Category: Reviews
Review – Bridge of Spies (2015)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Scott Shepherd, Alan Alda, Austin Stowell, Dakin Matthews, Amy Ryan
The big guns have been rolled out for Cold War espionage thriller Bridge of Spies, Steven Spielberg’s contribution to this year’s Oscar hunting season. Directing his first film in three years, the Hollywood master has teamed up for the fourth time with star Tom Hanks on a screenplay from Matt Charman and the Coen brothers.
In 1957, at the height of the Cold War and the accompanying thermonuclear hysteria, the CIA capture a Soviet spy, Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), living in Brooklyn. With the eyes of the world watching, and the American justice system under the microscope, it is important that Abel is seen as getting a fair trial. So James Donovan (Tom Hanks), partner in a successful insurance law firm, is appointed by the state as Abel’s public defender. While aware that defending the most hated man in the country will likely make him the second most hated man in the country, Donovan believes it is his patriotic duty to do the job. Continue reading
Review – Beasts of No Nation (2015)
Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga
Starring: Abraham Attah, Idris Elba, Emmanuel “King Kong” Nii Adom Quaye, Kurt Egyiawan
After great success with its original television content with shows like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, streaming giant Netflix has made the move into film production with its first original feature, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation. In adapting Nigerian-American author Uzodinma Iweala’s acclaimed novel about the life of a child soldier, Netflix has made a powerful statement with its first film, announcing itself as a company not afraid to tackle complex and confronting subject matter.
In an unspecified African nation, we meet a cheeky and imaginative young boy named Agu (Abraham Attah). While Agu lives a carefree existence, his country is caught up in a vicious, multi-factioned civil war. There is a constant stream of refugees passing through their rural village. Caught between the rebels and the army, the decision is soon made to evacuate the village. While the women and babies are shipped off to the capital for safety, the men stay to protect their village against looters. Continue reading
Review – The Martian (2015)
Director: Ridley Scott
Starring: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Kristin Wiig, Aksel Hennie
In a long career that has had its share of hits and misses, Ridley Scott has managed to consistently make one great film per decade. In the 1970s it was Alien. In the 1980s it was Blade Runner. He showed he was more than just a great science fiction director with Thelma & Louise in the 1990s and the swords and sandals epic Gladiator in the 2000s. After a bit of a recent dry patch (Exodus: Gods and Kings, The Counsellor, Prometheus, Robin Hood), Scott has returned to form with a film which could well be his great offering of the 2010s, an adaptation of the Andy Weir novel, The Martian.
The Martian gets straight into it, establishing its scenario instantly. Botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is 18 sols, Mars days, into the Ares III research mission on Mars when an enormous storm hits, forcing his team’s immediate evacuation. Struck by debris and assumed dead, Watney is left behind. But he is not dead. And despite being stranded 55 million kilometres from home, he has no intention of dying. Continue reading
Review – Straight Outta Compton (2015)
Director: F. Gary Gray
Starring: Jason Mitchell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins, Paul Giamatti, R. Marcos Taylor, Neil Brown Jr., Aldis Hodge, Marlon Knight Jr.
It is said that history is written by the victors and to an extent that is what you get with Straight Outta Compton, F. Gary Gray’s biopic of trailblazing West Coast gangsta rap group N.W.A (Niggaz Wit Attitudes). Among the film’s producers are two of the group’s founding members, Dr Dre and Ice Cube. Dr Dre is now CEO of Aftermath Records and Beats Electronics and ranked the richest figure in American hip hop by Forbes magazine. Ice Cube is a successful rapper, producer and movie star. They are the victors and the film they present is a mythologising of their origin story which takes us back to when these establishment figures were dangerous outsiders.
In 1986 we meet our three principals: charismatic drug dealer Eric “Eazy E” Wright (Jason Mitchell), aspiring DJ Andre “Dr Dre” Young (Corey Hawkins), and teenage rapper O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson (O’Shea Jackson Jr). Not content with his regular gig which has no interest in rap music, Dr Dre approaches Eazy for capital to record an album. With Dre’s beats, Cube’s rhymes and Eazy’s business acumen, they found N.W.A. Continue reading
Review – Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Starring: Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, Sean Harris, Alec Baldwin, Ving Rhames, Simon McBurney
Ethan Hunt and the Impossible Missions Force return in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, the fifth film in a franchise which has now spanned 19 years. With a different director on each film, this instalment sees Chris McQuarrie at the helm. McQuarrie has previously worked with Tom Cruise on four occasions, including directing him in Jack Reacher and writing Edge of Tomorrow, and while he doesn’t possess the same visual flair as some who have come before him, he is the first to be sole writer and director in the series.
The CIA wants to close down the IMF, believing it to be a reckless, unaccountable division. While Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is making ground gathering information about a mysterious criminal organisation called the Syndicate, CIA director Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) isn’t buying it, convinced the Syndicate is nothing more than a paranoid delusion of the IMF. As the IMF agents are called back in and reassigned Hunt stays out in the field determined to continue his mission. Wanted by the CIA and operating without the backing and protection of the American government, Hunt is dependent on his loyal former IMF pals Continue reading
Review – Dope (2015)
Director: Rick Famuyiwa
Starring: Shameik Moore, Tony Revolori, Kiersey Clemons, Zoe Kravitz, Blake Anderson, A$AP Rocky
Dope means a lot of different things and so Rick Famuyiwa starts his film with a series of definitions of its title. Dope is an illicit drug. A dope is an idiot. Dope is slang for something cool. All of these definitions prove relevant to the funny and energetic film that will follow.
