Tonally flawless, but narratively weak
Taking place over the course of Jeffrey Dahmer's last year in high school, and culminating with the fateful meeting between Dahmer (Ross Lynch) and Steven Hicks (Dave Sorboro), writer/director Marc Meyers's My Friend Dahmer is based on the 2012 graphic novel by Derf Backderf (played in the film by Alex Wolff), who attended the same school as Dahmer, and formed a pseudo-friendship with him. The film is tonally brilliant, coming across like The Breakfast Club (1985) directed by David Fincher, perfectly capturing 80s tackiness. Narratively, however, it's extremely plodding, and could easily have been trimmed by 20 minutes.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/sVDBh
Thematically interesting and brilliantly acted, but painfully slow and far too long
Feminine in design rather than inherently feminist, the show is a portrait of tainted motherhood and corrupted sisterhood, and is best categorised as a piece of Southern Gothic horror/melodrama, half Erskine Caldwell and half Tennessee Williams, garnished with a dash of Harry Crews. More concerned with internecine inter-generational conflict, matrilineal dysfunction, and how the rotten core of small-town America can breed not just old-fashioned sexism and bigotry, but festering cyclical violence, the main focus is not on major plot points or momentous reveals, but on how the past bleeds into the present and how difficult it can be to escape from past trauma. But whilst the acting is exceptional, and the show is well directed and edited, much like the first season of Big Little Lies (also a HBO series with a female-centric point-of-view based on a novel that isn't really about the murder at its centre), it left me utterly unengaged, completely uninterested in any of the characters, and fighting interminable boredom for much of its eight hours.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/MsF8N
Interesting and reasonably well-made, but morally questionable in how it presents some of the material
Covering some of the same ground as Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein's book, Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited (2007), and Lori Shinseki's documentary The Twinning Reaction (2017), the film presents a bizarre stranger-than-fiction story, which begins as a light-hearted human-interest piece before taking several darker turns. A big hit at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the US Documentary Special Jury Award for Storytelling, Strangers is hotly tipped for Oscar glory, and has been almost universally well-received by critics (96% approval on Rotten Tomatoes at time of writing). However, for me, although the fascinating central story is undoubtedly gripping, there are just too many egregious problems in the telling, including an excess of distasteful sensationalism; a dearth of contextualising scientific information; overly simplistic ethical, moral, philosophical, and esoteric conclusions; stylistic drabness; and an overreliance on plot twists, which often forces the filmmakers to manipulate the material beyond what you would expect normal of a documentary.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/zkhM7
Rewards concentration
When her secretive mother dies, miniatures artist Annie Graham (Toni Collette), is almost relieved, as the two had a deeply fraught relationship. With two children, 16-year-old Peter (Alex Wolff) and 13-year-old Charlie (Milly Shapiro), and a loving husband, Steve (Gabriel Byrne), Annie is determined to do a better job of raising a family than she felt her mother did. However, when she suffers another, far more devastating loss, Annie's mental state becomes increasingly precarious, as a series of terrifying revelations about her ancestry are slowly revealed.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/tlnHF
An extraordinarily lazy adaptation
I don't do remakes. They're a cancer of the industry. Where I am more flexible, however, is in adaptations of novels that have already been adapted. After all, my all-time favourite film falls into this category (Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998) was the second adaptation of James Jones's novel). Fahrenheit 451 is also a second adaptation; in this case, of Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel, and, for all intents and purposes, it's a misfire. Bradbury himself has said the novel is not about censorship, as is often assumed, but was written in response to the Second Red Scare and the rise of McCarthyism. More specifically, it's a treatise on the dangers of an illiterate society unquestionably accepting the word of a monopolising centralised mass media.
Adapted for the screen and directed by Ramin Bahrani (99 Homes), the film is set at an unspecified point in the future, after a second civil war has been fought. All aspects of society are rigidly controlled by the Ministry, an authoritarian government that believes unhappiness, mental illness, and difference of opinion come from unregulated reading. As such, all books have been banned, although simplified and edited Ministry-approved editions of texts such as the Bible, Herman Melville's Moby Dick, or, the Whale (1851) and Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse (1927) are available on the internet (known as "the 9"). Special units of "firemen" are tasked with locating and burning any remaining books, and estimates suggest that within 20-30 years, books will have become completely extinct. The film follows two such firemen; Cpt. John Beatty (Michael Shannon), the veteran and somewhat disillusioned mentor of Guy Montag (Michael B. Jordan), an idealistic rookie who believes unquestioningly in the firemen's work. That is until he meets Clarisse McClellan (Sofia Boutella), who educates him as to the real history of the US, the rise of the Ministry, and why they want literature destroyed.
