As someone who has to regularly come up with article titles, I know names can be hard. Finding something eye catching, easy to scan that sums up your entire work of art can be a maddening process. Good titles are eternally memorable. They can lead them directly to you work. Bad ones can turn people off, keep them from watching your movie.
Buy The Sisters Brothers Blu-rayThe Sisters Brothers is a terrible freaking title. It seems clever because its about some brothers whose last name is Sisters, but it doesn’t work in any other way, and those unfamiliar with the film (which includes everyone who hasn’t read the book) will immediately be confused. It sounds like some sort of prestige costume genre. It certainly doesn’t give you any indication that its a stylish, blood-soaked western.
I have not seen the movie. Its title certainly didn’t do anything to make me want to pay my money down. I saw the trailer when it first came out and it looked interesting, but apparently not so much that I made it to the theater. The reviews have mostly been good and the more I read about it the more interesting it sounds. It stars John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix as the titular brothers, hired guns for a enigmatic kingpin (Rutger Hauer) who sends them on an endless pursuit of limitless enemies. It was directed by French filmmaker Jacques Audiard, making his English-language debut.
Terrible title or not, I’m a fan of ultra violent westerns and the two lead actors so I’m all in for this pick of the week.
Also out that looks interesting:
Widows: Steve McQueen directs a Gillian Flynn script about a group of women whose dead criminal husbands left behind a debt whose payment is now being demanded by some hard-nosed gangsters. These widows hatch a plan to pull of a heist of their own. It stars Elizabeth Debicki, Viola Davis, Liam Neeson, Michelle Rodriguez, Carrie Coon, and Colin Farrell.
The Possessed: Italian director Luigi Bazzoni made this early giallo in 1966. It has more in common with Hitchcock and European art-house cinema than Dario Argento, but it is still full of style and mood. You can read my full review.
The Fifth Cord: Bazzoni made this film several years after The Possessed. In between those films, Argento made The Bird with the Crystal Plumage forever changing Italian horror. The Fifth Cord has all the tropes of giallo, but is elevated by fantastic cinematography from Oscar-winner Vittorio Storaro. You can read my review.
The Girl in the Spider’s Web: Claire Foy takes on the Lisbeth Salander role and she’s once again caught up in a web of shady bad guys.
The Cloverfield Paradox: Netflix dropped this film as a surprise last year after the Super Bowl. It was immediately panned by critics and basically forgotten about soon afterwards. It is part of the Cloverfield Cinematic Universe which seems to be made up mostly of films that weren’t originally conceived as such but later got some monsters tacked in to create the illusion that the filmmakers have some overarching ideas. This one’s about a space station equipped with a particle accelerator that creates some monstrous results.
Diamonds for Breakfast: Marcello Mastroianni stars in this very 1960s comedy about a gang of girl thieves aiming to steal the Russian Crown Jewels. You can read my full review.
The Deuce: The Complete Second Season: David Simon and George Pelacano’s drama set amongst the porn industry in 1970s New York had a stellar first season (which I reviewed). Season Two takes place in 1977 and finds a city besieged by poverty and crime and open to all sorts of sexual matters. I’m looking forward to sitting down with this soon.
Shame (Criterion Collection): Ingmar Bergman’s 1968 film stars Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow and as a couple, former musicians, who have fled a civil war and now live an idyllic life on a rural island, but the isolation is starting to wear on them.
A Private War: Rosamund Pike, Jamie Dornan, Stanley Tucci and Tom Hollander star in this drama about a war correspondent reporting from Kosovo, Chechnya and East Timor.
