Parenthood (1989)

 

Steve Martin stars and is perfectly uptight as Gil Buckman, a family man trying not to freak out on the rollercoaster of parenthood, but there's a veritable Love Actually-sized ensemble here too: a single mother (Dianne Wiest) struggles to raise a teenage boy (a young Joaquin Phoenix) while trying to steer an older daughter (Martha Plimpton) away from no-hopers like Tod (Keanu Reeves playing Ted again), and more (Rick Moranis, Tom Hulce, Mary Steenburgen, and Jason Robards) all in Ron Howard's comedy smash hit about the trials and tribulations of the privileged white raising kids in traditional family units.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Joker (2019)

A Rupert Pupkin's neurological condition, which causes him to laugh uncontrollably and inappropriately, continues through a compounding series of abject miseries.

★☆☆☆☆

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You Were Never Really Here (2017)

This is just another one of those Taken, "don't worry, honey, I'm coming for you" thrillers where a father figure takes on criminals to emancipate a girl from unspeakable horror (child sex slavery), but unlike others, this one doesn't just focus on the sheer violent spectacle of the father's revenge spree but develops the psychology of the protagonist, Joe, played by the wonderful Joaquin Phoenix, whose backstory of childhood trauma, unhealthy coping mechanisms and palliative care affords the derivative story a bit more poetry, dreaminess, lyricism and theatricality.

★★★☆☆

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To Die For (1995)

Gus Van Sant's crime drama parody received critical acclaim despite its being little more than a glorified episode of a real-life tv crime drama like 48 Hours, only with A-list stars Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix alternately hamming things up and expecting us to care less about a grubby, inconsequential suburban crime story, Clueless meets Amy Fisher and Note On A Scandal.

★★★☆☆

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Irrational Man (2015)

Not only is this 2015 Woody Allen movie thematically similar to his 2005 Match Point - another of his movies that references Crime and Punishment -- but this movie's Joaquin Phoenix (a tormented philosophy professor who is reinvigorated by murder) very closely resembles that movie's Jonathan Rhys Meyers, which makes you wonder if Woody Allen hasn't churned out so many films so often that he has lost track of which ideas he has already committed to celluloid, but thankfully he casts Emma Stone as a college student in the murderous professor's thrall and she is a fresh element and is as always captivating.

★★★☆☆

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Signs (2002)

This movie about a Pennsylvanian family struggling to maintain normalcy as they monitor media reports of a series of strange goings-on across the globe, benefits greatly from having been made by M Night Shyamalan while he was still committed to making good movies, and before its lead, Mel Gibson, embarked on a series of strange goings-on around the world all of his own.

★★★★☆

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The Master (2012)

A peculiar little slip of a story about a traumatised drunkard's encounter with a guru, given grand treatment by Director Paul Thomas Anderson who, for no obvious reason, has steeped the movie with references to Scientology.

★★★☆☆

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