All tagged romance
The App is an Italian sci-fi/drama/romance/thriller hybrid from writer/director Elisa Fuksas. The title of the film is not a metaphor or some grand symbolic play; it is the substance of the film. Fuksas commits to a story about a new kind of dating app and her vision is quite fascinating.
Mati Diop makes quite a statement in her debut narrative feature Atlantics. She crafts an original paranormal drama with romantic elements unlike anything I’ve encountered before. She plays with reinventing the tropes of the literary Gothic in a way that celebrates marginalized people and otherizes those with money and power.
What Gerwig refuses to do in her Little Women is sacrifice Meg, Beth, and Amy to tell the story of Jo. Jo is the central figure that connects all the plots together, though she is not shoehorned into every imaginable scene to make her the hero of the story. Meg is allowed to be a complicated character who believes growing up to discover a different dream is an admirable thing. Amy is allowed to grow and mature into an adult, still headstrong but able to accept that the world does not revolve around her. And Beth, dear sweet Beth, is shown to accept not just her fate but her own value in the world, where she is allowed to pursue her own happiness and take up space in the world.
The criteria for the list is rather simple. A great musical has to have a great song score. The singing has to be good. The songs have to service the story and the story needs to hit the emotional heights necessary to justify a song. And, most importantly, the film must have released between 2010 and 2019.
