Month: June 2022

After stealing her pushover cousin’s fiancé, Margaret Lockwood finds her new married life in the country boring. Utilizing a convenient secret passageway in her house, she begins a secret career as a bandit to spice things up. It’s quite a bit of fun watching her devil may care attitude and her complete disregard for prescribed gender roles. Unfortunately everyone else in the film are a bunch of wet blankets and the Code favors them over someone who lives for herself.  

Similar to The Killing Floor , this made for television film chronicles a bit of American labor history. Here, it’s an effort led by organizer A. Philip Randolph (played by Andre Braugher) to unionize the all Black Pullman porters who were traditionally called George (after George Pullman) by the white patrons. It’s fairly straightforward, but like that other film, it gives a glimpse into history that is often taught or talked about. It’s noteworthy that Randolph had a long history of fighting for equal rights from his days as a union organizer to later fights for civil rights, including mentoring Martin Luther King Jr.

After presumably killing the last of the evil Deviants, a team of ten Eternals spend the next five hundred years waiting for their next mission. When unexpected attacks cause the group to reunite and question their purpose on Earth. I was curious what a Marvel film directed by Chloé Zhao would look like and it’s unfortunately quite boring. During its excessively long and over CGI-ed run-time, it unnecessarily jumps back and forth in time and is just boring despite having an intriguing cast with Gemma Chan, Kumail Nunjiani, and Brian Tyree-Henry. Somehow the characters reside in the same universe as other Marvel characters yet they aren’t aware of/don’t bother showing up for a universe changing event.   

Richard Conte returns home to discover his father has lost his legs in a trucking accident perpetrated by Lee J. Cobb, an unscrupulous San Francisco produce dealer. Conte partners with the man who bought his father’s truck to get even with Cobb. I would never have thought there was such a thing as the dark underworld of fruit sellers, but here it is. Cobb plays a cunning and ruthlessly charismatic bad guy while Conte is a man who thinks he’s more in control than he is. As a noir, it even includes a femme fatale and the nice, good girl, but neither of them sticks to those simplistic roles.  

Jodie Comer struggled to find her place in the world until she finds work in a care home, a calling she is surprisingly well suited for. When Covid hits and the government’s priorities lie elsewhere, she is forced to undertake increasingly desperate measures to save her residents, especially Stephen Graham, a young man with dementia whom she has bonded with. I don’t think another film could possibly illustrate the devastation Covid has raged in some communities, particularly those which depend on the kindness of others, and the naivety so many of us experienced during the early days of the disease. The acting is top notch with writing and direction that really lends a sense of urgency and desperation to events. The ending unfortunately takes a bit of a turn from its very realistic earlier scenes, but still manages to hammer home its message.