Nickel Boys, The Brutalist, Better Man

Movie 1: Nickel Boys

This drama is adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The horrid racism of the deep south is seen through the eyes of Black teenage boys as they attend a Florida reform school. While the acting is very good, and this is an extremely important story to be told, we found the movie confusing and not particularly well told. And the cinematography style very off putting. Although most national film critics have given this important movie four globes.

Rating:

Movie 2: The Brutalist

This is a huge movie. An American saga that spans more than 33 years about a Hungarian Jew and Holocaust survivor who immigrates to Pennsylvania just after WWII. Adrien Brody’s portrayal of a visionary architect is stunning. The acting, direction, costumes and cinematography are all Oscar caliber. This movie has already won the Golden Globe for Best Picture, Actor and Director. Three hours and thirty minutes, with a fifteen-minute break, in English and Hungarian with English subtitles.

Rating:

Movie 3: Better Man

Wow! What an absolutely mesmerizing biography. We knew nothing about English singer and songwriter Robbie Williams before seeing this movie. It follows his life as a young child in a working class Stoke-on-Kent neighborhood to his days as a member of the famed British boy band Take That. The dance scenes are dazzling, as is the music and writing. He is portrayed as a chimpanzee (we have no idea why) throughout the movie. Yet somehow it totally works. Sit back and enjoy.

Rating: