See high quality movies and read movie analysis right now? The darkness is all-consuming, as is despair over a lost past and future, and a purgatorial present, in Vitalina Varela, Pedro Costa’s aesthetically ravishing true tale of its protagonist, a Cape Verde resident who returns to Portugal mere days after her estranged husband’s death. Vitalina wanders through this dilapidated and gloomy environment, which Costa shoots almost exclusively at night, the better to conjure a sense of ghosts navigating a dreamscape of sorrow, suffering and disconnection. Each of the director’s images is more ravishing than the next, and their beauty – along with an enveloping soundscape of squeaking beds, sheets blowing in the wind, and rain pattering on crumbling roofs – is enchanting. Presenting its story through fractured plotting and dreamy monologues, the Portuguese master’s latest is a series of tableaus of lovelorn grief concerning not only Vitalina but also an aged priest in spiritual crisis and another young man poised to endure his own tragedy. The film’s formal grandeur – its compositional precision, and painterly interplay of light and dark – is overwhelming, as is the majestic presence of Vitalina herself.
At first blush it’s easy to dismiss Birds of Prey. But this feverish spectacle directed by Cathy Yan and scripted by Christina Hodson is a triumph that takes the typically limp superhero genre and injects it with life and bravado as it traces Harley Quinn’s (played by a brilliant Margot Robbie) emancipation from the shadow of her relationship to the Joker. What could have been a trifle turns out to be a rich reimagining of Gotham City into a glittery haven for criminals like Ewan McGregor’s prancing Black Mask and his right hand, Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina stealthily turning in one of the best performances in the film), who are nipping at Harley’s heels over a lost diamond. The plot is besides the point. What matters is the visceral experience. The costume design by Erin Benach is iconoclastic, drenching Harley in a confetti-and-caution-tape aesthetic. The supporting actors give surprisingly realized turns, especially Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the awkward but committed assassin Huntress on a mission of vengeance, and Jurnee Smollett-Bell’s high-kicking fearsome Black Canary. What makes the film sing at the right register of pleasure is its commitment to crafting some of the most audacious, eye-catching, and bone-crunching action set pieces that brim with humor and complication thanks to stunt coordination and fight choreography by Chad Stahelski. We got to see the film four times in theaters before all of this happened, and with each viewing our hearts burst with more appreciation for this scrappy, wild, bombastic film.
Tom Hardy’s gift for hulking intensity and charismatic growling are in full effect in Capone, a fictionalized account of the last year in the life of the legendary American gangster. Trapped in a palatial Florida estate, his mind deteriorating thanks to neurosyphilitic dementia, Al Capone (Hardy) rants, raves, soils himself and freaks out over hallucinatory visions of people, and events, from his past. Writer/director Josh Trank’s film is a subjective affair told largely from Capone’s POV, so that nothing can be trusted and yet everything speaks, symbolically, to the man’s deep-seated ambitions, fears and misgivings. It’s a headfirst dive into delusion, told with free-flowing suspense and absurd comedy, all of which comes to the fore during a late scene in which Capone opens fire on his friends and family with a giant golden tommy gun while wearing a diaper and chomping on a cigar-like carrot. Part Cowardly Lion, part Bugs Bunny, and altogether ferocious even as his sanity frays, Hardy’s Capone is yet another triumph for the star, who ultimately captures his protagonist less through imposing physicality than via his dark, glassy, lost eyes. Discover additional information at honest movie reviews.
Whenever we start any discussion of the best media players and how great they are, the name VLC automatically comes at the top. But, why is it so? What’s the reason behind its massive popularity? VLC Media Player is a free and open-source media player that’s available for all popular platforms. Created by the VideoLAN project, VLC Media Player is known to support a vast number of audio and video compression methods and file formats. Over the years, VLC has earned the reputation of being the “play everything” video player. VLC is one of the best PC media players due to its fast and simple nature that doesn’t involve any painstaking steps. The software also features different customization options that can help you improve your viewing experience and change the look of the player. It’s also often used a streaming media player. This amazing Windows Media Player alternative also receives frequent updates and has a large user community. It runs on all Windows versions, from Windows 10 to Windows XP SP3. From time-to-time, this free movie player keeps receiving new features and updates. You can also check out our dedicated article on VLC tricks.
In short stories like The Lottery and novels like The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson conjured unease, tension, and queasy strangeness that made them difficult to put down. Fittingly, Shirley, an adaptation of a novel by Susan Scarf Merrell, examines a highly pressurized moment in the author’s life that makes for occasionally nerve-rattling viewing. As played by Elisabeth Moss, Jackson can be temperamental, brilliant, and cruel, especially to Rose (Odessa Young) and Fred (Logan Lerman), the newlywed couple that move into the paper-strewn house she shares with her controlling professor husband (Michael Stuhlbarg). Where Decker’s previous exploration of the creative process, the dizzying Madeline’s Madeline, took an often nonlinear, combustible approach, Shirley retains some of the stuffy mechanics of the writerly biopic, particularly in the scenes of Jackson typing away at what will become her novel Hangsaman. (That book, which was partially inspired by the real-life disappearance of college student Paula Jean Welden, was written earlier in Jackson’s life than the movie portrays.) But Moss’s mischievous performance, the subtle interplay between the two women, and the feeling that the movie could tilt over the edge into chaos, chasing darker impulses and rolling around in the mud with Decker’s roaming camera, keeps it from falling into many of the traps set by the often worshipful “great artist” micro-genre. See extra info at https://www.popcorntales.com/.
