Sarita Choudhury Archives - Silver Screen Riot

David Lowery is a visual poet. Throughout his celebrated career, the Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Pete’s Dragon, and A Ghost Story director has leaned on visual language and unconventional film grammar to connect with audiences, championing the emotional resonance of imagery over traditional narrative structure. In many ways, his films are in the same vein as American auteur Terrence Malick: thoughtful and dense, visually resplendent, whispery tone poems designated strictly for the Film Buff crowd. In that capacity, Lowery suffers Malick’s shortcomings, particularly as it pertains to resting too much within the opaque interiority of his characters and letting plotting fall by the wayside.

Tom Hank’s everyman charisma can’t save Tom Tyker’s laborious fish out of water romantic drama A Hologram for the King. That the plot doesn’t extent far beyond a man waiting for a meeting – an uphill battle of a dramatic thrust if there ever was one – isn’t necessary narrative nightshade though Tyker’s lackadaisical Tilt-A-Whirl approach to storytelling may just be. With a backbone that lacks pizazz, and often settles on a cursory examination of midlife existential crisis through the lens of cultural alienation, and a directorial style that tends towards unfocused arcs and uneven pacing, Tom Hanks proves a saving grace as a down-on-his-luck moral guide. With Hanks, we are admittedly in good hands but Tyker fails to make the frame swirling around him pop to any degree worth remaking upon. Read More