Now, you'd think that in this age of Trump's fake news and people using Facebook as a news source, something with this subject matter would speak volumes to a contemporary audience. And you'd be right. Unfortunately, this film isn't about sheeple and mass media. Apparently unaware of Bradbury's statements, the filmmakers have focused almost exclusively on censorship. But it falls down in other areas as well. Mildred Montag is absent, hence the theme of addiction to television broadcasting which tells people how and what to think. Additionally, the infrequent and scattered allusions to the importance of literary texts serve to undermine the absolutely essential nature of what a group of rebels are doing by memorising whole texts. This should be the film's absolute central statement, but instead, it comes across as a bunch of weirdos being quirky. Jordan plays Montag as a bombastic loudmouth TV personality. Shannon is, well, Shannon. Don't get me wrong, I love the guy. He's an actor of immense talent. But here, he's playing an identical character to the one he played in Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water (2017). It's an extraordinarily lazy performance. In fact, everything about the film is lazy. Bahrani's direction is flat and uninspired; the whole thing looks like Blade Runner-lite. It's all very conventional and safe, which neither the novel nor François Truffaut's 1966 adaptation was. And this conventionality and safety grind against the inherently rebellious subject matter, rendering it less urgent, and hence, less potent.
A dark and well-made show about the effects of psychological trauma, but the bifurcated narrative is a significant mistake
Dublin Murders is an eight-part series that adapts the first two novels in Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series – In the Woods (2007) and The Likeness (2008). And herein lies the show's biggest problem. French's series is pseudo-anthological in design; each novel has a different protagonist, and although there are common characters across all of the stories, each plot is wholly self-contained. In writing Dublin Murders, Sarah Phelps has made the strange decision to present the plots of the first two novels as happening concurrently, with each case bleeding slightly into the other. This doesn't even remotely work, with the events of The Likeness never feeling like anything other than a half-baked B-plot that serves only to detract from the far superior material in the A-plot. It's a maddening decision, as In the Woods could have made a superb five or six-part series, but instead we've got an over-long eight-parter with a ton of what feels like completely extraneous fat. Nevertheless, there is much to laud here; the acting, the cinematography, production design, and art direction, the editing and directing, and, when focusing on the first novel, much of Phelps' writing, which admirably captures the thematic and tonal essence of French's 500-page interiorised narrative.
For my complete review, please visit: https://www.themoviedb.org/review/603536ac0d2944003e5afccc
A balanced overview of an unprecedented case
Attempting to tell a more comprehensive story than the sensationalist narrative adopted by the media at the time, which was basically "evil devil woman secretly bullies vulnerable boyfriend to death so she can get sympathy", the series expands on some of the lesser known details of the case; the bizarre, almost entirely online nature of the relationship; his four prior suicide attempts; her months of constantly talking him out of suicide; their mutual mental illnesses, which includes her own suicide attempt, an eating disorder, and crippling loneliness; a theory about notions of self-identity, revolving around, of all things, the TV show Glee; a legal system which finds itself out of step with the digital era in which we live; a psychiatrist of questionable merit and his controversial theory; and the ramifications of a ground-breaking legal ruling. Looking at issues of technology, mental health, the ethicality of prescribing powerful SSRIs to teenagers, a reductionist media that pushes an easy-to-digest narrative based on familiar tropes and themes at the expense of the more multifaceted, complex, and uncomfortable reality, and, of course, whether one person can be held legally responsible for another's suicide, the show doesn't so much take a side as work to remind viewers that more than one side exists. And although there are some notable problems, it does a pretty decent job overall.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/1gIs17
A savage and hilarious satire
Examining how the rich get richer whilst the poor get unpaid jobs building faux-Roman coliseums on Greek islands, the film focuses specifically on a successful British clothing entrepreneur, and its bread and butter is the concomitant grotesquery that results when an individual has the same wealth as a small country. Effectively mixing send-up and satire with more serious socio-economic points, Greed doesn't really do or say a huge amount that hasn't been done or said before, but it's entertaining, amusing, and undeniably relevant.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/10TNVD
