I was so excited to see this, better late than never! The Plot;The film is set within the universe of a fictional 20th-century magazine, based in a beautiful make-believe French city. We meet many characters who have many stories to tell, all of which make up the sections within the next issue of The French […]
The French Dispatch: The Wes Anderson to End All Wes Andersons’
Time: 126 Minutes Age Rating: Animal cruelty & content that may disturb Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch as Phil Burbank Kirsten Dunst as Rose Gordon Jesse Plemons as George Burbank Kodi Smit-McPhee as Peter Gordon Thomasin McKenzie as Lola Genevieve Lemon as Mrs. Lewis Keith Carradine as Governor Edward Frances Conroy as Old Lady Director: Jane Campion […]
The Power of the Dog (2021) Review
A bored family man reaches back into his former life after his home is robbed which ultimately makes him the target of Russian mobsters.
Who Thought a “Nobody” Could Be So Great?
If someone said Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot were starring in a globetrotting heist comedy…you would probably be intrigued. It’s a film idea that has blockbuster written all over it. You’d have to work really hard for this film to be bad. Unfortunately, Netflix loves a challenge. The plot for Red Notice is […]
A story become too familiar? After almost a century of Dracula narratives, whether they are adapted directly from the Bram Stoker novel or not, the character and his arc feels as familiar as a family heirloom, passed down the generations. This is part of why F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu” is the adaptation of the
story I come back to more often than any other- Murnau’s film feels like an oddity, like that weird uncle you don’t really want to talk about. And yet, it still has a place in the family, because the DNA remains constant.
Nosferatu: A Bold Vision of a Familiar Story
I have always been a huge fan of The Coen Brothers and a lot of that is due to my Dad who introduced Fargo, Oh Brother Where Art Thou and The Big Lebowski into our household. I always got excited when a new film of theirs was announced. Ethan Coen appears to have retired from […]
Can’t Stop What’s Comin: The Nature of Violence & Fate in No Country for Old Men
There doesn’t seem to be much love in the world for killer doll movie Dead Silence. The film-makers (Leigh Whannell, James Wan) went on to bigger and better things, and disowned this early effort as mangled by studio interference, but while the creative forces may not have been satisfied with the end product, Dead Silence […]
Yikes! One of the unexpected fallers in 2021’s race for the drastically reduced box-office prizes on offer was James Wan’s return to the horror territories that he’d previously made his own. After the promising Dead Silence, the Insidious and Conjuring movies made Wan a brand, even if both franchises fizzled out in terms of appeal. […]
Apple TV + hasn’t exactly established itself as the go-to place for new movies; Ted Lasso is probably the biggest draw to date. But they certainly made a splash paying $25 million at Sundance for CODA, writer and director Sian Heder’s slight but utterly charming film about a fishing family living with deafness. CODA is […]
Korean cinema goes from strength to strength; the successes, including Parasite, are well-known, but the sheer breadth of quality films that have emerged over the last decade mark out Korean films as one of the most booming film-cultures. Aloners is a first time feature, but doesn’t feel like it; Hong Sung-eun’s film is something of […]
The presence of 2021 Oscar-winner Yuh-Jung Youn, now forever to be knows as the ‘granny from Minari’, is the obvious selling point for Kim Yong-hoon’s assured debut feature. But there’s a lot more going on here, and the long-time Brad Pitt fan only features in a few scenes, although her character is certainly memorable and […]
It took a bit of cajoling to get me to review this South Korean political thriller because…well, because it’s a South Korean political thriller. This is a hard sell, because while most of the world is hard-wired into US politics, the development of the Korean CIA and the abuse of presidential power is a rather […]
While it doesn’t dig as deep as one may hope, Becoming Cousteau is an honest yet engrossing portrait of one of the most iconic explorers.
BECOMING COUSTEAU: A Legacy Of Reflection, Desperation, And Hope
A film of consequence and warning, Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast” takes us back to the beginning of “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland and lets us see them through the eyes of a little boy. A very personal story equal parts pathos and warmth, it sentimentalizes the region’s “Bad Old Days” even as it reminds us and […]
Movie Review: “Belfast” takes us back to the City’s “Bad Old Days”
I will admit I do have some bias towards Red Rocket. Growing up in Texas and visiting the Galveston and Houston area as a kid made me nostalgic when the opening credits rolled with the refineries in the backdrop. However, what drew me in more than the refineries was the song that plays over the […]
‘Red Rocket’ Review: “Bye, Bye, Bye”
“Eternals” opens in a manner that isn’t typical of any previous film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Instead of jumping straight into the action, an opening scroll details the mythos behind the story we are about to watch unfold. In 5000 B.C., ten super-powered beings known as the Eternals were sent to Earth by the […]
“Blonde. Purple” is a heist tale/hostage thriller with vague pretenses of Tarantino or Guy Ritchie and little of the style, panache, wit or adrenalin of either of them at their worst. The odd moment of acting heat dissipates in a sea of words, too much of it set in a bank where a failed robber […]
Movie Review: A hostage, a gunman, a bank — “Blonde. Purple”
Mars Attacks (1996) Released: December 13th, 1996 Genre: Science Fiction, Comedy Director: Tim Burton Writers: Len Brown, Woody Gelman, Wally Wood, Norman Saunders, Bob Powell (trading card series) Jonathan Gems (Screenplay) Cast: Jack Nicolson, Martin Short, Jim Brown, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, Annette Bening, Tom Jones, Michael J. Fox, Natalie Portman, Rob Stieger, Pam […]
Retro Review: Mars Attacks (1996) Flash Review
Directed by Wes Anderson Written by: Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson Produced by: Barry Mendel, Paul Schiff Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Olivia Williams, Bill Murray, Brian Cox, Seymour Cassel, Mason Gamble, etc. *** CONTAINS SPOILERS *** Having recently written positively about my favourite films of Wes Anderson I was spurred […]
MEMORABLE FILM CHARACTERS #6 – MAX FISCHER – RUSHMORE (1998)
A pretty popular student, Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) cannot go on a date until her ill tempered sister Katarina (Julia Stiles) gets a date too, and that responsibility falls to mysterious Patrick (Heath Ledger). I had only seen Ledger in his role of William in the film Knight’s Tale, so when this film popped up on […]
10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
