American Hustle Movie Review
The always-outstanding British actor Christian Bale lays to rest the man in black for the new man in fat. His visual transformation is just one element of his transcendent performance. He has to act his butt off just to transcend that hairdo of his. Jennifer Lawrence adds to her building resume of great performances as Bale’s on screen wife who is both hilarious and clueless.
Bradley Cooper’s manic drug fuelled performance is also outstanding. Now no discussion of great roles in this ...
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Movie Review
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 They end up at a hotel in India under false pretences and find that the luxury hotel the ads spoke about has been replaced by a run down complex run by Sonny (played with good humour by Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire).
The set up is somewhat ...
Elysium Movie Review
The story follows Max (Matt Damon), a downtrodden underclassman vying for asylum in the privileged celestial city of Elysium. Like his poverty-stricken brethren, Max is an oppressed would-be saint crushed under the iron heel of an elitist upper class that is evil beyond redemption.
Emotionally-laden key words such as 'homeland security' and 'no-fly zone' are bandied about to ensure we don't miss the point and one of the bad guys is Apartheid incarnate with his penchant for authoritarian ...
District 9 Movie Review
Perhaps taking its cue from Banlieue 13, Pierre Morel’s thrill ride of 2004 set in Paris where the worst offenders existed in a walled-off ghetto, District 9 (set in Johannesburg) follows a similar theme except this ghetto’s populated by aliens with a taste for cat food. Eventually dark influences exploit the residents flavoured by, among other things, interspecies prostitution and with trouble following quickly, the government are left with no alternative but to create a new ‘haven...
Django Unchained Movie Review
When the rumours of Tarantino tackling the Western genre first surfaced, what a hundred years ago, it provided a number of great movie conservationist’s topics. Could his make cowboys look and sound cool? Could he recharge careers and get superlative performances from his regulars? Could he make an increasingly jaded audience stand up and cheer? In almost all categories the answer is a resounding yes.
Few are unaware of the film’s basic synopsis after another nuanced series of ...
22 Jump Street Movie Review
The fish out of water theme has returned but this time the background has changed to college life (as opposed to high school) and the roles are reversed with Schmidt (Hill) being the outcast and Jenko (Tatum) being the stud/jock who fits in. It’s also slightly less of a challenge in the suspension of disbelief while seeing these two thirty something actors in college instead of high school.
The story line taps into drugs on campus (this time of the performance enhancing variety) and ...
21 Jump Street Movie Review
How this happened is no real mystery. First it must be said that out of the ten or so people I spoke to before the screening, none had actually seen even a single episode of the eighties era television show, so the slate seems to be clean for a new interpretation with no baggage of having to adhere to fans that know every nuance of the original. The film also steers firmly into the direction of parody and as such takes as many swipes at eighties era society as it does the television of the ...
The Wolf Of Wall Street Movie Review
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 ...
A Single Man Movie Review
The film, based on the novel by Christopher Isherwood, does have a very distinct visual look. This at times almost robs the film of its emotional impact by being a bit too obvious but the window into the soul of its main character George Falconer (Firth) is so strong, it helps to keep the focus. George is an English Professor practicing his trade in California in the early sixties.
He has suffered a tremendous personal loss and is barely hanging on. His British detachment prevents him ...
True Grit Movie Review
Performances are predictably grand from this cast (Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper) with the exception of newcomer, Hailee Steinfeld, who is a revelation; her elocution of the Coen's distinguished dialogue squarely hits the mark.
History has shown that the Coen brothers produce basically two types of film: quirky and peculiar flicks that are borderline art house (A Serious Man, Barton Fink) and the crowd pleasers designed to return a reasonable box office (Intolerable ...