Guns, carnage, explosions, and xenophobia - everything you could want from a Rambo movie; hugely entertaining
Last Blood is barely a movie at all (the script is so rudimentary, it rivals the dizzying complexities of Rocky IV), and it's by far the least political entry in the Rambo franchise thus far. Is it xenophobic? Yes. Is it racist? To a certain extent. Is it likely to stoke irrational fears about the evils of Mexico and permeability of the southern border? Possibly. What it definitely is, however, is a film in which Rambo doesn't just kill his enemies, he kills them several times just to be sure (like the unfortunate schmuck who is decapitated via close-range shotgun blast and then shot several times in the torso for punctuation). What it definitely is, is a film in which on no less than two occasions, Rambo uses his bare hands to extract internal organs. What it definitely is, is an immensely enjoyable no-holds-barred revenge actioner that's about as interested in political correctness as it is in millennial angst. Which is to say, not even remotely.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/OVPdJ
Not nearly as smart as it thinks it is
From prolific French auteur François Ozon (Sous le sable; 8 femmes; Frantz), L'amant double [Double Lover] is partly a study of sexual obsession, partly an oneiric mystery (think Neil Jordan's In Dreams), and partly a conventional thriller (more whoisit than whodunnit). "Freely adapted" from Joyce Carol Oates's 1987 novel Lives of the Twins (published under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith), and written by Ozon and Philippe Piazzo, the film tells the story of Chloé (Marine Vacth), a woman with a fragile mental state, who falls passionately in love with her psychoanalyst, Paul (Jérémie Renier). Within a few months, she has moved in, however, as time goes by, she slowly starts to learn of a significant part of his identity which he has been concealing.
Imagine, if you will, Vertigo (1958) remade by someone like Gaspar Noé or Lars von Trier, and you'd be some way towards getting a handle on Ozon's latest; completely barmy (you know you're in strange territory when the second shot of a movie is, quite literally, an internal shot of a vagina). As one would expect from Ozon, the aesthetics are solid - the film is built upon an inventive visual style employing juxtaposition, pseudo-split screen, and copious amounts of shots with one person in the frame proper, and the person to whom they're talking only visible in reflection. The sound effects are also excellent and really jolt you out of your seat on a couple of occasions. Similarly, the acting is strong, with both Vacth and Renier unrecognisable in their respective roles.
However, the melodramatic and self-congratulatory plot is an absolute mess. Many of Ozon's standard tropes are here; a dissection of the academic middle class/intelligentsia, an examination of the schism between appearance and reality, an attempt to elucidate the mind of a complex woman, a psychoanalytical bedrock, the mutability of identity etc. But it's all diffused through an utterly farcical narrative, which fails to get even the basics right. For example, sex is a central theme, but by the time we get to the fourth or fifth sex scene, it has completely lost its potency (compare, for example, Abdellatif Kechiche's infinitely superior La vie d'Adèle – Chapitres 1 & 2, (2013) where sexuality is just as central, but which features only two sex scenes). The same goes for the increasingly ridiculous plot twists, once you get to three or four and you're still in the first half of the movie, you just stop caring. Ozon has always been hit and miss, for every Sitcom (1998) and Swimming Pool (2003), there's an Angel (2007) and a Ricky (2009), and L'amant double is, in the end, a rather pointless film that seems to think it's saying something exceptionally profound about desire and identity. It isn't.
Thoughts on the first season
Directed by Richard Clark, Innocent is a four-part whodunit that is half by-the-book, paint-by-numbers, nothing-you-haven't-seen-before, and half superbly realised and expansive family drama. The show begins with David Collins (Lee Ingleby) being acquitted for the murder of his wife, having already spent seven years in jail for the crime. Viewers are never left in any doubt as to Collins's innocence, which does have the unfortunate side-effect of making the characters who are convinced of his guilt seem either naive or antagonistic-by-default. Collins's quest to uncover the truth and learn why people he trusted lied during his trial is never especially gripping, with no real urgency, no major twists, and a decided sense of "is that it?"
