Review: Three Thousand Years of Longing, Breaking, and Funny Pages

Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton leave us with more longing than satisfaction in George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing. John Boyega shines in the painful film Breaking. Funny Pages fails to turn our interest.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

More about Three Thousand Years of Longing:

Dr Alithea Binnie is an academic – content with life and a creature of reason. While in Istanbul attending a conference, she happens to encounter a Djinn who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. This presents two problems. First, she doubts that he is real and second, because she is a scholar of story and mythology, she knows all the cautionary tales of wishes gone wrong. The Djinn pleads his case by telling her fantastical stories of his past. Eventually she is beguiled and makes a wish that surprises them both.

Starring: Idris Elba, Tilda Swinton

More about Breaking:

When Marine Veteran Brian Brown-Easley is denied support from Veteran’s Affairs, financially desperate and running out of options, he takes a bank and several of its employees hostage, setting the stage for a tense confrontation with the police. Based on the true story.

Starring: John Boyega, Michael Kenneth Williams, Nicole Beharie, Connie Britton, Olivia Washington, Selenis Leyva

More about Funny Pages:

When Robert, a high school student and aspiring cartoonist, rejects the comforts of suburban life, dropping out of school and leaving home, he finds an unwilling teacher and unwitting friend in Wallace — a former low-level comic artist — in this bitingly funny and playfully twisted coming-of-age story.

Starring: Daniel Zolghadri, Matthew Maher, Maria Dizzia, Josh Pais, Marcia DeBonis