Posts Tagged 'film'

It Follows

How did this happen? Its like someone, while absently pondering mash-ups of horror sub-genres, put The Ring’s pass-it-on curse next to Halloween’s teenage body count and stumbled upon a Tutankhamun’s tomb of treasures. It Follows‘s simple premise of sexually transmitted

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It Follows

How did this happen? Its like someone, while absently pondering mash-ups of horror sub-genres, put The Ring’s pass-it-on curse next to Halloween’s teenage body count and stumbled upon a Tutankhamun’s tomb of treasures. It Follows‘s simple premise of sexually transmitted

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Wheelman

The vaguely familiar Frank Grillo makes a classy and economical pitch at booting a Stallone/Van-Damme/Strachan tough-guy franchise. Director-writer Jeremy Rush has mashed Locke with Driver. As a car-chase movie, like nearly every car-chase movie other than Bullitt, it’s a fail. It

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Wheelman

The vaguely familiar Frank Grillo makes a classy and economical pitch at booting a Stallone/Van-Damme/Strachan tough-guy franchise. Director-writer Jeremy Rush has mashed Locke with Driver. As a car-chase movie, like nearly every car-chase movie other than Bullitt, it’s a fail. It

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The Shape of Water

Some strong elements combine to achieve less than their sum. A fine cast acts out some hot topics and at the helm is the director possibly trying harder than anyone else today to make movies that look good. It does

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The Shape of Water

Some strong elements combine to achieve less than their sum. A fine cast acts out some hot topics and at the helm is the director possibly trying harder than anyone else today to make movies that look good. It does

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Blade Runner 2049

Deckhard is back, Hampton Fancher is back, the rain is back, as is some of the neon, albeit faded behind some kind of airborne filth with lumps in it. Blade Runner in the eighties was a world crippled and depressed

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Blade Runner 2049

Deckhard is back, Hampton Fancher is back, the rain is back, as is some of the neon, albeit faded behind some kind of airborne filth with lumps in it. Blade Runner in the eighties was a world crippled and depressed

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Nightcrawler

Nightcrawler crawls over the line where news eats itself, not just blurring the report and the reporter but selling a kind of news that is self-creating, like reality television, with hapless unpaid actors forced to play out scenarios of some network

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Nightcrawler

Nightcrawler crawls over the line where news eats itself, not just blurring the report and the reporter but selling a kind of news that is self-creating, like reality television, with hapless unpaid actors forced to play out scenarios of some network

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By The Sea

The Brangelina vanity pic really isn’t that bad. However its punchline is straight out of that famous picture starring Burton and Taylor, which sadly then makes everything else about By The Sea seem familiar – the soon-to-be-divorced-in-real-life actors, the younger

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By The Sea

The Brangelina vanity pic really isn’t that bad. However its punchline is straight out of that famous picture starring Burton and Taylor, which sadly then makes everything else about By The Sea seem familiar – the soon-to-be-divorced-in-real-life actors, the younger

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Alien: Covenant

As has been observed before regarding Prometheus, Alien: Covenant is trying to build conceptual sci-fi on the burial grounds of what began as a simple, stylish, terrifying horror story. This alleged prequel to the Alien saga, now in its second

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Alien: Covenant

As has been observed before regarding Prometheus, Alien: Covenant is trying to build conceptual sci-fi on the burial grounds of what began as a simple, stylish, terrifying horror story. This alleged prequel to the Alien saga, now in its second

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Doctor Strange

This latest comic superhero activation is notable for the first inspired and visionary (rather than merely pragmatic) use of visual effects in a blockbuster since Avatar.  

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Doctor Strange

This latest comic superhero activation is notable for the first inspired and visionary (rather than merely pragmatic) use of visual effects in a blockbuster since Avatar.  

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Ex Machina

According to the movies, programming your AI is apparently indistinguishable from a contract with the devil. Inevitably there is a hidden catch in the wording of the contract, or a clause that hubris encourages you to overlook. And the outcome for

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Ex Machina

According to the movies, programming your AI is apparently indistinguishable from a contract with the devil. Inevitably there is a hidden catch in the wording of the contract, or a clause that hubris encourages you to overlook. And the outcome for

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Ghost In The Shell

A remake of the 1995 anime. That film’s story about semi-outlaw cyber cops chasing a rogue entity that has evolved out of the internet has been dispensed with for an episode of Find My Family, with lashings of chop socky in

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Ghost In The Shell

A remake of the 1995 anime. That film’s story about semi-outlaw cyber cops chasing a rogue entity that has evolved out of the internet has been dispensed with for an episode of Find My Family, with lashings of chop socky in

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Rogue One feels like a heroine’s journey has been extracted from something originally conceived for an ensemble cast, leaving us with not quite enough of either. There are too many characters, talking so much about what they’re doing we don’t

