Mike Goes To Movies

Sound of Metal (2020) TLDR: Easily one of the best films I have seen in a long while. Grounded by an absolutely stellar performance by Riz Ahmed (and co-star, Olivia Cooke), Darius Marder's Sound of Metal is a moving and deeply-empathetic look into the journey and struggle to find peace with one's self through the lens of a musician who loses his hearing.  Have no doubt, if you are not yet familiar with the names Riz Ahmed and Olivia Cooke you are about to be. Both actors - Ahmed in particular who leads the film - are transcendent in Darius Marder's Sound of Metal. Ahmed plays Ruben, a heavy metal drummer, in a duo group led by guitar/singer, Lou, played by Cooke. The two are as much a pair off-stage as they are on it. It is clear from early on that they are all that the other really has in life and they are content to travel across the country in their RV together playing shows and making ends meet as best they can. However, all goes awry when Ruben - who batters his eardr...

The Sisters Brothers (2018) The Sisters Brothers is yet another illustration of the fickleness of the film industry. It is by all means a very good film - direction, cinematography, script, acting, and so on - however, it greatly under-performed on release and, since, has more-or-less disappeared from discussion. This really is a shame because The Sisters Brothers has all of the trappings of a classic dark comedy. I guess the one hope is that it bounces back in future years as somewhat of a cult film. As one can guess, the film is about the Sisters brothers - two of the most infamous hired-guns around - Charlie (John C. Reilly) and Eli (Joaquin Phoenix). The film revolves around the brothers meeting up with a man, John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) who has been tracking another man, Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed), whom the brothers have been hired to kill. Along the way, the brothers run into and entangle themselves with an assortment of notable characters, dangers, and various plots...