The 4-Star Films of 2019 | Features
“Deadwood: The Movie” by Brian Tallerico
“All bleeding stops eventually.”
“Deadwood: The Movie,” a project that's been rumored and hoped for over the last decade, finally pulls into the station this Friday, May 31st, amidst revelations that creator David Milch is suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. Even if one wasn’t aware of the tragic state of the film’s creator, there’s an unexpected poignancy in every frame of “Deadwood,” but the miracle of this production is how deftly Milch and company avoid emotional manipulation as they bring closure to an iconic TV show. Befitting one of the most complex television shows of all time, it's a rich 110 minutes of filmmaking that rewards fans without pandering to them. It is the product of someone who has been living with these characters since the show went off the air in 2006. You get the feeling that he knows everything that’s happened to them since then, and we drop in on their lives now as if they have gone on while we’ve been away. As much as fans have desperately wanted another season or movie before now, there's something so perfect and beautiful about how this movie came out that almost makes one feel like it couldn't have happened any other way.
“The Farewell” by Christy Lemire
“The Farewell” announces at the beginning that it’s “based on an actual lie,” but the meaningful truths it reveals couldn’t be more poignant or powerful. And while writer/director Lulu Wang’s film is obviously personal and culturally specific, it achieves a universality and a resonance through its vivid depiction of a family in the midst of crisis.
“For Sama” by Tomris Laffly
It’s commonly thanks to individuals with insatiable journalistic instincts that the history of families, cities or entire nations gets preserved through visual and written evidence. In the shattering “For Sama”—the most harrowingly intimate and arguably, the best documentary to date on the Syrian conflict—rebel Waad al-Kateab is one such woman born with that restless impulse to document. When she first starts to aimlessly film her country’s ongoing conflict that steadily grows in violence and complexity, al-Kateab is an optimistic, 26-year-old student armed with nothing but a cell phone at Aleppo University, studying to earn a business degree in 2012. This was when her country’s movement was riding the glory of the Arab Spring, with rising protests against the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. But as hope gave way to chaos, destruction and crimes against humanity committed by the regime and its allies, options started to thin out; revolution seemed like a distant fantasy. And yet, instead of leaving like many, al-Kateab decided to stay behind and fight for the better future she believed in.
“The Heiresses” by Sheila O’Malley
It’s commonly thanks to individuals with insatiable journalistic instincts that the history of families, cities or entire nations gets preserved through visual and written evidence. In the shattering “For Sama”—the most harrowingly intimate and arguably, the best documentary to date on the Syrian conflict—rebel Waad al-Kateab is one such woman born with that restless impulse to document. When she first starts to aimlessly film her country’s ongoing conflict that steadily grows in violence and complexity, al-Kateab is an optimistic, 26-year-old student armed with nothing but a cell phone at Aleppo University, studying to earn a business degree in 2012. This was when her country’s movement was riding the glory of the Arab Spring, with rising protests against the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. But as hope gave way to chaos, destruction and crimes against humanity committed by the regime and its allies, options started to thin out; revolution seemed like a distant fantasy. And yet, instead of leaving like many, al-Kateab decided to stay behind and fight for the better future she believed in.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmn52RqcKzsdJoq6GdXWl6tMDAq2SfoZyiwG67xWZpaWlp