Spectre Movie Review
The feeling lingers that they started with an overall direction for the Craig films but ended up taking too many diversions along the way. Some of the reveals are far from the surprise the filmmakers intended. Also extending the realism and casting Bond as more human and less the gadget guy has worked with only half of the four films. This sombre realism worked well with Casino Royale and Skyfall, less so with Quantum of Solace and Spectre.
Even though Craig is contracted for one more ...
The Dressmaker Movie Review
The story revolves around country life in a very small town and the often times negative effects of power and privilege filtered through gossip and innuendo. Kate Winslet is fantastic as Myrtle 'Tilly' Dunnage who returns to the town to address some long held secrets. Liam Hemsworth (brother of Thor) is also very effective as the love interest.
The film is unafraid to throw the audience and the characters themselves under the bus and as such there are some very genuine moments of ...
The Walk Movie Review
Enter Robert Zemeckis; director of numerous landmark films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Back To The Future, Forest Gump and Contact but has failed to match the quality and innovation of those films for nigh on twenty years. His last film, Flight, was a reasonable attempt at recapturing prior successes but it was no Contact. The time is right - nay overdue - for a return to form.
The Walk isn't quite that film. But it is a very good film. It is imbued with the same emotional fibre of ...
Bridge Of Spies Movie Review
Based in the murky waters of the shadowy world of espionage back in the late fifties, the film does an admirable job of keeping the audience in the know. There was such a litany of enemies (both real and perceived) of the American way of life presented back then that the story could have easily diffused into myopic rubbish. It steers mostly clear of easy slogans.
Hanks plays super hostage negotiator James B. Donovan as he tries to trade a Russia spy to secure the release of Gary Powers, ...
Crimson Peak Movie Review
It must be said that the film looks fantastic and features visuals never before seen but the plot and action staging is so predictable, it drains all the energy out of the experience. In some genres this would not drive the knife into the heart but with the horror/thriller genre nothing is worse than predictability.
Also not helping is the film score by Fernando Velázquez that telegraphs emotions with such an obvious touch. It’s a shame really as the cast, which includes Mia Wasikow...
Black Mass Movie Review
Johnny Depp breaks step with all that pirate nonsense and delivers his best performance in years as Irish-American organised crime boss, James ‘Whitey’ Bulger. In 1975 as an informant, Bulger enjoyed the protection of the FBI whilst supplying information the Feds used to take down his Italian rivals and allowed him to replace them as a kingpin in Boston. It was a charmed deal for Bulger until the mid nineties when the media blew the lid off this corrupt arrangement.
A barely recogn...
The Martian Movie Review
It is equal parts thriller and scientific exploration and focuses on the human resolve to rise to the occasion and survive despite all the odds. Matt Damon is fantastic as the hyper intelligent astronaut that due to circumstance gets left behind on an aborted manned mission on Mars.
His approach to survival is based around his scientific knowledge and raw will to live but it is tempered by irreverence towards his circumstance and to the authority figures that he has to interface with. ...
Pan Movie Review
The set up is interesting enough: young orphan, Peter, is abducted to Neverland where he befriends Tiger Lilly, Tinkerbell and a young Hook and together they save Neverland from Blackbeard the pirate. The narrator is unequivocal about the central theme being best friends becoming enemies - a clear reference to the Peter/Hook relationship.
The problem is that by film’s end Peter and (now Captain) Hook are still friends! So the story, as a whole, feels unresolved.
Now, perhaps the ...
Sicario Movie Review
This is a modern day tale of drug running and Mexico/America border politics and it draws you in with bold strokes. It then details the character’s action in such a way as to illustrate the horrors that both the innocent and guilty have to endure during these drug wars.
The screenplay leads you to make certain assumptions about the main protagonists actions and it’s to its satisfying complexity that right up until the end of the last reel there are still surprises left in store.
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Everest Movie Review
The film is incredible tense and from the first frame you feel the rising level of impending doom. Even for those that have little knowledge of the actual events of the disaster, the film fills you with that dark sense of foreboding. It frames the climbers (accurately or not) as a group of driven people with little regard for their own safety or the tons of rubbish that modern day mountain climbing leaves behind.
The film is big in almost every way, a big cast, a big adventure and a big ...
