Female Film Critics 24/375
With the undeniable theatrical success of Michael – grossing more than $400 million worldwide – it’s obvious that moviegoers prefer the fantasy of Michael Jackson as opposed to the reality. Wisely, this current biopic chronicles Jackson’s life until 1988 – before any allegations surfaced – positioning it as a long overdue celebration of an artistic genius, chronicling his cultural impact on music, dance, even fashion.
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Michael is a winner overall, hitting mostly all the right notes. The biopic of the King of Pop focuses on the legendary star’s rise to fame with his brothers as the Jackson 5 in the 1960’s and ‘70’s to the beginning of Michael’s iconic solo career through the Victory Tour in the late 1980’s. At just over 2 hours, the film stops short of Jackson’s marriages and the child abuse allegations against him due to settlement agreements with those involved. Also not depicted are Michael’s younger siblings Janet and Randy and older sister Rebbie.
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In 2002 Antoine Fuqua directed Denzel Washington to his Best Actor Academy Award. Since then the pair have worked together on several movies, including the middling The Equalizer series based on the 1980s television show of the same name. World weary ex-special ops officer Robert McCall tries to atone for his life of violence by helping those in need. This third film has him in Sicily taking out a group of Mafioso for “taking something that didn’t belong to them,” and ending up shot and under the care of the kindly inhabitants of an idyllic Italian town named Altamonte.
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Bullet Train is all about the action. There’s a storyline in there somewhere, but this rapid transit is long and has so many cars you may need Google Maps. Every single character has their own separate and overlapping narrative, including a bottle of Fiji water. No one and no thing is left out, except for us. It’s our job to bob and weave and stay upright. Directed by David Leitch and prpduced by Antoine Fuqua, , Bullet Train can’t help but be pedigreed for pandemonium.
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Jake Gyllenhaal is one of the producers of this remake of the Danish entry as Best Foreign Film of 2018. He gives his character, Joe Baylor, a wide range of hysteria, fright, concern, and frustration. He plays up Nic Pizzolatto’s screenplay, which is more sensational than the original, which felt creepier for being subtler. Still, “The Guilty” is unpredictable, heart-stopping, and, most of all, imaginative.
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Twenty years after his breakthrough film, Training Day, Antoine Fuqua returns to the environs of the Los Angeles Police Department to deliver a very different, more subdued drama. A remake of a 2018 Danish thriller of the same name and shot under COVID protocols, it is a film where interest never flags but one that is hampered by its shaky night-in-the-life-of scenario, delivering a too shallow portrayal of the life of a troubled man.
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“Broken people save broken people.” That’s how Christina Vidal as Sgt Denise Wade explains Jake Gyllenhaal’s character Joe Baylor in Antoine Fuqua’s incredibly tense new film The Guilty. If the movie proves one thing, it’s that nothing is simple, and nothing is what it seems. Here, Fuqua teams up with Gyllenhaal in a pandemic-era story that unfolds in real time, bringing the audience on a gripping 90 minute wild ride, while the cameras stay almost exclusively in one room.
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It’s been more than 20 years since the TV series The Equalizer (1985-1989) made its debut opposite Denzel Washington’s popular
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