
Maos Sangrentas translates to Bloody Hands in English, and that's just what this gruesome Brazilian melodrama delivers. The story begins when a gang of dangerous convicts escape from a penal colony. With the police in hot pursuit, the escapees cut a gory swath through the countryside. As his comrades are killed off one by one, the leader of the group descends into gibbering madness. In contrast to this, a subplot develops involving the least dangerous of the escapees, who murdered his wife in a peak of self-righteous rage and is now seriously in doubt about the wisdom of his deed. Principal scenes reworked in 1962 to make the film The Violent and the Damned (q.v.).
I suppose you could argue that the story wasn’t what Director James Cameron was aiming for, it was the visuals. The spectacle of it all was the point, and it certainly shows.
Netflix's Afterlife of the Party might fall into the rom-com genre, but it's much more about grief, strong female friendships, and platonic love than it is about romance.
Animation as a medium of storytelling can be thought to be open to all ages and as I hope my reading will reveal, 'Nimona' could be interpreted as a transgender story.
Who knew a drunken game of truth or dare could launch one of the most chaotic rom-coms of the year? The Threesome takes Connor’s fantasy night with Olivia (Zoey Deutch, in peak queen-of-indie form) and Jenny (Ruby Cruz) and flips it into a deliciously messy nightmare when both women end up pregnant. What follows isn’t cheap comedy—it’s a whip-smart, heartfelt exploration of love, consequence, and the beautiful disasters we call adulthood.
Eternals is an interesting concept and unique visuals, but slow pacing and rushed character development suggests it should have been a mini-series.