Biography 240 results

Retro Movie Review – Deepwater Horizon

Mark Wahlberg and Kurt Russell are the heroes of the piece as their salt of the earth characters rise to the occasion and help to prevent a more serious loss of life through selfless heroism. The action is suitably claustrophobic as the isolation of the out-to-sea oil platform plays into the disaster.   //   Berg’s decision to focus on the accident on the oil rig and reduce the ecological disaster that was cased by the oil leak to a small footnote at the end of the ...

Watch the trailer for RESPECT, starring Jennifer Hudson as Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin!

  //   RESPECT stars Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, Marlon Wayans, Audra McDonald, Marc Maron, Tituss Burgess, Saycon Sengbloh, Hailey Kilgore, Tate Donovan, Heather Headley, Skye Dakota Turner, and Mary J. Blige and will be released in cinemas 2021! www.facebook.com/UniversalPicturesAU

Retro Movie Review – Steve Jobs

Screenplay writer Aaron Sorkin’s influence can be felt in more than just the words in the film as the Sorkinisms just keep piling up. The famous walk and talk shot is used throughout, as is the uber intelligent and quick witted conversational style. The brain pool on display is never short of exceptional as are the acting chops.   //   Michael Fassbender as Jobs is fantastic as is Kate Winslet as Job’s right hand woman Joanna Hoffman. Winslet’s take on Hoffman with ...

Retro Movie Review – Everest

The film is incredible tense and from the first frame you feel the rising level of impending doom. Even for those that have little knowledge of the actual events of the disaster, the film fills you with that dark sense of foreboding. It frames the climbers (accurately or not) as a group of driven people with little regard for their own safety or the tons of rubbish that modern day mountain climbing leaves behind.   //   The film is big in almost every way, a big cast, a ...

Retro Movie Review – Hidden Figures

The story revolves around the space race of the mid-sixties and the contribution of three extraordinary female African Americans. Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe are outstanding as the three leads and their intelligence and humour illuminates every scene they are in. Their quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) dignity show a resolve few posses.   //   The Space Race as it was called back then really was a race as the threat of communism and the fact the ...

Retro Movie Review – American Sniper

Clint Eastwood’s take on Navy Seal Chris Kyle’s (Bradley Cooper) autobiography certainly sets a scene of dread and foreboding as we follow Kyle and his descent into the war in Iraq. Kyle is a good old boy from Texas, a former competitive cowboy and a very proficient marksman. His entry into the service is spurred on by the events of 9/11 and his upbringing with a very strong and opinionated father. This background is revealed is very broad strokes and lacks the nuance to really allow ...

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 – The Wolf Of Wall Street

It’s a sign of the expertise at work here that the 180 minute long film literally flies by. It’s also helped along by Leonardo DiCaprio’s most manic performance yet. If you thought he was full on in Django Unchained, he ramps it up ten fold here. Quite a few of the support cast members also turn in career defining roles. This includes Jonah Hill, who get the mix of powerful and pathetic just right and Aussie soap star Margot Robbie’s clothing optional performance that proves her ...