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Showing posts with the label Joel Edgerton

BRIGHT - REVIEW

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This year Netflix released Bright , a fantasy cop movie starring Will Smith and Joel Edgerton, the latter playing an Orc of all things. Directed by David Ayer, the film quickly became a popular target for everyone to trash and make fun of. Set in an alternate present where elves, fairies and other creatures live side-by-side, the film sees human cop Daryl Ward (Smith) reluctantly partner up with an Orc as they spend a whole night dealing with dirty cops, protecting a powerful magic wand and running away from the likes of evil elves, Mexican gangsters, Orcs and the Feds. It's been compared to Alien Nation and, indeed, there are obvious similarities but the film is so derivative that it somehow comes back around to feeling rather original and fresh. There's definitely a heavy-handed message about racism in there that, while relevant, is hard to take completely seriously when everyone's talking about magic wands the whole time. Bright wants to be a lot of things but it n

MIDNIGHT SPECIAL - REVIEW

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From the director of Take Shelter and Mud comes another cult oddity starring Michael Shannon. Midnight Special is a science-fiction film about a young boy with unpredictable abilities who is being driven out of the city by his father as government agents hunt them down. Very much a nod to all those E.T. -style sci-fi films of the 1980's, Midnight Special remains a modern update rather than a straight-up homage like Stranger Things . The tone and pacing throughout is about as gloomy and slow as you'd expect from a Jeff Nichols film so if you're looking for big action sequences or tons of trippy effects then this will probably disappoint. The cool thing about Midnight Special is it really doesn't feel like a science fiction movie so when something out of the ordinary happens it has an impact. The mood is pretty depressing from start to finish which is rare for a movie of that type but appropriate as the characters all journey towards a goal that can only mean one