Posts

Showing posts with the label drama

DEATH WISH (2018) - REVIEW

Image
Review available on the new website .

NETFLIX CATCH-UP: AMERICAN CRIME STORY (SEASON 2)

Image
Talking about American Crime Story: The Assassination Of Gianni Versace .

LUKE CAGE: SEASON 2 - VLOG REVIEW

Image
I talk a bit about Season 2 of Marvel's Luke Cage .

LIFE OF PI - REVIEW

Image
Based on a novel by Yann Martel,  Life Of Pi  was directed by Ang Lee, who won the Best Director Oscar that year. It was a significant commercial and critical hit back in 2012, banking on its impressive 3D visuals and unusual scenario. The plot sees a Canadian journalist (Rafe Spall) meet a man called Pi Patel (Irrfan Khan) who has a wild story to tell that might be worth writing about. He describes his childhood and how he wrestled with various faiths throughout, from Christianity to Hinduism. His father eventually decides to leave India with all the animals from his zoo so the family, including a teenaged Pi, sets off on a long boat trip. One night, a storm suddenly sinks the boat and only Pi appears to survive. He sails off on a lifeboat with a couple of animals, one of which, we eventually find out, is a tiger he calls Richard Parker who turns out to be both the biggest liability and the one thing keeping Pi alert and alive. While the first act of the film sets the main theme

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI - REVIEW

Image
Review now available on the new website .

GONE BABY GONE - REVIEW

Image
Directed by Ben Affleck, Gone Baby Gone was a 2007 neo-noir mystery starring Casey Affleck as a private investigator hired to solve a missing person case along with his girlfriend, played by Michelle Monaghan. This Boston-set drama follows street-smart P.I. Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) as he conducts his own investigation, occasionally sharing his information with the police. He gets closer and closer to the truth about the missing little girl's whereabouts through his, often dodgy, contacts. His ability to talk to people on their level, without sounding condescending or too much like a cop, means he manages to get a lot more information from locals, criminals and other suspects. The plot is set into motion when the missing girl's mother makes an emotional plea for someone to find her daughter on television and the child's aunt soon hires Patrick, despite his initial reluctance to take on the case. The deeper he gets into this story, the more secrets he discovers le

DUNKIRK REVIEW - PODCAST

Image
We review Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk on The Big Rewind .

THE POST - REVIEW

Image
With the current political climate the way it is, there couldn't have been a better time to release The Post , Steven Spielberg's dramatic account of when The Washington's Post released leaked documents exposing a massive cover-up linked to the Vietnam War in the early 70's. Meryl Streep plays Katharine Graham, who became the owner of The Washington Post following her husband's death, and Tom Hanks is the newspaper's editor in chief Ben Bradlee. The latter is looking to elevate The Post beyond dealing with relatively trivial stories and constantly reacting to other publications' breaking news. When an ex-military analyst leaks documents to The New York Times proving current and past Presidents knew the Vietnam War was a disaster and still sent troops despite it being a lost cause, Richard Nixon's administration attempts to intimidate The Washington Post into not releasing more files. As Bradlee and his team rush to gather the rest of the leaked doc

WONDER WHEEL - REVIEW

Image
Wonder Wheel was Woody Allen's 2017 film starring Kate Winslet and Justin Timberlake as two people with a bit of an age gap who start an affair before one of them decides to get together with the other one's younger daughter. If this plot rings any bells, by the way, you've successfully pinpointed the first troubling aspect of this movie. As the world increasingly struggles to separate artists from their, often less-than-remarkable, and sometimes just plain odious, personal lives, it was a bit of a blind gamble for Allen to release a film like Wonder Wheel. A film that, if not consciously, subconsciously evokes the allegations surrounding the celebrated auteur and his daughter Dylan Farrow. Then again, if you've convinced yourself that you have done nothing wrong, why would you bother avoiding certain subtexts? On the surface, Wonder Wheel is your typical Tennessee Williams-style melodrama about people making bad decisions leading them to some ironic tragedy.

PHANTOM THREAD & WONDER WHEEL - VLOG

Image
I talk about a couple of late 2017 movie releases.

VENGEANCE: A LOVE STORY - REVIEW

Image
Another year, another Nicolas Cage film that passed by almost unnoticed. Recently released on Netflix, Vengeance: A Love Story is a thriller about a woman who is abused by a group of men one night in front of her daughter and the aftermath of that traumatic event. On paper, this sounds like your typical revenge plot where someone is taken or raped or killed and a good cop takes the law into his own hands once all else fails. The film, perhaps aware of how overplayed that subgenre has become, makes a genuine attempt to keep that aspect of the film in the background and focus on everything else. While this was a wise decision as it allows us to spend more time with and feel for Teena (Anna Hutchison), the victim, and her daughter Bethie (excellent newcomer Talitha Bateman), the film is unfortunately not clever enough to really explore the impact of rape on someone or the justice system's failings on the matter in a way that rings true. Vengeance is like a poorly written essay:

PHANTOM THREAD - REVIEW

Image
Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film, Phantom Thread , sees Daniel Day-Lewis play a respected fashion designer who meets a waitress and starts a rather awkward relationship with her. This is, as far as we know, probably the actor's final performance in a film. In contrast to the grim and intense There Will Be Blood , this new film seemed like a potentially lighter and less depressing effort. In a way, this is true since we're dealing with a man who makes dresses rather than a scary moustached man who sucks up oil "milkshakes" from the ground but this remains another typically unnerving and dark P. T. Anderson creation. The point of the film not being the dress-making itself as this isn't exactly a biopic, but rather everything else. It's the relationship between the fussy and closed-off yet undeniably talented Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and waitress Alma (Vicky Krieps) that takes centre stage. Woodcock is shown to be a true artist and a perfec

AMERICAN MADE - VLOG REVIEW

Image
I talk about American Made in a live vlog.

THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES - REVIEW

Image
Written and directed by Noah Baumbach, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)  was released on Netflix this month after a respectable performance at the Cannes Film Festival. The film stars Dustin Hoffman as Harold Meyerowitz, an ageing sculptor whose children have grown up resenting him somewhat based on their divisive upbringing. Harold constantly confuses his own sons' childhoods since his art was and still is always at the forefront of his mind with his daughter Jean (Elizabeth Marvel) trailing far behind. Danny (Adam Sandler) and Matthew (Ben Stiller) are very different from each other as a result of Harold's lack of interest: the former is a down-and-out musician with a limp, the latter is a successful yet high-strung private wealth expert. The film follows this family as they are forced to reconnect when Harold suffers a significant health scare. These are "New and Selected" stories in that, while the film is mostly linear, it skips through portions of

DUNKIRK - REVIEW

Image
Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk is a WWII movie following several characters including soldiers, pilots and civilians as they try to survive during an evacuation in the North of France, just before German forces close in. This story is told from different perspectives and periods of time as a British mariner sails a boat towards Dunkirk in order to help the Allied troops while a Spitfire pilot faces numerous potentially deadly challenges in the air and soldiers on the ground try everything they can to stay alive and make it home. The intensity of the expanding war is captured perfectly by showing the humanity and heroism involved alongside the pain and misery these soldiers face every single minute that goes by. No matter how flawed the main characters are, we still understand them and feel for them since none of what they're dealing with is their fault: they just happen to all be stuck in the grimmest mess. These are people who are so tired and beaten that

1941 - REVIEW

Image
Following the runaway success of both Jaws and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind , Steven Spielberg directed war-themed comedy 1941 back in 1979 and, although it wasn't technically a box-office bomb, it wasn't exactly a hit and it's only years later that it gained a cult following. The film is very loosely based on a mix of real yet mostly disconnected events as it explores the growing paranoia post-Pearl Harbor with US citizens fearing that Japan would attempt another attack and dealing with it in various ways. As an enemy submarine slowly tries to make its way to Los Angeles with the unlikely goal of destroying Hollywood, chaos builds in the city and we follow a variety of characters, each of them doing their own thing, with everything culminating in a cartoonish battle around Santa Monica pier. This is very much an ensemble piece in the vein of Dr Strangelove or American Graffiti with some characters having a very clear goal and others just kind of wandering i

GUARDING TESS - REVIEW

Image
Released in 1994, Guarding Tess was a comedy/drama starring Nicolas Cage as Doug Chesnic, a Secret Service agent tasked with protecting stubborn ex-First Lady Tess Carlisle (Shirley MacLaine) despite the fact he desperately wants to quit. The first time we meet Doug, he's genuinely happy to not be Tess' personal bodyguard anymore and he's keen to move his career forward in Washington due to his relationship with Tess having been a tumultuous one as she's constantly disobeying protocol, making spontaneous demands and telling him off. Unfortunately for him, leaving isn't that easy since Tess can just call up the President directly every time and get him to encourage Doug to stay. This doesn't improve the characters' dynamic much as one of them tries to enforce by-the-book rules and the other makes a point of going against said rules. There's a predictability about this whole scenario: two people can't stand each other, they get to know each other

DESIGNATED SURVIVOR - VLOG REVIEW

Image
I talk about Kiefer Sutherland's latest show Designated Survivor .

FEUD - VLOG REVIEW

Image
I talk relatively briefly about new FX show Feud .

LESS THAN ZERO - REVIEW

Image
Robert Downey Jr. stars in Less Than Zero , a 1987 film based on Bret Easton Ellis' novel. It also stars Jami Gertz, Andrew McCarthy and James Spader. The film follows three friends as their lives evolve (or devolve) after college: Clay (McCarthy) and Blair's (Gertz) relationship ends when the latter has an affair with Julian (Downey Jr.) and, some time later, a now successful Clay returns to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with his family and reconnect with old friends, including old flame Blair. Unfortunately, Julian's drug problem quickly becomes a liability for everyone. Robert Downey Jr. gives a reliably strong performance as the ebullient yet wounded Julian and James Spader is, of course, entirely convincing as the main antagonist. The film itself works best when it focuses on the sleazier side of L.A. and how the pressures of fitting in and making it big in the city can turn people into mindless cocaine-fuelled zombies, probably on a downward spiral to self-destr