It is March 31st, 1943 and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first ever collaboration, “Oklahoma!” has just opened on Broadway. Having just sat through the opening performance, Rodgers’ long term collaborator Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) holds court at Sardi’s Restaurant with the barman Eddie (Bobby Cannavale) and the many other famous faces who venture in during the after … Continue reading Blue Moon
The true story of boxer Prince Naseem Hamed (Amir El-Masry), trained from a young age by Brendan Ingle (Pierce Brosnan) who would rise to be World Champion by the age of twenty-one and retired at age twenty-eight. Giant is a sports biopic that shows flashes of brilliance but mostly stays entrenched in genre tropes. There … Continue reading Giant
In 1961, a nineteen-year-old Bob Dylan (Timothee Chalamet) arrives in New York as a complete unknown. By 1965 he is the most famous musician in the world and about to deliver a groundbreaking electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. A Complete Unknown is a classic biopic that chooses to focus on a fixed … Continue reading A Complete Unknown
Maria Callas (Angelina Jolie), the greatest opera singer in the world, lives out her final days in Paris, 1977. Maria is a biopic by director Pablo Larrain. Which is to say that it is unlike typical biopics. For anyone who has seen his previous films Jackie or Spencer, which focused on Jackie Kennedy and Princess … Continue reading Maria
Phil the Bear's Film Reviews 