good.film
2 years ago
“I couldn’t care less about basketball, Michael Jordan or shoes and I still really enjoyed this film because it’s not about any of that. It’s about people and the risks they take to make the big deal.” ~ Rachel Wagner
The script from Alex Convery hit the 2021 Blacklist of hottest unproduced screenplays, but what gets us excited is how the film explores the themes of inequality and pay disparity in sports for minority players. Back in 1984, White basketball players had an average salary that was almost 175% higher than Black basketball players, and merch & endorsement deals with Black basketball superstars were far more rare, and underpaid, compared to their White teammates. Strap in, then, as the story introduces Jordan’s Mum, Deloris, who went in to bat (or should that be to jump?) for Michael in the Nike negotiations. As Rotten Tomatoes puts it: “This moving story follows the uncompromising vision of a mother who knows the worth of her son’s immense talent.” Sounds like a slam-dunk to us.
Trivia time: Michael Jordan’s only request when making this film, according to Director Ben Affleck, was that he cast Viola Davis as his mother. Non-negotiable, apparently. It turned out to be a great call: Davis is already getting heaps of Oscar buzz to land a supporting actress nomination 9 months from now!
From one GOAT to another, very different hero in Bob Brown - although he’s still super tall, and so are his mates, The Giants. They’re the ancient trees of the Australian forest, and while they might be enormous, they’re defenceless against rapacious deforestation.
Enter THE GIANTS: an awe-inspiring new documentary about our forests, intertwined with an insightful biopic of environmentalist Bob Brown, a.k.a. the first openly gay member of parliament in Australia and leader of the world’s first Green party. The film flicks from Bob’s story to the trees’ story, exploring Brown’s spiritual connection to nature that continues to sustain his activism.
“A poetic, cinematic portrait of environmentalist Bob Brown and the forest…
[THE GIANTS will] inspire a new chapter in our relationship with nature.” ~ Screen Australia
According to the filmmakers, “THE GIANTS creates an epic and creative portrait of the forest that combines immersive, animated 3D forest scans with spine-tingling sound design featuring human vocals – to literally give a voice to these trees.” Anyone else got chills?!
But aside from looking and sounding inspiring, THE GIANTS aims to ignite a conversation about the right of the Forest to exist. A true example of impact entertainment, then: a story that captures our imagination, and inspires us into action to save it. We can’t wait.
AIR hits cinemas on April 5. The Giants releases nationally on April 20.
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On streaming, we’re flashing back to high school daze right now (yep, pun intended) with TWO amazing new female-led series: neither of them set in high schools. Confused? We’ll explain…
Season 2 of Yellowjackets has just dropped, and it’s being described as “uniquely gnarly”, “madly inventive” and “thrillingly disturbing”. Where do we sign? If you missed Season 1, the series is about a high school girls soccer team who survive a plane crash in the Ontario wilderness. It jumps back and forth between this timeline and 25 years later, where we see how the survivors have rebuilt their lives - and the truth about what really happened.
“Brutal but powerful viewing… a show about girls and women and how they weather a number of crises, both extraordinary and mundane.” ~ Michael Cuby
Hint: it’s gross. Series co-creator Bart Nickerson admitted ahead of launch that the girls resort to chowing down on one of their dead teammates. “We gave away the cannibalism in the pilot,” Nickerson said. “We wanted to build to not just that they DID it, but WHY they did it.” And we thought being eaten alive in high school was just a metaphor?!
So, high school drama, female empowerment, a huge disaster, and hidden secrets… hmmm, if you love the sound of all those ingredients but feel a bit vommy at the whole “human buffet” thing, we reckon Class of ‘07 could be more your speed! This killer new Aussie series has just landed on Amazon Prime with an incredible 98% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes - score.
Writer-creator Kacie Anning combines laugh-out-loud humour with a high-school reunion setting and an apocalyptic premise, which sees our heroes Zoe, Saskia and Amelia (plus all their BFFs & frenemies from a decade ago) getting together for a night bash at their old school… which just happens to be on top of the highest hill in town. Pretty handy for when an end-of-days flash flood hits Australia at biblical levels. Seriously, even Noah would park the Ark and chuck a sickie in this weather.
“Class of ’07 is absurdist in its approach to a survival story… a goofy, fun, surprising show that isn’t trying to be as serious or scary as Yellowjackets…” ~ Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya
See, told you. So how do Zoe & co. deal with the Earth-quaking apocalypse they’re trapped in, and the (maybe even more dramatic) frictions & ructions between their old crew? We won’t give away how the series unfolds, but we’ve gotta agree with reviewer Mariana Delgado, who wrote for That Shelf, “Any series smart enough to stick to its strengths, in this case, an all-female cast, is worth watching.” Bring it on.
Yellowjackets S2 is streaming on Paramount+. Class of ‘07 is streaming on Amazon Prime.
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