Bradley Cooper is a CHEF. He’s had a TROUBLED PAST. He wants to prove that he’s the BEST. But he can’t do it ALONE. And I can tell all of this just from the poster. I laughed when I saw the poster at the cinema a few months ago. It seems like such a formulaic premise for a movie, something that movie execs cook up thinking that it can’t possibly fail because it has all the right ingredients. And it’s not a terrible movie, but it’s like dining at McDonald’s, you know exactly what you’re going to get when you walk in and no amount of artisan presentation will change the fact that it’s the same burger you’ve eaten many times before. Continue reading
Category Archives: Reviews
Eddie the Eagle (2016)
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The trailer for this film sucked me in. It looked like a warm, quirky British biopic in the vein of Billy Elliot or Chariots of Fire. It’s based on the true story of Michael ‘Eddie’ Edwards, the irrepressible everyman who managed to represent Great Britain in ski jumping at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, despite being a relative newcomer to the sport and not on a par with other competitors. Unfortunately this film has more in common with Cool Runnings, the largely fictionalised Disney film of the Jamaican bobsled team that competed at the same Olympics, than I hoped. Continue reading
Rams (Hrutar) (2015)
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I want to go to Iceland. I blame Björk for sparking my interest. There is something about her discordant eccentricity, the kookiness of Icelandic names and the brutality of the landscape that makes me think this would be a country worth knowing. It’s possible that Rams is the first Icelandic film I have ever seen and it didn’t disappoint. Continue reading
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
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I’d forgotten this film from 2004. Joel (Jim Carrey) wakes to find that his girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) has had all memory of him erased so that she can move on. In anger, he chooses to do the same and we follow him back through their relationship as the fragments of his memory of her disappear. Directed by Michel Gondry with inventive camerawork and very few post-production special effects, you are kept off-kilter as you navigate your way through the real and the surreal that is Joel’s mind. Continue reading
Carol (2015)
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Or cigarettes and sombre faces. Carol is directed by Todd Haynes (Far from Heaven), based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr Ripley) and stars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. Good credentials as far as I’m concerned. It is set in early 50s New York, a post-war world where women are beginning to emerge from the constraints of the past and it explores a lesbian relationship, highlighting the challenges and inequities for women who don’t conform. It is based on an experience of Highsmith’s and her story existed many years under a pseudonym with Highsmith denying authorship until the late 80s, a telling fact as to how long these inequities existed (and still exist). Continue reading
Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict (2015)
StandardI have mixed feelings about this documentary. I appreciate the opportunity to learn more about an interesting and non-conformist woman who had an impact on the development and understanding of modern art, something that seemed to be the domain of men in the mid-20th century. The documentary itself, though, is rather pedestrian and does not match its subject’s love of challenging and expressive art. Continue reading
In the Shadow of Women (L’ombre des femmes) (2015)
StandardOr why sometimes it is better to cut and run. Pierre and Manon are married. They are documentarians who struggle to make ends meet. Pierre is silent and dour, Manon sparkles and pleases. Pierre meets a younger women, Elizabeth, and begins an affair. One day Elizabeth spies Manon in the arms of another man and must decide if she should tell Pierre. Continue reading
The Big Short (2015)
StandardOr how the housing crisis was pretty tough for a bunch of rich, white guys. I’ve been musing on this film quite a bit since I watched it a couple of nights ago. Not because it’s a great film but because I can see two ways to review it – for its craft and within the context of mainstream contemporary Hollywood film making. It’s about the US housing crisis of 2007 and chooses to try to explain why it was allowed to happen rather than explore the effects. We follow several men, all misfits in some way, who saw the signs of the housing mortgage bond collapse and used it, and the blindness and perhaps deliberate fraudulence of the banks and regulatory bodies, for their own financial gain. Continue reading
Deadpool (2016)
StandardI’m not the biggest fan of superhero movies. I’ve seen a few – Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Ironman, X-Men, Avengers – and some are more watchable than others but there is a certain sameness to them. For a start, the superhero is nearly always a man (looking forward to next year’s Wonder Woman), female characters are there for sex or saving (or both) and the plot rarely varies – ordinary guy, painful process, super powers, denial and rage, girlfriend captured by villains, saves her and saves the world. Deadpool doesn’t really depart from these archetypes but it is unlike any superhero movie I’ve seen before. Continue reading
Room (2015)
StandardThis Irish/Canadian drama has an interesting premise. We meet five-year-old Jack and his mother, Ma. They go about the ordinary business of domestic life in their home but it soon becomes apparent that Ma and Jack are confined to a single room. It takes a while for us to discover why and, for a while, we are no more than arm’s length from them, seeing everything through their eyes. On the surface, the film explores the challenges we face in life and the courage we may find within ourselves but it also posits a deeper question – how much do we need to protect children from the world? Continue reading
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