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Biopic films are an especially challenging mountain to climb. They’re done a lot, so they can get formulaic; and some go too far to sanitize their subject (Bohemian Rhapsody, 2018) or vilify them (Mommie Dearest, 1981). The United States vs. Billie Holiday miraculously doesn’t fall into any of these metaphorical ravines.

Oscar-nominated actress Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl, 2014) plays another villainous role as Marla Grayson, a professional guardian who takes care of old people who can no longer live independently. But Marla's care is a finely-tuned scam forcing the innocent seniors into a retirement home against their will, liquidating all their assets, and draining their life savings. But her crooked scheme takes a...

Actress Robin Wright (Wonder Woman 1984, 2020) co-produces and stars in her feature film directorial debut as an emotionally shattered woman retreating from life in the drama Land. After suffering a deep loss, a quiet woman moves into an abandoned cabin alone with no car, no electricity, no running water, and no phone deep in the mountains of Wyoming. Suffering dangerous winter storms, wild intrud...

Supernova is a heartfelt love story of two married men straining against loss, aging, and time. During a road trip through the countryside of England, one husband struggles to remain strong while the other husband struggles with dementia.

The Midnight Sky is a quiet contemplative drama, set in the future, about survival and human connection adapted from the 2016 novel Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton. Since The Midnight Sky premiered on Netflix recently, it has inspired a persistent philosophical question in my mind: “What is happening to George Clooney?” I don’t mean to suggest that Gorge Clooney is sliding into Nichol...

One Night in Miami is a powerful portrait of the anxieties and hopes of Black Americans in the 1960s, and it has strong connections to the culture of today. This film is adapted from a one-act play, written by an African American man Kemp Powers (who also worked on the screenplay), that was first produced in 2013 in Los Angeles. The story is a fictionalized gathering of four famous African America...

Oftentimes, a drama film tugs at your heartstrings...and sometimes a film can lacerate them. When a young couple's home birth ends in tragedy, the expecting mother tries to keep living under a constant cloud of grief.

First time feature film writer/director Emerald Fennell has created a story challenging the male gaze and stabbing it between the eyes.

You are tuned to Utah Public Radio. I'm Shalayne Smith Needham, here with our film critic Casey T. Allen. Hello, Casey.

You are tuned to Utah Public Radio. I'm Shalayne Smith Needham, here with our film critic Casey T. Allen. Hello, Casey.

Mank is a brilliant biopic of Herman Mankiewicz, his screenwriting career in Hollywood, and his creation of the screenplay for the famous Citizen Kane film from 1941. (Practically every film scholar and film historian includes Citizen Kane as one of the greatest films ever made.)

The Life Ahead is a coming-of-age drama set in Naples, Italy about a 12-year-old orphaned boy (Ibrahima Gueye) who is sent to live with an elderly cantankerous woman whom he recently robbed. This reluctant pairing is a clash of opposites with young and old, Muslim and Jew, refugee and native, as the young boy starts selling drugs on the street and his aged caretaker struggles with memories of the...

Netflix recently released their own adaptation of the 1938 novel by Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca, that was first adapted into a feature film in 1940. This 1940 version was directed by Alfred Hitchcock (Rear Window, 1954) and received the Oscar for Best Picture.

In the current wasteland of barely mediocre movie theater releases, I'm happy to say I recently watched a new release in my home (on Netflix) that's one of the best I've seen all year.

An efficient assassin traveling the globe tries to reconcile her damaged family relationships and fight her own superiors for survival when the tables turn against her.

Writer-director Armando Iannucci has proven himself an exciting creator of raucous, vulgar, profane comedy with the dark historical parody The Death of Stalin from 2017 and the brilliantly insulting TV series Veep (2012-2019) which concluded last year. His latest film is still funny, but with a PG rating The Personal History of David Copperfield is decidedly less obscene than Iannucci's other work...

The Binge was released on August 28th and is currently available for personal streaming on Hulu. Set in the not too distant future, when all alcohol and drugs are banned from everyone in the United States, The Binge focuses on the stressful lives of 3 teenage boys trying to attend an exclusive party on the one night of the year when all drug and alcohol consumption is legal for everyone. It's like...

The Secrets We Keep is a patient psychological mystery set in a quiet post-WWII suburb where a housewife (Noomi Rapace, Prometheus, 2012) starts to unravel when she suspects a new man living in her town is a Nazi who tortured her during WWII years ago. This suspicion leads to kidnapping, interrogation, and blood. And when suspicion grows into an obsession with vengeance, nobody walks unscathed.

Oscar-nominated director Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk, 2017) is evidently still enjoying his obsessions with complicated action sequences and non-linear storytelling.

Tesla is a historic, biographical drama on the life of pioneering engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla, whose ideas changed the world at the turn of the 20th century and beyond (his work included the alternating current electricity system, a thermo-magnetic motor, and the Tesla coil.)

Waiting for the Barbarians is a historical period drama based on the award-winning novel of the same name by South African writer J.M. Coetzee first published in 1980. This newly released film (premiered on August 7th) tells the story of a Magistrate, played by a soft-spoken and dignified Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies, 2015), who manages a small settlement in a foreign, quiet desert on the far edg...

Aren't weekend getaways a blast? They're especially fun when they have dangerous secrets, hidden cameras, a hot tub, and dead bodies. Actor Dave Franco, mostly known for light-hearted comedy and action films like The Disaster Artist (2017) and Now You See Me (2013), has his feature-length directorial debut with The Rental currently playing in select movie theaters throughout Utah after its nationw...

The Old Guard was released on July 10th this year and has become one of the most popular original films streaming on Netflix this month. Adapted from a graphic novel series by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez that was first published in 2017, The Old Guard follows a group of expert, world-weary (and refreshingly diverse) mercenaries who travel the globe killing terrorists, hiding their identities,...

One half crime procedural and one half Shakespearean tragedy, Blow the Man Down tells a contemporary, noir-inspired drama of two twenty-something sisters who cover up a murder in a small coastal town of Maine. But their cover-up leads them into unexpected secrets, money, and danger. Lobster traps, fishmongers, and chowder are clever bits of decoration that portray the calloused lives of Down Easte...

Palm Springs was released July 10th of this year and is currently available for streaming on Hulu. This R-rated comedy is set in the magical desert of Southern California where a man and a woman meet at a Palm Springs wedding and become eternally linked to each other...and to the same repeating day. The leading stars Andy Samberg (Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, 2016) and Cristin Milioti (Brea...