Reviews include Universal Language, No Other Land, and Bring Them Down.
TFCA Friday: Week of August 25th, 2017
August 25, 2017
Welcome to TFCA Friday, a weekly round-up of film reviews and articles by TFCA critics.
Reviews and features by: Andrew Parker (AP), Jim Slotek (JS), Norm Wilner (NW), Barry Hertz (BH), Peter Howell (PH), Gilbert Seah (GS), and Chris Knight (CK).
Opening this Week
All Saints (dir. Steve Gomer)
Birth of the Dragon (dir. George Nolfi)
“The film aims high in revealing the fact that Bruce Lee changed his style of fighting and became the man he did, but the film is still quite mediocre” — GS
“Fails at everything it attempts” — AP
Bushwick (dirs. Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott)
“Packs a lot of fast paced action, great performances, and social commentary into a modest package” — AP
“The trouble is that audiences have seen all this before in a dozen or so films of this nature” — GS
Letters from Baghdad (dirs. Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum)
The Only Living Boy in New York (dir. Marc Webb)
“If you only see one movie named for a Paul Simon track this year, make it Baby Driver” — NW
“A smug, artsy fairy tale” — GS
Patti Cake$ (dir. Geremy Jasper)
“A hard watch from start to finish, though every minute is worth it” — GS
“A star-making performance from Australian actress Danielle Macdonald” — AP, who interviewed the upcoming star and her writer/director
The Queen of Spain (dir. Fernando Trueba)
“Some of it historically fascinating, as when we see pre-digital tricks like matte paintings and foreground miniatures made to look huge by the placement of the camera. But it’s not enough to save The Queen of Spain from its rambling plot” — CK
“An entertaining romp, and a tribute to the nostalgic filmmaking of the 1950s” — GS
“The kind of film that only an octogenarian who hasn’t seen a film in 50 years could love” — AP
The Space Between (dir. Amy Jo Johnson)
“Functions nicely as a coming out party for Amy Jo Johnson as a budding filmmaker” — AP, who followed up and interviewed Amy on her Power Ranger past and her filmmaking future
Sundowners (dir. Pavan Moondi)
“Moondi wisely doesn’t push it to ridiculous extremes, the way a Hollywood production surely would” — PH
“It took a while to realize that I needed to go deeper with the characters, with the real intention to engage with the expectations of what a vacation-gone-awry comedy is,” says Pavan Moondi in an interview with Barry Hertz (who also reviewed the film, calling it “more Cassavetes than Chevy Chase“)
“Sundowners is something closer to the kind of experience you expect with waves pounding the shore and a world-class sunset“, says Jim Slotek, who interviewed Moondi as well
“Should have and could have been funnier” — GS
The BBC’s Top 100 Comedies
From Some Like It Hot to The Nutty Professor, PH asks on the release of a new poll: “What’s so funny about film critics?”