Posts by Neely Swanson

“Scarlet” is a poetic fairy tale, often floating like the red sails the heroine longs for. Directed by Pietro Marcello (“Martin Eden”) and co-written with Maurizio Braucci, Maud Ameline and Geneviève Brisac, it is loosely based on Aleksandr Grin’s novel “Scarlet Sails.”  Watching this film is like reading a lovely, lyrical elegy with a beginning…

Peter Jones, an Emmy Award-winning writer, has constructed a lovely, fluffy biography of the mail order catalog that swept the 70s and 80s and changed the face (and body) of mens’ fashion and fashion photography. Directed and edited by Bryan Darling at a breezy pace, “All Man: The International Male Story” tells the origin story…

It’s easy in this day and age of same sex marriage to forget about the years of discrimination faced by gays and the acceptance (still not entirely acknowledged) that homosexuality was not a lifestyle choice but rather was rooted in the DNA, the person’s biology. It can’t be prayed out; it can’t be wished out;…

There’s no way around it. This is an excruciatingly long movie on a topic that could have been interesting had it been presented less portentously.  The camera opens on a close-up of Monica’s beautiful face, all perfect angles and lush lips. The next shot reveals her to be a gorgeous redhead climbing into a convertible,…

“Sisu” is an untranslatable word in Finnish meant to imply courage beyond imagination in the face of extraordinary danger. It’s that, but as this movie will show, it’s so much more. But first, a word of warning. This is an unbelievably violent movie, but so violent, like a Quentin Tarantino film, it becomes cartoonish in…

“R.M.N.,” short for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (the Romanian equivalent of MRI, Magnetic Resonance Imaging), long form for a brain scan, takes on several meanings. One of the minor characters is suffering from a tumor, hence his need for this neurological procedure. More globally, however, is the relevance to intolerance. Here, director Christian Mungiu, known for…

As Fats Domino sang so eloquently, “Ain’t that a shame.” “Gringa,” the assured directing debuts of Marny Eng and E.J. Forester is thoroughly undermined by an inadequate script. Eng and Forester more than do their jobs by keeping things moving and trying to bring out the development of all their characters. To say that Patrick…

“You’re Killing Me,” directed by Beth Hann and Jerren Lauder and written by Walker Hare and Brad Martocello, is a mashup of several genres and, in its own way, a bit of fun, if definitely bloody. Not a masterpiece by any means but there’s probably an audience. Melissa Brown has gone missing from Torrington Prep…

“One True  Loves,” based on the Taylor Jenkins Reid novel (Reid and Alex J. Reid wrote the screenplay), posits the question of whether you can love two different people, have two true loves.  Emma’s infatuation with Jesse seemed hopeless. Hopeless, that is, until he noticed her and that was it for both of them. Standing…

“Kubrick by Kubrick,” the richly informative documentary by Gregory Monro, is a marvel of information gleaned from interviews of the master himself. Notoriously reclusive and tight-lipped, Kubrick rarely talked about his films and definitely not about himself. But there were exceptions, few as they were, and most of them were made for Michel Ciment, a…

“Wildflower” is the sort of true story of an intrepid youngster raised by intellectually challenged parents. Peg and Earl are the parents of Sharon, born seriously challenged intellectually but with a joyful, fearless personality ready to go after what she wants. Derek, whose mental growth stopped at age 13 after a traumatic head injury, is…

The “Los Angeles Times” has chronicled the subversive presence of deputy gangs within the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. A problem for many years, the last sheriff vowed to rid the department of them and instead embraced them like an unpopular kid being welcomed into a clique. He was defeated by Robert Luna who, also, campaigned…

Marvin Samel, director of “iMordecai,” wanted to honor his father with a personal family history. A cigar entrepreneur, Samel had been using his father as a punchline for years in the anecdotes he told during sales events he hosted. He realized he had a gold mine because his father’s stories were endless and when he…

Actress Frances O’Connor, in her feature writing and directing debut, has tried to translate her fascination with the enigma that was Emily Bronte into a fanciful biography. Scant actual information about Emily Bronte exists. She was reclusive by nature, suffering from an anxiety disorder that kept her close to home. She made several attempts at…