Where the show really succeeds, however, is in the depth of Matthew Arlidge and Chris Lang's depiction of the secondary characters whose lives are changed irreparably as the effects of Collins's release ripple outward; his brother Phil (Daniel Ryan), with whom he moves in; his sister-in-law Alice Moffat (Hermione Norris), whose testimony that he beat his wife was an important factor in his conviction; her amiable husband Rob (Adrian Rawlins); DCI William Beech (Nigel Lindsay), the original lead investigator, who may (or may not) have suppressed evidence; DI Cathy Hudson (Angel Coulby), the new lead investigator, and Beech's girlfriend; Collins's children, Jack (Fionn O'Shea) and Rosie (Eloise Webb), who were adopted by Alice and Rob after the trial; Tom Wilson (Elliot Cowan), Collins's former best friend, whose failure to provide him an alibi led to his conviction; Melissa (Hannah Britland), Tom's wife, who suspects he knows more than he's letting on; and Louise (Christine Cole), Tom's ex-wife, who left him after she discovered his affair with Melissa. Each of these characters are given a fair amount of dialogue, screen time, and character development as the show lets the whodunit plot fade somewhat into the background, and it's here where the narrative is at its most enjoyable. It's not going to change your life, but it's worth a look.
Unadventurous but enjoyable
When Anthony Sullivan (Michael Riendeau) disappears on his tenth birthday, his family is devastated. However, as more and more time passes without the police being able to locate him, long-buried family secrets are dragged to the surface, turning the Sullivan family against one another.
A journeyman show, The Disappearance is very much paint-by-numbers stuff, with nothing you haven't before seen in half-a-dozen similar narratives, with writers Normand Daneau and Geneviève Simard taking no real risks. Having said that, however, it's a well made piece of television. Confidently directed by Peter Stebbings, the material may offer nothing revelatory, but what it does offer is enjoyable enough on its own terms. An excellent Peter Coyote dominates the show as Anthony's grandfather, Henry, a retired judge with a strained relationship (to say the least) with his son, Luke (Aden Young), Anthony's father. As the veneer of civility slowly erodes, the fissures running beneath the family dynamic begin to erupt, with blame and recrimination becoming the central tenets of familial interaction. You may guess half-way through who the kidnapper is, and yes, they're one of those Hollywood kidnappers who leave cryptic clues everywhere, but this remains a well made, if unadventurous, show.
Clichéd and derivative nonsense
Matilda Gray (Lydia Wilson) is a talented cellist whose life is turned upside down when her mother, Janice (Joanna Scanlan), suddenly commits suicide. Whilst going through Janice's possessions, Matilda finds newspaper clippings reporting on the disappearance of a young girl from a small Welsh village 23 years earlier. With her best friend Hal Fine (Joel Fry) by her side, Matilda travels to Wales to try to find out why her mother was so interested in the case, and what she finds will cause her to call into question everything she thought she knew.
Requiem is not a very good show. The plot is utterly derivative, with writer Kris Mrksa stealing bountifully from everything ranging from Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (1898), to Jack Starrett's Race with the Devil (1975) to Robert Eggers's The VVitch: A New-England Folktale (2015). Matilda fails to engender even a modicum of empathy. She's deeply unlikable, and shows little self-awareness as she harasses a child and a clearly mentally-unstable woman. And then there's the tonal raison d'être - the "horror" of it all. Director Mahalia Belo is very much of the modern school of horror filmmaking; mix equal parts shallow focus camerawork, high contrast shadows, and unnatural noises, and finish with a garnish of implausible jump scares. Also Tara Fitzgerald, as antiques dealer and all-round weirdo Sylvia Walsh, appears to have forgotten how to act. The last twenty minutes of the last episode are pretty decent, and properly creepy, but by then it's far too late.
An excellent examination of a wrongful conviction, a virtual cult, and the insanity that connects them
The second season of The Devil You Know isn't as good as the first, however, it's still an impressive documentary. The third episode in particular is brilliantly done, really making you feel just how badly manipulated Kelly Pingilley was and how much her friends miss her. Tightly paced, very well edited, with an excellent selection of Shriner's voice-overs and Steve's video clips, the season is definitely worth your time.
Exceptional in every way; thematically rich, aesthetically breathtaking, and emotionally devastating
Watchmen is an exceptionally good show. By default, of course, there will be fans of the comic who'll dislike it on principle. There will also be those who accuse it of pandering to a liberal PC agenda (look at the negative (and frankly, hilarious) review bombing on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes), and there'll be those who simply don't like the idea of a Watchman TV show with a black woman at its centre. Make no mistake, however, this show has been put together by people who know, appreciate, love, and understand the comic. Thematically complex, aesthetically breathtaking, brilliantly acted, Watchmen is an exceptional piece of television.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/1mk9ch
An aesthetic showcase that's completely uninterested in human beings (and for the love of God, what does Christopher Nolan have against decent sound mixing?)
