Retro Movie Review – Precious
The film also provides a platform for some amazing performances. First time actor Gabourey Sidibe delivers a heart wrenching performance as the title character, fact is, the acting is so strong throughout that it transforms your feelings about a number of key characters. Mo'Nique who plays Precious’ mother is so repugnant is the early part of the film that you absolutely hate her, but through a great script and pure acting talent, there is a scene that actually makes you feel sympathy for ...
Retro Movie Review – Mr. Pip
The film based on a novel by Lloyd Jones is set in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea during the civil war there during the early nineties. The story revolves around Matilda (Xzannjah Matsi) and the relationship she has with her mother Dolores (Xzannjah’s real life mother Healsville Joel), Mr. Watts (Hugh Laurie) the only white man in their small village and the novel Great Expectation by Charles Dickens.
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Matilda’s somewhat idyllic life is brought to a crashing ...
Retro Movie Review – Moneyball
Lewis’ book follows the reinvention of baseball by using computer and statistical analysis to achieve the desired individual results and bypasses the traditional way that teams scouted players and as a topic of a ‘sports movie’ presented quite the challenge. It’s to the filmmaker's credit that a subject that could have resulted in a very dry cinema experience has been turned into such a warm human examination.
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The acting is excellent throughout and Brad ...
Retro Movie Review – Looper
Looper dives into this environment with a very slick look and some very well known actors (one slightly altered by prostheses). It skirts the line between science fiction and thriller status with a quiet confidence and draws you into more of an examination of the characters lives than a study of the raw science. It has to be said that the technology behind the time travel is hardly mentioned.
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It also comments on the emptiness that the day’s technology has ...
Retro Movie Review – It Might Get Loud
For died in the wool fans there are still enough on-screen disclosure to get you through, including a rare visit to Page’s guitar dungeon (with its impressive number of vintage instruments), White’s country estate and cool car and The Edge’s guitar lair, which is the audio equivalent of Frankenstein’s laboratory.
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They are set pieces, some of which are quite silly (like the one when the present age White meets himself as a youth for a lesion on guitar ...
Retro Movie Review – Marley
His rise from being a poor and struggling musician to becoming one of the world’s great healers makes for a riveting story. Macdonald uses live performance clips, interviews with Bob, his family and close friends as well as stock footage to set the time and place in a masterful way.
Both Marley and reggae came of age in a most tumultuous time and one has to have first hand experience of how difficult life can be in those poor and improvised countries to know how exceptional his level ...
Retro Movie Review – Gasland
The process under scrutiny is called hydraulic fracturing and it involves pumping a concoction of highly carcinogenic chemicals into the ground in a process that helps free the natural gas. Almost all of the poor people that live around these sites are experiencing the horrors that go along with exposure to toxic wastes. This point is brought home most vividly by a number of homeowners who after years of fine well-sourced drinking water can now (post drilling) actually light their tap water ...
Retro Movie Review – End Of Watch
Taylor and Zavala are beat cops driving through some of Los Angeles’ meanest streets and the compression of action that they see in a single day, while it might be all artists license feels real and ominous. The film is shot with a lot of contradictory technologies from hand held (and jumpy) cameras to lapel cams to fixed position shots. Its quasi-documentary style feeds into this sense of heightened reality.
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Like many tales that have come before, those that go ...
Retro Movie Review – Frost/Nixon
The film is based on a play by Peter Morgan (writer of The Queen) and features the original stars from its London and Broadway performances. British born actor Michael Sheen plays David Frost and the American actor Frank Langella plays Nixon. At first, Langella seems an odd choice to play the unlikable Nixon but by the end of the film, his emulation of Nixon’s odd body language and speech patterns become quite convincing.
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As the interviews begin, the lightweight ...
Retro Movie Review – Broken Embraces
That character, Mateo Blanco (and his alter ego Harry Caine) played by Lluís Homar puts expectations to the side while indulging in some classic artist inspired narcissism. His back-story is told in flashbacks but there are still a number of gaps that need to be filled in by the attentive. Also mirroring real life, it is not always apparent what the motivations behind some of those actions are.
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Almodóvar’s muse, Penélope Cruz delvers a performance that could ...
