After breaking-up with his girlfriend Veronica, the unemployed John Hare rents a cheap room in an old boarding house owned by the nice Martin Stone and the landlord tells him that the house is crowded by discreet persons. John does not see any other tenant but a bizarre old woman in the house and during the nights, he sees weird things on his television and hears violent knocks on his door. When John calls Veronica, she notes that he is near a breakdown after many sleepless nights and decides to stay with him. However, Veronica vanishes during the night, leading John to an ultimate decision.
Netflix’s new mystery thriller, The Marked Woman (released originally as La Desconocida), is confusing. More critically, though, it commits the worst mistake a movie can make: it’s boring. From Spanish director Gabe Ibáñez, the film squanders its premise at every turn, fills the story with unlikeable characters, and lacks emotional payoff.
This 2016 winner of an Ophir Award for Best Film focuses on the forbidden romance of a young, Bedouin woman and the ramifications it has for her family, her identity, and her culture.
As a frequent “the book was better” extoller, this movie was well worth the watch.
It’s easy to dismiss Joel and Ethan Coen for writing from the world they build from outside the box of overarching Hollywood stereotypes, but their inability to compromise their collective vision is precisely what makes the simplistic nature of their world-building and characters so brilliant. It’s also what led Fargo to collect seven Oscar nominations and two wins for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actress for Frances McDormand’s brilliant portrayal of the sincere, motherly detective whose wholesome demeanor seizes the day over the selfishness, corruption and evil of the men who don’t comprehend that there’s more to life than a little money.
There’s been a longstanding criticism of sci-fi films about its lack of Black characters. For the past few years, Anthony Mackie has been successfully representing Black masculinity in the otherwise homogenous genre and I am here for it.
'Living' dives into many themes that we can all understand regardless of our cultural backgrounds. We can see this through the shared similarities between 'Ikiru' and 'Living'.
