German Film Festival 2023: A Thousand Lines Movie Review
In December 2018 the world added the term Spiegelgate to the international lexicon when German journalist Claas Relotius was outed as a fraud on a grand scale. He falsified facts in at least 14 stories of his in Der Spiegel, a German weekly news magazine with a huge circulation at that time.
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Director Michael Herbig deconstructs the actual details of that misuse of position and power and builds in its place a very entertaining romp through spectacular levels of ...
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Movie Review
Volume 3 of Guardians of the Galaxy shares the franchise’s penchant for fantastic visuals highlighting imaginative new worlds with recognisable rock songs to help create momentum. It also features characters that are written well within the lines. This gives things a comforting familiarity but one open for a slight expansion of backstory. This time the highlights are the details about Rocket's (Bradley Cooper) origin story.
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As with all the MCU’s big-budget ...
German Film Festival 2023: Sisi & I Movie Review
The movie revolves around her relationship with Countess Irma Sztáray (Sandra Hüller) who started as her lady-in-waiting but became much more. The film begins after the period when Sisi gave birth to the royal children and focuses on the time she spent away from her husband on Corfu, an island off the coast of Greece.
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During this separation, she was able to indulge her every whim and led a hedonist lifestyle where all those around her had to indulge her outside ...
Living With Chucky Movie Review
This documentary starts with an assembly of talking heads describing the temper of the times. An era where anti-heroes were fuelling a new wave of horror films that had likeable villains. This started with Freddy Krueger from Wes Carven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street and gathered momentum when writer Don Mancini created the Chucky character for the film Child’s Play in 1988.
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The maniacal doll proved so popular that they eventually spun off a series of films under ...
Evil Dead Rise Movie Review
This latest chapter is light on the humour and heavy on the red stuff. Set in an almost film noir run-down Los Angeles apartment building, this poor family has no idea of what’s about to come. When an earthquake happens, this is Southern Californian after all, it unearths that sacred tome and all hell breaks loose.
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Now just about every family has a horror story about the parental units, My personal shocker involves a mother-in-law but the transformation of ma ...
Mafia Mamma Movie Review
Kristin (Toni Collette) is a woman who gives everything to others, leaving very little for herself. She is tied to a job that has no respect for her and a deadbeat husband that takes full advantage of her good nature. Her one shining light, a teenage son has just flown the coop to go to college.
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Into this situation drops the news of her distant grandfather's passing away and her being summoned to Italy to take over the running of the family business. She meets ...
The Pope’s Exorcist Movie Review
Those laughs are often countered by the intensity of the possession scenes. They are more than reminiscent of that granddaddy of the genre, The Exorcist. Those moments are delightfully over the top and build to a bat-shit-crazy crescendo by the film’s end.
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When Julia (Alex Essoe), Amy (Laurel Marsden) and Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) first roll up to the creepy castle-like structure in the middle of nowhere, it’s not long before things go bump in the night. ...
Air Movie Review
His alignment with the shoe company Nike and the contract he signed that gave him a percentage of each shoe with his name on it was groundbreaking and changed the industry overnight. Air provides a fascinating look at the human endeavour behind the scenes of this monumental event.
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Matt Damon is Sonny Vaccaro, the Nike employee most responsible for signing Jordon to the brand. A brand at the time that was lagging in sales in the basketball shoe market. The film, ...
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Movie Review
It’s been over twenty years since that last cinematic effort and the ensuing two decades plus of CGI advancement has led to a much richer palette this time. It’s to the filmmaker's credit that they have developed a script that puts character development on equal terms with the computer-generated effects.
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Engineered to bring the role players out of the house and into the cinema, this film version of DnD works hard at establishing character skins you would want ...
Shazam! Fury of the Gods Movie Review
Fury of the Gods mixes mythical magic with an ethos that promotes family and the value of friendship. There is still the prerequisite amount of spectacle but the heroes here have doubts and less than absolute conviction. It makes them more relatable to a younger audience.
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The story revolves around gods being released from purgatory and returning to earth to wreak havoc and plant the seeds of human destruction. The trio of baddies is led by Hespera played by Helen ...
