Retro Movie Review – The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
It’s set in India and uses that colourful and frenetic local as an integral part of the storyline. It’s a tale of redemption amongst an older generation of Brits that are bucking against feeling like they have reached their used by dates. They end up at a hotel in India under false pretences and find that the luxury hotel the ads spoke about has been replaced by a run down complex run by Sonny (played with good humour by Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire).
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The ...
Retro Movie Review – Bridge Of Spies
Based in the murky waters of the shadowy world of espionage back in the late fifties, the film does an admirable job of keeping the audience in the know. There was such a litany of enemies (both real and perceived) of the American way of life presented back then that the story could have easily diffused into myopic rubbish. It steers mostly clear of easy slogans.
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Hanks plays super hostage negotiator James B. Donovan as he tries to trade a Russia spy to secure the ...
Retro Movie Review – Sicario
This is a modern day tale of drug running and Mexico/America border politics and it draws you in with bold strokes. It then details the character’s action in such a way as to illustrate the horrors that both the innocent and guilty have to endure during these drug wars.
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The screenplay leads you to make certain assumptions about the main protagonists actions and it’s to its satisfying complexity that right up until the end of the last reel there are still ...
Retro Movie Review – Foxcatcher
How a member of one of America’s richest families comes to murder an American Olympic star is one of the strangest tales ever told and even with the liberties taken with time lines and some of the actions on screen, the story remains true to life and true to being very bizarre.
Almost unrecognizable under make up and facial prophesises, Steve Carell as John Eleuthère du Pont drops the dry funny man stick and delivers the performance of his career, albeit a very creepy one. From his ...
Retro Movie Review – The Theory of Everything
The life and times of theoretical physicist, cosmologist and million selling author Stephen Hawking is told via a screenplay based on a book by his first wife of thirty years, Jane Wilde. We are given a window into his life from his early years and get to spend time with him before the revenges of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) took over his body.
While the force of the man’s will and his defiance of the medical profession’s estimate of the time of his demise is very inspiring, ...
Retro Movie Review – Senna
His career also ran parallel to the dawn of the new media age pertaining to live sport, so his life was very well documented visually, so well in fact that the film is built entirely from actual footage from his career, while a large part of the film’s dialogue comes from Senna himself.
It’s a masterful job of blending archival footage, spoken snippets from Ayrton himself and comments from some media experts that knew him well. There is also family footage that nicely places the ...
Retro Movie Review – Chappie
The story revolves around a computer sciences geek Deon Wilson (played by Dev Patel, he of Slumdog Millionaire, The Newsroom and Best Exotic Marigold Hotel fame) who creates an Artificial Intelligence program to help his robots achieve a level of human consciousness. His place of employment has already used his technology to build robots that the police use to enforce the law in Johannesburg. Upper management is opposed to this, so he goes rogue to complete the task. This is when the story ...
Retro Movie Review – Focus
Will Smith plays a hyper intelligent and suavely smooth career con man with one major flaw and it’s one you have to wait until film’s end to assess. He plays off the somewhat naive Jess, played by Margot Robbie in her first major role after her breakout appearance in The Wolf of Wall Street.
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In line with most flicks of this ilk, there is a large group of co-conspirators and victims and it’s very enjoyable to find out which is which. The sets and background ...
Retro Movie Review – Bridesmaids
Directed by TV actor/director Paul Feig and produced in part by Judd Apatow, Bridesmaids tries to deliver a raucous ride and succeeds for the most part. The cast is excellent and building a film around Kristen Wiig (who is also one of the film’s writers) is never a bad thing as she is a comic heavyweight, it’s just that it’s not always believable seeing women act as stupid and self-involved as men.
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This out of character activity leads to some very funny ...
Retro Movie Review – The Martian
It is equal parts thriller and scientific exploration and focuses on the human resolve to rise to the occasion and survive despite all the odds. Matt Damon is fantastic as the hyper intelligent astronaut that due to circumstance gets left behind on an aborted manned mission on Mars.
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His approach to survival is based around his scientific knowledge and raw will to live but it is tempered by irreverence towards his circumstance and to the authority figures that he ...
