Denial Movie Review
The film packs true emotion and proves there is still a place in modern cinema for films that are made for adults. It’s a heart wrenching look at a serious subject and one that engages the audience through a solid script and superlative acting and never reduces things to cheap theatrics.
The subject, the Holocaust and its deniers is given a mature treatment and even the people in the wrong are treated with respect. It is not however just a dry courtroom drama and as the case progresses, ...
The Fate of the Furious Movie Review
The Fate of the Furious is the first complete edition of the series after the tragic death of core cast member Paul Walker and his loss in firmly felt. His character is only given one line of reference dialogue and this outing features the weakest character development in a long time.
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To compensate for this lack of story, the action is ramped up to unheralded levels of crazy. It also shows some signs of complacency as some of the special effects are quite dodgy ...
Ghost in the Shell Movie Review – another view
More a prequel to Oshii's film than a remake, the story relates the origins of Major Motoko Kusanagi (Scarlett Johansson) and also a little bit of her partner, Batou (Pilou Asbæk). The film riffs heavily off Oshii by lifting sequences directly from his film (hence why, on the surface, this appears to be a remake) and recreates them in the live action format - a relatively easy task with our contemporary special effects technology. It's interesting to see how Sanders has applied these ...
Ghost In The Shell Movie Review
Scarlett Johansson inhabits the role of Major with a fitting mechanical nonchalance that gets progressively more human as the story unfolds. Having said that, the depth of almost all the characters in this version are condensed to a fairly basic level. The film feels very Hollywood and the film’s makers could have shown a bit more trust that the modern audience can digest and enjoy more complex narratives.
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Touching on universal truths and the themes of what ...
The LEGO Batman Movie Review
Following his success in the original Lego Movie, voice actor Will Arnett reprises his role of Batman / Bruce Wayne as he’s an excellent choice. His voice has just the right amount of wit and snark and he plays it all to the hilt. Without getting all the Batman fanboys and girl’s knickers in a bunch, the whole billionaire crime fighting playboy with a dark side gets the send up it so richly deserves and what better way to do that than with a world built on plastic pieces.
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Logan Movie Review
The great thing about the Wolverine spin off films is that they're more humanist drama/action movies than they are traditional comic book adaptations. This applies even to the much-derided X-Men Origins: Wolverine. They represent a maturation of the comic book films that are freer to explore other genres outside the literally derived, primary-coloured storyboard format.
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James Mangold's two Wolverine films - this one and its predecessor, The Wolverine - are a ...
Kong: Skull Island Movie Review
The cast is chock full of Hollywood A-Listers including a man of the moment, Tom Hiddleston, the always popular Samuel L. Jackson (in a bad guy role) and even an attempt at some form of indie cred with Brie Larson, here getting her best Lara Croft on following her star turn in Room. The other A-Lister is that big bad monkey man, who this time out is big but not so bad.
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The locations are exotic and the sets are stunning and the emergence of the big guy is played to ...
Jasper Jones Movie Review
The story is set in a small town in Western Australia and it mirrors small town life with a loving feel. The surrounds are idyllic and its inhabitants are not portrayed as yokels but as a community with compassion but one coloured by conservatism and some degree of racism. Into this mix we focus on Charlie Bucktin (Levi Miller), a soft spoken and sensitive 14 year-old boy who is about to get pulled into a world previously unknown to him.
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The cast is peppered with ...
T2 Trainspotting Movie Review
The main players that lived through the first film are all back and Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie are as dysfunctional as ever. The story set twenty years later borrows heavily from the novels Trainspotting and Porno. Boyle’s technique of injecting scenes from the original work gives T2 a strong and believable link to the past. This continuity does author Irvine Welsh proud.
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The story revolves around Renton (Ewan McGregor) returning to his old stomping ...
Hidden Figures Movie Review
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.
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The Space Race as it was called back then really was a race as the threat of communism and the fact ...
