu, Sarro narrowly escapes a terrible fate on the streets. Even with the help of authorities, the five-year-old can’t find his way back home and is eventually adopted by an Australian couple (David Wenham and Nicole Kidman) to be raised thousands of miles from his home.

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Malice

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Malice
  • IMDb: link

Malice1993’s Malice is your typical thriller, except for the fact that everyone involved isn’t typical at all. Written by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The Newsroom, and Sports Night) and Scott Frank (Out of Sight, the underrated Heaven’s Prisoners, and The Lookout) and starring Alec Baldwin, Nicole Kidman, and Bill Pullman, the story takes an expected number of twists and turns down a dark road until the truth is fully revealed. And you also may have heard of its cinematographer Gordon Willis who shot a little series known as The Godfather Trilogy.

The story centers around a young couple (Pullman and Kidman) whose lives are shattered when their friend (Baldwin) operates on her making a mistake in surgery that costs her the ability to have children. The fallout for the couple and the doctor leads to grief, a lawsuit, and the husband to begin looking into a situation that he discovers is far more complicated than he ever imagined.

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