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GONE BABY GONE - REVIEW

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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

MOTHER! - REVIEW

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Directed by Darren Aronofsky, mother! is a psychological thriller from 2017 about a couple living in the countryside who get a strange visit from another couple before things get truly out of hand, to say the least. Jennifer Lawrence is the titular mother who lives in an unfinished house with her rather intense husband, a writer (played by the ever-intimidating Javier Bardem) suffering from writer's block until he is visited by a fan and his wife. The latter couple, played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer, show up randomly one day as Lawrence's character becomes increasingly suspicious of their bizarre behaviour and nervous about their influence on her husband. "mother" isn't all that normal herself as she appears to be obsessed with fixing her house and spends pretty much all her time walking around looking confused by everything. You're never quite sure what this awkward dynamic between her and her much older husband is all about since they're r

RUN ALL NIGHT - REVIEW

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Liam Neeson is back with yet another action thriller and, so soon after Taken 3 (which was met with lukewarm reviews), although the film's poor performance at the box-office proves that Run All Night was one Neeson-being-a-badass movie too many too soon, this doesn't reflect the film's overall quality. Sure Run All Night works a bit too much like a compilation of Neeson's previous movies: he plays an alcoholic ( Non-Stop ) with a family he's aiming to protect at all costs ( Taken ) who is very good at punching faces (all of the above). Even then, this is a solid thriller which may not be quite as unique or atmospheric as the underrated A Walk Among The Tombstones , but which hits all the right notes and has a lot going for it. For one thing, the film looks beautiful: from the slick, dream-like expansive shots of the city to the dark, street-light-lit night shots, even if the film itself wasn't, the cinematography in this one is, indeed, a hit. Director Ja

THE ROCK - REVIEW

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The late nineties were a weird time. Nicolas Cage kept being cast in ridiculously overblown action movies ( Con Air , Face/Off ), Michael Bay was about to work with J.J. Abrams on Armageddon , dogs and cats living together: mass hysteria. Back in 1996, The Rock came out and combined the acting talents of Mr Cage and Mr Sean Connery in what seemed like an odd pairing, and, I suppose, in what  was an odd pairing, but which also worked surprisingly well. Knowing what we now know about Bay, The Rock is an interesting film to revisit because it's both very much his style and yet nowhere near as irritating or cheesy as the likes of Armageddon and Transformers 2 . I mean, of course you still get soldiers marching in slow-mo at sundown, insulting comic-relief stereotypes (look out for a gay hairdresser more concerned about hair than he is about bullets), perplexing one-liners ("How do you like how that shit works?") and ludicrous art direction but there's just somet