Posts by Neely Swanson

Noel Coward is a name that seems to have dropped from the modern lexicon and that’s entirely unfair. I’d done my fair share of dismissal until I saw a production of “Present Laughter” in London starring Andrew Scott. Now, granted, Scott could read the phone book (if we used such things now) and it would…

“Daaaaaalí!” is the ultimate fluff piece. It’s a French existential comedy that replays like “Groundhog Day,” revisiting the same surreal theme, Dalí himself, over and over using multiple actors playing the master himself. Young Judith Rochant (Anaïs Demoustier), tired of her day job as a pharmacist, has decided to redefine herself as a journalist and…

“The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry,” written by Rachel Joyce based on her best seller, is directed by Hettie Macdonald. Macdonald, whose work on the popular Irish series “Normal People” established her as an artist who fully understands the importance of character development really knows how to tell  a small story with bigger aspirations and…

Make no mistake, “Wolfs” is not going to make anyone’s “Best of” list for 2024 but that doesn’t mean it’s not a lot of fun, because it is. A starring vehicle for two of the biggest movie stars on the planet, Brad Pitt and George Clooney, the script is a tad too light to sustain…

The more things change, the more they remain the same, or at least they do in “Coup!” set during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. The city has been abandoned; businesses have closed; people are starving; the government of Woodrow Wilson is cracking down on dissenters and anyone spreading criticism of the efforts to curb the…

“Good One” is an uncomfortably insightful film by India Donaldson in her feature writing and directing debut, and it is purposefully ambiguous, starting with the title.  Sam (Lily Collias) and her dad Chris (James Le Gros) are in the midst of packing for their annual father/daughter camping trip. Chris stumbles over the baby toys strewn…

Karen Kain was the much beloved and lauded prima ballerina of the National Ballet of Canada. She followed up her dancing career by becoming its Artistic Director. Announcing her retirement, she was determined that she would not go gentle into that good night, by declaring that her last act would also be a first. She…

There are films that defy expectations and there are those that turn those expectations upside down. Lee Tamahori’s “The Convert” is a movie that does both. Tamahori, a Maori/English filmmaker from New Zealand, burst on the scene in 1994 with “Once Were Warriors” about a violent Maori family. In “The Convert,” he returns to those…

“Chronicles of a Wandering Saint,” a true gem, is about the unexpectedly surreal and funny actions of a woman whose expectations rise to the heavens. That woman is Rita Lopez. She lives in a tiny, neglected Argentine village in the middle of nowhere, where the local Catholic church, dedicated to Santa Rita, is the central…

Agnieszka Holland, the fabled director of “Europa Europa” about a young Jewish boy’s survival in Nazi Germany, has set her laser focus on the migrant crisis in Poland. “Green Border” won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival as well as a number of nominations and awards around the world. Most Polish film…

“Wildcat,” Ethan Hawke’s audacious film about Flannery O’Connor, tries for the kind of gothic approach that this Southern writer might have liked. Most ambitious was his desire to reintroduce O’Connor, considered one of the leaders of Southern Gothic literature, a group that included William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams and Carson McCullers. This style often included elements…

“Io Capitano,” nominated for this year’s Academy Award for Best International Film from Italy, is a complicated web and complex film. Written and directed by Matteo Garrone,  “Io Capitano” is the story of two teenage boys from Dakar, Senegal with stars in their eyes and Europe as a goal.  It’s not so much the endless…

“Ordinary Angels’ is a sweet story meant to tug at your heartstrings and play on the adage that one person can make a difference. Jon Gunn, working from a script by Meg Tilly and Kelly Fremon Craig, bases his tale on a true life story about a very sick child and the stranger that rallies…

“God and Country,” an excellent and rather chilling documentary directed by Dan Partland, lays out the history of the radicalization of politics in some of the largest Evangelical Christian churches and how much of it has morphed into a Christian Nationalist movement bent on changing the face of the nation to mirror their essentially all…

Writer/director Lila Avilés has always been intrigued by the chaos of families, especially large Latin American families where boundaries are fluid and views of life are often contradictory. In “Tótem” she tells a story of family as seen through the eyes of seven-year-old Sol. It is a significant day in the life of young Sol…