current and classic film reviews for all of those wonderful people out there in the dark
The puppies are adorable and I’m not going to lie, I shed a tear or two. But there’s no confusing this for an actually good movie. It telegraphs its ending and splits the focus too many ways, especially given the fact that budget considerations clearly prevented giving all five puppies full time camera crews.
Puppies, though. Sometimes puppies are enough.
I’m a Nancy Drew fan. As a kid, I read all 50 of the books in the original series, many of them in different editions since they were updated and changed over the years (Shout out to the true original author, Mildred Wirt, whose books are still the best, even though they’re dated). I have a decent collection of early editions from the 30’s and 40’s. Maybe that helps my enjoyment here, since I had high hopes for this latest reboot.
Sophia Lillis is a great young actress, and of all the TV and movie Nancys, she is by far the most suited to the role. It’s dream casting. Linda Lavin and Laura Wiggins are also quite good, and the script’s emphasis of character over mystery is well played, if not ideal. Wiggins plays Helen Corning, an early and often forgotten friend of Nancy’s – her inclusion here is the first of many indications that this movie was made by fans of the material.
The problem, such as it is, is that Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase feels like the pilot for a 90’s TV show. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – I’d watch the hell out of that show. It does seem a little cinematically uninspired, though.
The most important thing is that in spite of the updates (and a thin mystery), this does feel like a real Nancy Drew story. I think it might be appreciated by its intended age group.
I hope we get to see Lillis in the role again.
Amazing cinematography raises this simple slice of life drama above the ordinary.
I want to love Roma more than I do. Alfonso Cuarón is one of the most talented directors currently working anywhere in the world, and the cinematography here is breathtaking. There’s just something about a carefully composed black and white image that resonates in my soul, maybe because the first best films I ever saw were oldies on TV.
And Roma is very beautiful. The suspenseful scenes are gripping. The actors are solid. But there’s a distance.
It seems to me that there is something fundamentally unknowable about Cleo – in fact that may be the point, that she can’t be put into a box and labeled simply one thing or another. But it also seemed like the movie itself was holding me at arms length, when I wanted to get all up in there with my emotions.
The best film of 2018.
Comedy’s easy, being adorable is hard.
in the dark 