Tag: Rachel Brosnahan

REVIEW: The Courier [2021]

Jared Mobarak

Sometimes a lie is a gift. There’s a great line about mid-way through director Dominic Cooke and writer Tom O’Connor‘s The Courier wherein Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) are talking about the lies they have to tell to keep their families safe. The latter’s Russian official turned CIA asset is trying to comfort the former’s British businessman turned amateur operative by saying they’re in a similar predicament when it comes to home life only for Wynne to incredulously explain the exact opposite with the words, “Your…

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REVIEW: I’m Your Woman [2020]

Jared Mobarak

You’re not supposed to look back. Director Julia Hart and co-writer Jordan Horowitz waste no time making sure Jean’s (Rachel Brosnahan) introduction tells us everything we need to know. There she is sitting in her backyard staring off into space and thinking about how empty her life has become. She’s so bored that an urge to rip the tags off her new robe walks her into such a rage that her husband Eddie (Bill Heck) finds her sitting on the kitchen counter with a carving knife at the ready to…

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REVIEW: Basically [2014]

Jared Mobarak

That’s just the rejection talking. Even the most vain and vapid have moments of clarity. Whether they prove to be intentional or not is the question. So is it because Shandy (Rachel Brosnahan) has more to her than what appearances reveal that she’s able to turn colorfully vindictive soliloquies into philosophical quandaries worth contemplating beyond the laughter of her visual juxtapositions? Or is it merely because everyone has the agency to hit a home run if they simply talk in circles long enough to break free towards territory they never…

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REVIEW: Munchausen [2013]

Jared Mobarak

You can almost hear the musical score when thinking about old silent films from the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. They have that peppy melody to really shine a light on the optimism of what could be before some sort of hardship or tragedy arrives with a somber tone to lead our emotions along a roller coaster of hijinks and reflection. But we never mind that slow, deep transition of sound because it’s always followed by a miraculous recovery, joyous occasion, or happily ever after. We get through…

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REVIEW: Louder Than Bombs [2015]

Jared Mobarak

“After this I’ll slow down. I promise.” Few depict love’s pain onscreen better than Norwegian writer/director Joachim Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt. They’ve cultivated a distinct voice for character-driven dramas of friendship and romance that build and dissolve with an authentic rhythm of life’s unpredictability. Their characters ache inside and out as they deal with the struggle of human connection and their English-language debut Louder Than Bombs is no different. In it are three men traversing a world removed from the life they led with a matriarch no longer by…

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