Tag: cinema
It’s okay. I don’t know why they kept the other brothers’ identities intact but reduced Donnie from an inventive technical wizard to merely someone who uses computers (y’know, like most people in the year 2023) but howandever. More…
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Right, so, no time for a full-length review of this one, but it’s a film that leaves impressions, that’s for sure. Like the fact that it foregrounds the racism embedded within HP Lovecraft’s storytelling in its vague point-of-view character, a young black man who, by the final scene, is almost literally whitewashed. More…
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No time to write up a proper review of this one, but I have thoughts. Mostly around the idea of this being yet another narrative of familial abuse and estrangement where redemption is achieved through reconnection and forgiveness as if that path is mandatory. Honey Boy presents itself as something different, and to be fair it’s remarkably staged and beautifully shot, with performances that deserve awards attention for going where you might not expect. (And yes, I know it’s Shia LaBeouf adapting his own relationship with his father for the screen.) But in essence it’s as clichéd as the rest of ’em. And that cliché, an almost bullying edict (‘You must forgive your parents even if they’ve been extraordinarily shitty to you!’), is not something I care to stomach. More…
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I can’t tell whether there’s a lot going on here, or nothing at all. More…
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I came out of Godzilla II feeling a lot better about it than when I went in. Are there too many humans in it? Yes, and in particular it could do without all of the family drama that feels glued on in appeal to an audience that has no business seeing a monster movie in the first place. (Vera Farmiga’s character… I don’t even know what’s going on there.) Are the monster fights smothered in darkness? Of course; we should all know by now that it hides a multitude of sins for hard-pressed CG artists. Do these things ruin the experience? Not even close to the point of exasperation. This is the direction the Legendary franchise hopefully wants to go in; not the cerebral pretensions of 2014’s seemed-good-at-the-time-but-in-hindsight-a-bit-dull Godzilla, or the cynical mean-spiritedness of Kong: Skull Island, but the popcorn crowd pleaser of the Roland Emmerich school (and I also suggest this film serves as an up-yours to said director of Godzilla ‘98). More…
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What begins as a promising quirky romance with a decidedly bleak edge descends into dreadful self-absorption before the second hour drags its lack of a point to oblivion. Watch Toradora! instead: it hits most of the same beats, yet with far more substance and emotional resonance. More…
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Come for the kawaii penguins; stay for what’s really a Spielbergian bildungsroman that could still do with being a half-hour shorter. More…
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Us is like a rollercoaster that breaks at the top so instead of hurtling down, it kind of shudders along the slope and rolls to a safe stop. That first half? Amazing stuff. And then it goes where it goes. It feels like it would play great to a crowd, though; I wish I’d seen it in a fuller cinema, and I never say that about any film. More…
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