Female Film Critics 24/375
Casting Hilary Swank as humorless, abrasive, pugnacious journalist Eileen Fitzgerald on Hulu and ABC-TV’s drama Alaska Daily really works. Yet – despite encouraging initial ratings – the series is taking a long hiatus which may dissipate whatever tension and interest it initially provoked.
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Individuals with a couple hours to waste in a thoroughly preposterous plot will find a home in Fatale, with its retrograde plot and few redeeming features. I was attracted to it by two actors I admire immensely—Hilary Swank and Michael Ealy. Scripts crossing their desks must be terrible for them to accept this misadventure. Nevertheless, they soldier on, delivering good performances in ludicrous roles.
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As the titular femme fatale, Hilary Swank seems ready to boil a bunny in this pulpy-noir thriller. Problem is: two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry, Million Dollar Baby), who also served as a producer, is decidedly unsexy in a role that calls for a sultry, seductive quality that she’s apparently unable to summon.
Read moreLooking for a new Netflix series to binge? Oscar-winner Hilary Swank stars in this cathartic, compelling sci-fi drama about the first manned mission to Mars. Perfectly timed during this worldwide pandemic, the initial 10 episodes capture our current anxiety and paranoia, as viewers can identify with the isolation and poignant emotional dilemmas faced by Atlas’ crew members who communicate with loved ones via video chat/cell phones/texting although they’re millions of miles away.
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Taking its cue from Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game, it depicts wealthy, heavily armed elites exercising their Second Amendment right against a dozen drugged/kidnapped/gagged victims, stalking them as sport on a private game reserve in Croatia.
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You have to admire first-time writer/director Elizabeth Chomko for assembling a star-studded cast for this poignant, multi-generational domestic drama, inspired by memories of her own grandparents. Set in the Chicago area, the story begins with clips of old home movies as elderly Ruth Everhardt (Blythe Danner) slips out of bed and shuffles off down the street into the cold, snowy night, clad only in a nightgown and sweater.
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What They Had, the first feature from actress-turned-writer/director Elizabeth Chomko, is a stirring family drama in which adult siblings, Bridget (Hilary Swank) and Nick (Michael Shannon) are trying to cope with their mother’s (Blythe Danner) progressive dementia and their father’s (Robert Forster) denial of her disability. Chomko’s well-crafted script and sensitive direction, and the superb performances from the stellar ensemble bring a balance of heartbreak and humor to this painful and entirely relatable situation.
“Grandma drank the holy water,” says Taissa Farmiga’s moody college student. “At least she’s hydrated,” says Michael Shannon as her uncle who laughs mostly to keep him and the audience from crying. That first-time filmmaker Elizabeth Chomko can pull off this sort of humor in a movie that revolves around the evil disease that is dementia is a feat achieved primarily based on the strength of her casting choices.
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Pangs of authenticity fill Elizabeth Chomko‘s debut feature What They Had and with good reason. Chomko based her film on her own experience with her grandmother’s dementia and the home movies we see in this tender family drama belong to her. The family dynamics and emotional push-pull in Chomko’s story of how various family members deal with the reality of Alzheimer’s Disease has a truthfulness that feels earned.
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Writer-director Elizabeth Chomko’s debut film is a simultaneously sharp and tender portrait of longstanding, interconnected family squabbles and hidden resentments that finally come to a head with a near-tragedy. Achingly affecting performances all around — particularly Blythe Danner’s and Michael Shannon’s — and oh-so-many poignant details ground What They Had in melancholy authenticity.
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