Kingsman: The Secret Service Movie Reviews
Colin Firth as Kingsman agent Harry Hart is flawlessly cast as our introduction to this world of perfect gentlemanly conduct and deadly killing precision. And in stark contrast to the recent proclivity of the Bond franchise to do away with all those cool spy gadgets, this film is littered with deadly hardware that would have made the old Q more than happy.
Underlining the cool technology on display is a story based on character development, honour and paying back impossible depts. Harry ...
The Imitation Game Movie Reivew
It had a high profile cast (for its time) in Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, Saffron Burrows, Jeremy Northam and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau who would, later on become much more famous as a pivotal character in an obscenely popular medieval TV show. There's a problem with Enigma, however and it's the fact the filmmakers substituted the real-life homosexual mathematician, Alan Turing, for a fictional heterosexual mathematician named Thomas Jericho and indeed the story centres around his very hetero...
Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) Movie Review
Mexican writer and director Alejandro González Iñárritu has delivered a story inside a story about a past his use by date movie star, Keaton, who previously reaped the riches and empty adulation that went with his role of playing the big screen superhero Birdman. He is seeking redemption (artistically and humanly) by writing, directing and starring in his own Broadway play.
Alejandro uses music masterfully as the first three quarters of the film is set to a drum solo and not the ...
Taken 3 Movie Review
Hollywood has a long history of impossibly cool heroes. Operatives whose talents can stop any foe and often times dead in their tracks. If the character is strong enough it can even start its own cottage industry. From a list that includes heroes like James Bond, Indian Jones and Jason Bourne, the powers to be are trying to add the name Bryan Mills.
As a screen superstar, Mills (played so far by Liam Neeson) ticks a lot of the requisite boxes: former secret operative (CIA, SAS, you pick the ...
Big Hero 6 Movie Review
Disney's cinematic adaptation of Marvel's Big Hero 6 markets itself off the back of Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen but it is an inferior film to both of those movies, lacking the intergenerational appeal and depth of those predecessors.
Big Hero 6 is all just a bit ‘kiddie’ and twee compared to its contemporaries. Yes, this is a kid’s movie but after all the intergenerational ‘kids’ movies we've had from Pixar and others, a plain ol' kids movie barely cuts it anymore. The beauty of ...
The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies Movie Review
Unperturbed by this, Peter Jackson has attempted to do the exact same thing with his Hobbit films bar the good sense to realise prior to publishing that destroying the tone of the original book is, in fact, a bad idea. Is it arrogance or egoism on Jackson's part to presume that he can improve upon Tolkien or is it economic studio interference to produce a cash cow? I suspect a fair portion of both but the result is the same: a three hour movie extravaganza of a children's novel which ...
Nightcrawler Movie Review
25 years ago the Hoodoo Gurus released , a song about the ever increasing prevalence of violence in the mass media. Of course, even then it was by no means a new concept. Indeed the song references the ancient Romans as ‘taking out all the guesswork’ in the formula.
With the advent of motion pictures it was inevitable that violence would become a fundamental element of the medium; unsurprising, of course, given violence is a primal staple of human drama. Fewer, though, are the films ...
The Dark Horse Movie Review
Pretty as a picture in his cardigan, trackie daks and red Crocs, Gen's severe bipolar disorder sees him frequently institutionalised as he struggles with the norms of society. Released into the care of his brother, Gen is thrust back into the violent gang environment into which he was born but his iron determination to overcome his disability and help others sees him use his substantial chess playing ability to help disadvantaged youth avoid an inevitable path of violence and crime.
The ...
Interstellar Movie Review
Environmental disaster is coming and our days are numbered on Mother Earth. Unfortunately the world is also consumed with an incongruous mixture of hyper-cynicism, conspiracy and hopeless optimism: living day to day, hoping for the best, shunning technology; existing in a perpetual state of damage control, rather than seeking new horizons. In the words of traumatised ex-test pilot, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), we have become caretakers rather than explorers and pioneers. In what appears to ...
