Drama
Noah’s Barks pages relating to the drama genre.
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Legend of the Galactic Heroes
‘Legend of the Galactic Heroes’ is a 110-episode dramatic space epic with some of the greatest moments you’ll ever see in anime—and a lot of lesser material. (read more)
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Mobile Suit Gundam F91
The Gundam series that never was, ‘Gundam F91’ salvages concepts originally intended for a TV series in one two-hour movie. How did we get here? (read more)
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Touch of Evil
Touch of Evil is a gigantic, ruthless bore for the first half, making no effort to have an engaging hook: a murder mystery about a case where the victims or the crime itself don’t actually matter. The main story about a detective jurisdiction dispute lacks fire when Orson Welles’s jabs are minor and ignored by… (read more)
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American History X
Some melodramatically emotional punches are thrown, but it’s necessary when trying to cover the slow, personal, lifetime-long induction of racism in only two hours. American History X (AHX) may not get into much past the surface, but it takes the alternate route of looking at that surface in its entirety. Instead of exposing racism by… (read more)
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Quiz Show
Tense and engaging in that typical way these “true story” cons tend to be, but I won’t act like I’m above that kind of entertainment. Especially when it’s backed up by the great performances of John Turturro and Ralph Fiennes. Robert Redford’s direction is very uninvolved, however, making Quiz Show more of a literal story… (read more)
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Bridge of Spies
The praise Bridge of Spies has been getting is inexplicable. It’s a Steven Spielberg movie with no powerful stills. It’s a Coen bros. script full of terribly misplaced awkward jokes in spite of the story’s drama and risk, and this awful humor makes it obvious every situation ends for the best or it’s in poor… (read more)
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Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
A Mexploitation of exploitations? It has to be Sam Peckinpah, and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia poster makes both facts obvious. Warren Oates might want to be cool, but he’s an aging, poor bartender who lives in squalor with his prostitute lover. Problems aren’t solved with a bullet and a laugh this time… (read more)
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Lost in Translation
Conceptually, Lost in Translation is a brilliant movie. Capitalizing on alienated people looking for romance by placing them in a culture they can’t connect to as another country, and the cinematography further empathizing crowdedness and the disorienting size of the world around them. Technically expressive, but the dialogue, including most of the leads’ interactions consists… (read more)
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Crash
Those who champion Crash as another David Cronenberg cult classic at least have an understandable reason: it’s arguably the last of his original format. Sexual psychology abounds, draped in darkness and colored with Cronenberg’s body horror tastes in a mangled orgasmic car Crash. What’s missing is his ability to contextualize this psychology through human beings… (read more)
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Seconds
Some compellingly trippy, symbolic imagery here and there, but overall Seconds feels like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone that didn’t need to be extended—at least when it comes to its themes, which seem to deliver the broad message of, “life’s what you make it” with an unrelated, unforgiving pessimism added on top for… (read more)