It's undeniably fascinating to see a tent pole Hollywood production engaging with issues such as entropy, thermodynamics, reversibility and irreversibility, time's arrow, the grandfather paradox, and T-symmetry, all the while keeping proceedings housed firmly within the spy genre (it's a Bond movie in all but name). Indeed, one of the film's central questions is especially noteworthy – if what and who we remember from our past defines who we are in our present, do things that haven't happened to us yet also speak to our identity? Do our future actions determine who we are as much as our past actions? It's a fascinating question. And one with which Nolan does precisely nothing. However, the film's main problems aren't related to the squandered existential potential, the much ballyhooed complexity, the puzzle-like structure, the philosophical musing, or the thematic similarity to Nolan's previous work. Rather, they are more fundamental, existing almost entirely at a structural level (although some of the performances don't help matters, nor does the abysmal sound mixing). The film looks incredible, the practical effects in the action scenes are extraordinarily mounted, the cinematography is stunning, and the editing is superb, but there simply isn't anything of note under the shiny veneer. It's a film with virtually no interest in human beings.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/1lbO1H
Initially a pitch-perfect homage/parody of summer-camp slasher movies, AHS/1984 subsequently morphs into something of an amalgamation of a ghost story, a true-crime thriller, a study of serial killing, and a multi-character tale of redemption, giving us one of the coldest and most ferocious villains the show has ever seen. For me, it's the best season of American Horror Story since the exceptional second season, Asylum. However, there's no denying it's a divisive beast – the type of highly stylised story that'll have as many detractors as admirers. AHS purists probably won't be overly impressed. For one thing, it's a dark and very, very, very camp comedy before it's a thriller or a horror. For another, it leans so heavily into '80s clichés and slasher movie tropes that it's practically on its side. On the other hand, it's consistently hilarious, it's a brilliant parody of slasher movies, it doesn't take itself even remotely seriously (although it does have something to say about the media's commodification of serial killers), and despite the ridiculousness of the plot and the twists layered on top of twists layered on top of twists, it actually manages to elicit quite a bit of empathy for a couple of characters who were introduced as one-dimensionally irredeemable. And the soundtrack, wardrobe, and hairstyles have more '80s cheese and excess than you could ever imagine.
For my complete review, please visit: https://www.themoviedb.org/review/5f1296bbd46537003761a415
An impressive eco-thriller that could do with more clearly delineated characters
The debut feature from writer/director Neasa Hardiman, Sea Fever examines such issues as humanity's disregard for the size of our ecological footprint, the knee-jerk argument that if something hitherto unknown can't be exploited for profit then it should be destroyed, and Mankind's utter insignificance in the face of the wonders of nature. Heavily influenced by David Cronenberg's body horror films, Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), and John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), it could do with some refinement, especially in terms of characterisation, and the dénouement is a little anticlimactic, but Hardiman gets the atmosphere spot on, and overall, this is an impressive debut.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/12eSGp
A fascinating premise and setup, but the execution is tedious
We live in an age where so many people work to live and live to work. We live in an age where Big Pharma has worryingly significant control over our lives via the drugs we're prescribed, drugs that so many people need just to make it through the day. We live in an age of genetic engineering and the commodification of well-being. And these are some of the weighty themes tackled in Little Joe, a clinically detached, aesthetically fascinating pseudo-horror with a killer premise, but questionable execution. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed the first hour or so, relishing the slow pace and methodical build, the gradual accumulation of detail, the anticipatory discomfort at seeing the protagonist pushed further and further into a corner. However, at around the 75 minute mark, I realised that this wasn't a slow build to something; this slow build was the something. And with that realisation, it didn't take long for tedium to settle in. I certainly admire the film's thematic complexity and stunning visual and aural design, but, in its totality, it's completely lifeless, the tone rigidly detached and dispassionate no matter what's happening on-screen, like a long sentence spoken in a gratingly monotone voice. It's one of those films I wish I had enjoyed a lot more than I did, but the fact is, I found the last act (which is not especially dissimilar to the previous acts) a real struggle to get through.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/10CJ6H
A well-made creature-feature; it may not be original, but it is entertaining