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Rogue One feels like a heroine’s journey has been extracted from something originally conceived for an ensemble cast, leaving us with not quite enough of either. There are too many characters, talking so much about what they’re doing we don’t

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Miles Ahead

For the 100 minutes of this film’s running time, Miles Davis is taking no shit from nobody. Don Cheadle’s invocation of Miles is mad, bad and dangerous to know, as Ewan MacGregor’s desperate-for-a-scoop Rolling Stone reporter discovers. Even bullets are

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Miles Ahead

For the 100 minutes of this film’s running time, Miles Davis is taking no shit from nobody. Don Cheadle’s invocation of Miles is mad, bad and dangerous to know, as Ewan MacGregor’s desperate-for-a-scoop Rolling Stone reporter discovers. Even bullets are

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Westworld (1973)

Michael “high concept” Crichton directs the film of his own screenplay (no novel this time). It becomes very clear where the idea for The Terminator came from as we watch Yuul Brynner reincarnate his The Magnificent Seven character in the form

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Westworld (1973)

Michael “high concept” Crichton directs the film of his own screenplay (no novel this time). It becomes very clear where the idea for The Terminator came from as we watch Yuul Brynner reincarnate his The Magnificent Seven character in the form

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Jimi: All Is by My Side

Interesting, if frustrating. Seeming unable to pull a narrative from elsewhere the story spends most of its time on Jimi’s girlfriends and, by all reports, does them a disservice. Andre Benjamin’s voicing of Jimi is startlingly good but he’s playing someone

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Jimi: All Is by My Side

Interesting, if frustrating. Seeming unable to pull a narrative from elsewhere the story spends most of its time on Jimi’s girlfriends and, by all reports, does them a disservice. Andre Benjamin’s voicing of Jimi is startlingly good but he’s playing someone

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Captain Fantastic

Drop-out survivalists are forced to re-enter mainstream society when a tragedy strikes. They’re like a family of doomsday preppers with a positive, if fortress, mentality and leanings toward Mao and Chomsky rather than the NRA (was this written in the 70s?). The

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Captain Fantastic

Drop-out survivalists are forced to re-enter mainstream society when a tragedy strikes. They’re like a family of doomsday preppers with a positive, if fortress, mentality and leanings toward Mao and Chomsky rather than the NRA (was this written in the 70s?). The

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I Am Not Your Guru

Figure out what you really want. Work out what’s stopping you from getting it. Decide what you are going to do about it. Don’t get distracted. This bit of apparent common sense has been the core of Anthony Robbins’ testament for the

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I Am Not Your Guru

Figure out what you really want. Work out what’s stopping you from getting it. Decide what you are going to do about it. Don’t get distracted. This bit of apparent common sense has been the core of Anthony Robbins’ testament for the

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Steve Jobs

Screenwriters can be typecast, just like actors. With Steve Jobs, Aaron Sorkin cements his reputation as the go-to guy for stories about brilliant young men with personality issues – flawed, obnoxious but dazzling wunderkinds who could, might, or in Jobs’s case actually did

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Steve Jobs

Screenwriters can be typecast, just like actors. With Steve Jobs, Aaron Sorkin cements his reputation as the go-to guy for stories about brilliant young men with personality issues – flawed, obnoxious but dazzling wunderkinds who could, might, or in Jobs’s case actually did

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Sicario

As Sicario overplays its quest to underplay itself, we arrive at a confused portrait of profound dysfunction. That may be an appropriate angle to take on another of America’s unwinnable wars (in this case the drugs and border war with Mexico),

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Sicario

As Sicario overplays its quest to underplay itself, we arrive at a confused portrait of profound dysfunction. That may be an appropriate angle to take on another of America’s unwinnable wars (in this case the drugs and border war with Mexico),

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens

For the first ten minutes or so there is nagging despair, even mourning. It feels like an awkward Star Wars themed high school reunion in a room littered with lifeless artefacts, with Disney and JJ Abrams strutting around bragging “lookit all

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens

For the first ten minutes or so there is nagging despair, even mourning. It feels like an awkward Star Wars themed high school reunion in a room littered with lifeless artefacts, with Disney and JJ Abrams strutting around bragging “lookit all

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Tomorrowland

Conflict being the essence of drama and all that, it’s not easy to pull an entertainment out of a pleasant scenario, unless it’s one under threat. In this case the utopian promise of Tomorrowland is in danger of never arriving. We’re presented with a rampant

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Tomorrowland

Conflict being the essence of drama and all that, it’s not easy to pull an entertainment out of a pleasant scenario, unless it’s one under threat. In this case the utopian promise of Tomorrowland is in danger of never arriving. We’re presented with a rampant

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