Film Reviews, Interviews and Articles
Those who hearken back to the golden Clintonian Summers of the 90’s might remember seeing The Fifth Element on the big screen during its maiden theatrical run. A blockbuster facing a mixed press at the time, but finding near cult status twenty years later. A defining moment for director Luc Besson. Or at least as defining as when he discovered Natalie Portman at a Pizza Hut and cast her in a hitman film with a coked-out Gary Oldman and Jean Reno. Or something like that. Read More
Tom Holland may be the third Spider-Man to crawl across our cineplexes in the last decade but, as a much younger version of Peter Parker than his predecessors, he and director Jon Watts have presented a new enough spin on an old classic. That’s not to say that everything that Watts and company do to give Spiderman: Homecoming a fresh coat of paint works but, for the most part, the freshly minted union between Marvel and Sony have produced an acceptable enough product, incorporating yet another super-powered hero into their increasingly unwieldy lineup and laying the groundwork for a solo series involving the fresh-faced webslinger. That being said, the sting of superhero fatigue is real and even when Watts and his spray of screenwriters (there’s a sinister six of them) avoid familiar Spider-Man tropes (the fated spider bite, the iconic “with great power comes great responsibly” lesson, Uncle Ben’s untimely demise), this is still a character we’ve seen onscreen a whopping 7 times in the last 15 years. That’s not to say that Spider-Man: Homecoming isn’t a fun, splashy, perfectly acceptable mid-July popcorn spectacle, because it is just that. But is it really anything more than that? Not exactly.
Let’s not split hairs – though with the sublime mane work the necromancers at WETA have accomplished here, splitting hairs is definitely within the realm of possibilities – War for the Planet of the Apes is a remarkable achievement on nearly any rubric. A narratively pulsating, emotionally turbulent survival epic complete with near-miraculous FX work and sumptuous production design, War sets itself so far apart from the average summer blockbuster that it risks being undefinable. As bleak as anything I’ve personally witnessed in a PG-13 effects-driven escape movie about apes, War for the Planet of the Apes is the Joseph Conrad-penned Schindler’s List of Apes movies. Dealing in genocide, slavery, exodus and death, War also finds room among its Old Testament adversity for growth, heroism and hope to take root. Perfectly culminating Caesar’s prequel trilogy and tying into the 1968 Charlton Heston-led original, War is everything fans of the franchise could hope for and more. And boy is it a breathtaking journey to be a part of. Read More
It’s been a hot minute since Edgar Wright has graced us with his genius. The man responsible for such perfect fare as Shaun of the Dead andHot Fuzz, Wright has long been a pioneer of the Trojan horse comedy, trafficking highbrow laughs in with genre trappings. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Wright is known for his masterful command of visual language, finding laugh-out loud moments in sharp editing, frame composition, camera operation and a great ear for music that amplifies the deadpan, pun-happy, tongue-in-cheek writing gushing from the page. As the mainstream moves more and more toward studio comedies disemboweled by flat visual palettes that fail to embolden jokes with any discernible directorial decisions, Wright has further articulated and championed his particular filmmaking flavour and the world of cinephiles has been the more fortunate for it. Which takes us to Baby Driver. Read More
Just like kicking your little brother in the nuts isn’t a movie, Transformers: The Last Knight isn’t a movie. A blatant “fuck you” to audiences stupid enough to buy a ticket to this next go-round – one that Universal and Hasbro have positioned as a “launching pad” for a Hasbro Cinematic Universe (and yes, the existence of a Hasbro Cinematic Universe makes me question my place on this Earth and will to live) – this inept fivequel is a brain-numbing series of endless explosions and rinkadink chase sequences and imbecilic exposition and sparks farting through the air and adolescent titties bouncing in slo-mo and Mark Wahlberg hollering fucking nonsense and racist robots with gold-plated teeth and snobby British ladies gathered for high tea. Trans5mers is all those things and so much less. It’s a retard-robo-fantasy masquerading as a film that lacks any of the stuff that actually makes a movie a movie, replacing substance with middle fingers extended curtly at those in the audience expecting one iota of sense. A flaming effigy of not giving a single fuck, Transformers: The Last Knight spits in its haters’ face and asks you to thank it. Read More
The Book of Henry, only the third film from “indie” director wunderkind Colin Trevorrow, plays like a film adaptation of a best selling novel. There’s sudden shocking twists, richly drawn, if brazenly over-the-top, characters and a hurried pace that all coalesce to feel like the product of 300 pages of prose siphoned into a 100-page screenplay. Big, bold and unpredictable, Henry unfolds like a suburban Dan Brown novel; it’s pulpy and scrumptious while it lasts, brimming with sudden breakneck turns that veer the narrative into perpetual new territory, but won’t leave much of an imprint once you’ve slammed it shut. Read More
Rodrigo Grande’s devilish Argentine caper pits a paraplegic engineer against a malevolent troop of thieves burrowing beneath his house to rob a nearby vault. Nail-biting and pitch black in tenor, At the End of the Tunnel employs star Leonardo Sbaraglia’s dramatic chops to create a complicated protagonist, even if his villainous counterparts are at times cartoonishly evil. Drawing inspiration from the likes of David Fincher’s Panic Room, Grande’s is a worthwhile pursuit for those who want a little slice of dark Hollywood sheen to their foreign language dishes. (B-)
A stirring tribute to the journalistic heroes of ‘Raqqa is Silently Being Slaughtered’, City of Ghosts takes us into the epicenter of Syria’s ISIS occupation where a troop of citizen journalists seek to expose the true horror tearing their world to pieces. Matthew Heineman’s immersive filmmaking peels back the curtain, crafting a definitive take on one of the world’s most horrific war zones. The personal sacrifice each of the subjects must endure – some are killed, others see their families killed in their place – is unspeakably heartbreaking but Heineman’s powerful documentary never exploits their pain for political means. Must-see investigative journalism, City of Ghosts is a terrifying vision of hell on earth. (B+) Read More
What to say about Baywatch, the new movie from Paramount and Horrible Bosses director Seth Gordon, that can’t simply be assumed? R-rated by virtue of scatalogical humor – penii, both of the flaccid and majorly erect variety, crowd the screen; jaws dangle, gawking at flopping mammaries; – and frivolous vulgarities, Baywatch fails to insert much conviction into its raunch and lacks even more in the originality department. Read More
In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, we find the infamous Captain Jack Sparrow in a drunken stupor. Washed up and officially deadbeat, even the price on Jack’s head has sunk to a paltry pound. It’s a strange parallel to Johnny Depp’s public persona of late, having slipped from the good grace of the hoi polloi after reports of his abusing wife Amber Heard made waves, followed by news of widespread financial woes and a slew of middling to poor films floundering at the box office. With Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, both Sparrow and Depp pray for a comeback. Read More