Malcolm (Shameik Moore) is a black geek with a single mother growing up in “The Bottoms” in Inglewood, surrounded by gangs and drug dealers. He is obsessed with 1990s hip hop culture, with a flat top hairstyle pulled straight from the old episodes of “Yo, MTV Raps” he watches online. With his friends Jib (Tony Revolori from The Grand Budapest Hotel) and Diggy (Kiersey Clemons) he is into “white people shit” like good grades, BMX riding and Donald Glover. The three of them are in a punk band called Awreeoh (a play on Oreo, a slang term for someone who is black on the outside and white inside).
Malcolm is very smart kid. Continue reading
Review – The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Director: Guy Ritchie
Starring: Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Debicki, Sylvester Groth, Luca Calvani, Christian Berkel, Jared Harris, Hugh Grant
Remakes and reboots are common place in Hollywood. Studios love them because they are largely safe. While an original idea is risky, a remake gives you instant name recognition and a pre-existing audience. At least that is the thinking. But Guy Ritchie’s latest film, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., is a remake of a television series that ran from 1964-1968, half a century ago, that carries zero cultural cache with the target demographic for this spy actioner, which begs the question: why?
As is to be expected, we go back to the beginning. This is an origin story, describing how U.N.C.L.E., the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, came about. We begin in East Berlin in 1963, where American CIA agent Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) has been sent on an extraction mission to transport beautiful, young auto-mechanic Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander) across the Iron Curtain. Between Solo and safety is Ukranian KGB operative Illya Kuriyakin (Armie Hammer) who is also after Teller. An exhilarating car chase ensues, one only slightly undermined by the stodgy communist bloc Trabants they are driving. Continue reading
Review – Ex Machina (2015)
Director: Alex Garland
Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Oscar Isaac
When we think science fiction films we tend to think big – space travel to distant worlds, scope and spectacle. But quite often the best science fiction films are small. Ex Machina, from the Latin phrase meaning “from the machine,” is such a film and marks the directorial debut of British screenwriter Alex Garland, best known for his screenplays for 28 Days Later and Sunshine, and his novel The Beach.
Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is a low level programmer working for tech giant, Blue Book. Through an in-company lottery he wins the chance to spend a week with the company’s enigmatic CEO and programming legend, Nathan (Oscar Isaac), at his remote Alaskan mansion and research facility. Upon arrival Caleb discovers that he is not there for a week of hanging out with the boss but to assist Nathan in his latest research endeavour, artificial intelligence. Nathan has produced a humanoid robot, Ava (Alicia Vikander), and he wants Caleb to put her through a Turing test. The Turing test (named for the British computer scientist Alan Turing, subject of Oscar winner The Imitation Game) tests a machine’s ability to exhibit human behaviour. Continue reading
Review – Trainwreck (2015)
Director: Judd Apatow
Starring: Amy Schumer, Bill Hader, Brie Larsen, Colin Quinn, LeBron James, Tilda Swinton, John Cena
The traditional romantic comedy is increasingly becoming a thing of the past. A hit romantic comedy in the 21st century requires a slightly harder edge, and that is exactly what you get in Trainwreck, the debut film from writer and star Amy Schumer.
Trainwreck starts with a flashback, 23 years in the past, as Gordon (Colin Quinn) sits his two young daughters down to explain why he and their mother are getting a divorce, an explanation which finishes with the girls reciting the mantra “monogamy is unrealistic.” Fast forward to the present day, and while Kim (Brie Larson) is happily married with a step son and a baby on the way, elder sister Amy (Amy Schumer) has taken her father’s advice to heart. She is a proud, single woman with a long list of conquests and a job she loves, writing for S’Nuff, a seedy men’s magazine not above publishing articles on the ugliest celebrity children and the effects of garlic on the taste of semen. Despite her hatred of sports, she is assigned to do a profile on a prominent sports doctor, Aaron Conners (Bill Hader). There is an instant chemistry between the two and a preliminary interview becomes drinks and then a cab ride back to his apartment and… well, you know. Continue reading
Review – Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015)
Director: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
Starring: Thomas Mann, Olivia Cooke, RJ Cyler, Nick Offerman, Molly Shannon, Jon Bernthal, Katherine C. Hughes, Connie Britton
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a special movie. With a second time director in Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, and first time screenwriter in Jesse Andrews (adapting his own novel), the film won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and the Audience Award at the Sydney Film Festival and is one of 2015’s little gems.
The ‘Me’ of the title is Greg (Thomas Mann), an invisible high school senior. The survival strategy which has successfully navigated him through school thus far is to be an acquaintance to many and a friend to none, being on first name basis with all of the key cliques without declaring an allegiance to any. One day his mother (Connie Britton) breaks some bad news to him. A girl from his grade at school, Rachel (Olivia Cooke), has been diagnosed with leukaemia – the ‘Dying Girl.’ And then as only mothers can, she demands that Greg go over to Rachel’s house to be a friend and try and cheer her up. With time, what starts out as an uncomfortable arranged friendship becomes an honest connection between them. Continue reading
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