A Dog’s Purpose Movie Review
A Dog’s Purpose is built on the premise that dogs live life over and over via reincarnation but keep the memories of past lives in their consciousness. We follow one doggie soul through multiple lives and all of them are examinations of various forms of the human condition.
Unafraid to lay down something other than just cute doggie shenanigans, some of the lives our main dog soul lives are quite sad. It’s comments on unworthy parents, unwanted pets or human loneliness give the film a ...
Alien: Covenant Movie Review
Michael Fassbender does double duty this time out and his android character poses most of the film’s questions on life and the meaning of. Non existentialists need not fear for those with less interest in large degrees of depth, there is still plenty of inventive gore and enough scare tactics to keep most audience members on edge.
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Picking up where Prometheus left off, Alien: Covenant works well as a stand alone film as it doesn’t add all that much to the alien ...
Free Fire Movie Review
The cast is A-list, Brie Larson (following up her star turn in Room), Armie Hammer (unrecognisable under all that facial hair) and Cillian Murphy (effective as a shady dude with values), the film’s intent is decidedly not and in this case that is a good thing. No wildly improbable flights of CGI fancy or vanity visuals, just a gritty story with dire consequences.
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Set primarily is one set, the film plays off the actors ability to drop in and out of view but still ...
Get Out Movie Review
The story revolves around leaving the big city and going out to the country to meet the girlfriend’s parents for the first time. Along the way it touches on issues as diverse as rich white privilege, social injustice, true friendship and how often times people are completely different than the first impression would lead you to believe.
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The direction is assured and important elements of the story arrive with perfect timing. For a first time director, this level ...
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Movie Review
The visuals and set design are also ramped up to a lollie shop level of bright colours and eye candy. The underlining story is rather thin this time but does divulge further information on Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) and his parents and how the animosity between sisters Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (Karen Gillan) became so intense. This lack of deep story story telling does little to distract from the fun as the script is rife with humour and running gags. This is especially true with the ...
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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