The last film distributed by 20th Century Fox before they were rebranded as 20th Century Studios by Disney, Underwater was shot in early 2017 for $50 million and then sat on a shelf for over two years. Now that it's finally seeing the light of day, there's a real sense of Disney just wanting to be rid of Fox's clutter, and they either didn't know how to promote it or didn't want to promote it, as the marketing campaign has been next to invisible (and the bland title certainly doesn't help), with the film grossing a paltry $7 million in its opening weekend. From Disney's perspective, of course, releasing it in the January release window makes sense, as it's a period traditionally dominated by duds and cast-offs – films the studios don't care about for one reason or another. A recent high-profile example is Blackhat, Michael Mann's underrated 2015 cyber-terrorism drama, which was released with little to no advertising, grossing only $20 million at the North American box office against a $70 million budget. However, much like Blackhat, Underwater is considerably better than most January releases. Sure, it's clichéd and predictable, and it shamelessly borrows from a litany of superior genre films, but it's also a very entertaining and enjoyable aquatic creature-feature.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/109tJb
A superbly made film about madness, isolation, alcohol, a pissed off one-eyed seagull, and farts
A bizarre film in just about every way, from its glorious visual and aural design to its grandiose acting to its jet black humour to its wonderful ambiguity to its avenging angels/seagulls, if you thought The VVitch was somewhat inaccessible, then you'll most likely despise every second of The Lighthouse, insofar as its subtlety, slow pace, and narrative abstruseness will surely frustrate those who prefer their horror in the mould of jump-scares and chainsaw-wielding escaped mental patients. However, if you favour the cerebral, difficult-to-define, and always slightly off-camera terror that was the foundational principle of The VVitc, or if you enjoy the oppressive dread of classic German Expressionist films, then you'll find much here to appreciate.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/ZvKIT
Nothing too unexpected here, but it's funny and hugely entertaining
The film seems stuck in the last decade in more ways than one. It's highly questionable that the only gay character is a slimy man-whore into S&M, its token female character barely even manages to rise to the level of tokenism, and Ritchie does absolutely nothing new here – if you've seen Lock, Stock or snatch., you'll know pretty much exactly what to expect – but The Gentlemen is still hugely entertaining. Most of the jokes land, the dialogue is as sharp and expletive-laden as ever, the cast are having a ball, and the self-reflexivity, although a little forced in places, works well for the most part. And yes, the plot is as derivative as it gets, but there's no denying Ritchie has injected real verve into what looks on paper like an inconsequential C-movie. The Gentlemen definitely won't change your life, but it will make you laugh.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/VTKS7
A fascinating socio-political study of proto-feminism mixed with exceptionally dark comedy
The debut feature from Australian actress turned writer/director Mirrah Foulkes, working from an idea by English actress Lucy Punch (which, given the subject matter, seems like it's a joke, but isn't) and her brother Tom, Judy & Punch is a (very) dark comedy that presents the fictional background behind the early years of the (in)famous puppet show. Essentially a study in proto-feminism, a look at :pound_symbol:MeToo sensibilities applied to a very un-:pound_symbol:MeToo society, it's a strange mixture of Monty Python-esque slapstick and serious social critique, taking in misogyny, domestic violence, witchcraft, social stratification, and the exploitation of old age, and wrapping it all up in a gleefully anachronistic and pseudo-magical realist aesthetic, not entirely dissimilar to what you might find in the work of Angela Carter. It's a curious mix that really shouldn't work, and, for many, it probably won't. I can see some finding the tonal balance too skewered towards socio-political protest for it to work as a comedy, whereas others will argue that the comic elements undermine the seriousness of the socio-political agenda. For me, although the film is a beat too long at 105 minutes, I thought Foulkes just about got away with the tonal balancing act – most of the humour lands and most of the political material is well-handled. She's also helped immeasurably by strong performances across the board and a stunning visual design, which is especially accomplished given that this is her first feature.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/SOAmj
Probably too rooted in the theatrical tradition for some, but it does an exceptional job of compacting a massive amount of info into a comprehensible form
More of a procedural drama than a political thriller, The Report could do with a little emotion, and there's no denying that it's very, very talky, perhaps to the extent of being more suited to the stage than the screen. However, irrespective of this, it's a brilliantly acted, unflinching, and insightful look at one of the most shameful moments in US history.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/SHdGh
Complex, intelligent, and sobering; superb television
Based on The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (2006), Lawrence Wright's exhaustively researched and critically acclaimed winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (2007), whilst the book is about how al-Qaeda succeeded (with a lot of time spent delineating just why they hated American culture so much), the TV show is about how the US failed. It's a story of arrogance, incompetence, ignorance, and tragic inevitability. And although the binary of CIA=bad/FBI=good is more than a little reductionist, and whilst there's a real dearth of information on al-Qaeda itself, this is a deeply sobering series, which is at its infuriating best when it shows us, as it does time and again, just how easily these globe-altering events could have been prevented.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/NXgFX
A gift for the fans, especially those of us who have long extolled just how pioneering the show was
What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a partly fan-funded documentary directed by Ira Steven Behr and David Zappone. The documentary is built around three core components; the cast and crew looking back at their time on the show (often very emotionally), a writers' room mapping out the first episode of a hypothetical eighth season (which ends up sounding awesome), and everyone from military vets to clergy to TV producers to human rights campaigners to professors of history discussing just how ahead of its time the show really was. And thankfully, the documentary is absolutely superb, and something no DS9 fan can possibly miss.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/Kiglp
The franchise keeps getting better
With Chad Stahelski back in the director's chair for the third time, as with the previous films, Parabellum is built on the foundation of Sir Keanu of Reeves's zen-like stoicism, a quality he can deploy to make a violent sword fight look about as stressful as sleeping on silk linen with "Fur Elise" playing in the background and a cat gently purring on the pillow beside you. And although this third entry in the franchise does flirt with a few themes amidst the mayhem (honour, fealty, destiny), it's not trying to be something it isn't, well aware of its own identity as a completely over-the-top orgy of violence. This is a world wherein even the most innocuous of items can be rendered lethal, and where the endless deaths by gun, knife, fist, dog, horse, motorbike, sword, pencil, and book of 18th century Russian folklore, are so excessive as to transcend any possible accusations of irresponsibility or glorification of violence. In short, the film leans into its status as basically a live-action episode of Itchy and Scratchy. Sure, it can become a little repetitive at times, and there's next to no plot or character development, so if you want to be reductionist, you could argue that it essentially gives us more of the same, except bigger, louder, and more elaborate. But that's to ignore how aesthetically accomplished it is, how funny it is, how compelling it is, and how unapologetically entertaining it is.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/IBWgV
A brilliantly made crime saga about the clash between old-world tradition and new-world corruption
Allowing genre to inform anthropology and anthropology to enrich genre, Pájaros de verano strikes a broadly successful balance throughout, resulting in a film that consistently depicts familiar genre tropes in a manner which audiences will find unique, especially those whose only familiarity with this milieu comes from shows like Drug Wars (1990-1992) and Narcos (2015-2017), and Americentrist films such as Blow (2001), The Infiltrator (2016), and American Made (2017). On paper, it could be dismissed as just another gangster film, and although adherence to the genre template does occasionally work against the story, this remains a beautifully nuanced, aesthetically exceptional, and deeply lamentative film.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/IwEx5
Esoteric and poetic, but very singular; certainly not for everyone
High Life is as multiplex-friendly as anything in director Claire Denis's oeuvre (which is to say, not in the slightest). And although she's ostensibly working within genre parameters, the film covers many of her more familiar themes - the darker aspects of desire; the notion of being an outcast; parenthood; the inescapability of death; the beauty of the human body; the relationship between violence and sexuality. The presence of Robert Pattinson will probably draw in a lot of unsuspecting folks, who will have no idea what to make of Denis's slowly paced existential musings, resulting in a slew of "worst film ever" reviews. But although it's not Denis's best (that remains either Beau travail or Les salauds), it's a fascinatingly poetic and original film that is utterly uncategorisable.
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/I8UJX
Overlong, but the acting is immense
Escape at Dannemora is a four or five-hour story stretched out unnecessarily over eight hours. Ostensibly a prison break genre piece, the series is more interested in the psychology of the people involved and the poor choices they made (and why they made them) than in going in either of the two usual routes for such stories; triumphant escape or social commentary. Excellently directed and beautifully shot, with a quartet of astounding performances at its centre, the show tells a fascinating story, but it moves at a glacial pace that requires serious patience, without ever really offering much in the way of rewards (although the last two episodes are undeniably exceptional).
For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/HvmCP
