Review – Room (2015)

Director: Lenny Abrahamson

Starring: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Joan Allen, Sean Bridgers, Tom McCamus, William H. Macy

room

Irish director Lenny Abrahamson’s adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel Room (which she wrote the screenplay for) is a tender and at times thrilling drama about the love of a mother for her son in the face of extreme circumstances.

Five-year-old Jack (Jacob Tremblay) lives with his mother (Brie Larson) in Room, a small, grimy, sound-proof shed with a skylight. He has lived there his whole life. It is just the two of them except for once a week in the evening when he must hide in the wardrobe while a mysterious man known only as ‘Old Nick’ (Sean Bridgers) comes to drop off supplies and ‘visit’ his mother. As an audience we make assumptions about Jack and his Ma’s situation and how they came to be there, but Jack never questions it. In his limited perspective there is Room, there is outer space and there are the planets that he sees on TV, but they aren’t real. Only Room is real. Continue reading →

Review – Arrival (2016)

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Starring: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg

arrival

While the sci-fi films that dominate the box office and attract the most attention tend to be rollicking space adventures like Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy, at its heart science fiction is a genre about ideas. At its best, science fiction uses fantastic, unfamiliar scenarios to discuss relevant issues and relatable ideas. Up and coming Quebecois director Denis Villeneuve’s latest film, Arrival – based on Ted Chiang’s “The Story of Your Life” – uses the story of aliens arriving on Earth to explore notions of communication, memory and time.

Twelve 1,500 foot tall spacecrafts shaped like giant coffee beans have settled at seemingly random locations around the globe. Every 18 hours a door at the bottom opens enabling us to go in and make contact. Continue reading →

Review – Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

Director: Mel Gibson

Starring: Andrew Garfield, Teresa Palmer, Sam Worthington, Vince Vaughn, Luke Bracey, Hugo Weaving, Rachel Griffiths

hacksaw-ridge

Despite being a divisive man, Mel Gibson is an undeniably talented filmmaker. After a tumultuous decade that has seen his standing in Hollywood severely diminished, he returns to the directors chair with Hacksaw Ridge, which tells the true story of Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector to be awarded the Medal of Honour after he single handedly dragged 75 wounded from the World War II battlefield that gives the film its name.

After the Japanese attack Pearl Harbour, young Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) feels compelled to enlist and do his bit for the war effort. However, as a devout Seventh Day Adventist, and having grown up with an abusive, alcoholic father (Hugo Weaving), Doss is vehemently opposed to violence. Having previously entertained the idea of becoming a doctor were it not for his lack of schooling, Doss enlists as a medic in a combat battalion, figuring that with all the people doing their best to take life it might be worth having a few doing their best to save it. Continue reading →

Review – Doctor Strange (2016)

Director: Scott Derrickson

Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tilda Swinton, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Mads Mikkelsen, Michael Stuhlbarg, Benjamin Bratt

doctor-strange

The fourteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Strange, is a peculiar beast. It is simultaneously the boldest and most conservative Marvel film in some time, taking the franchise in an exciting new visual direction, while taking enormous steps back from the character and relationship complexity of some of Marvel’s more recent films in order to tell a routine origin story.

Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a brilliant, wealthy and arrogant neurosurgeon from New York whose life is turned upside down when a serious car accident leaves him with severe nerve damage in his hands, effectively ending his medical career. After exhausting all the options of western medicine, in desperation he heads to Kathmandu in search of a holy teacher who he has learned healed a man with a serious spinal injury. There he is met by the mysterious Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who takes him to Kamar-Taj, an ancient community of sorcerers under the leadership of the Supreme Sorcerer, known only as the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton). Continue reading →

Review – Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)

Director: Stephen Frears

Starring: Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant, Simon Helberg, Rebecca Ferguson

florence-foster-jenkins

Gosh it must be fun to be Meryl Streep. The most celebrated screen actress alive has reached a point in her career where she can seemingly do whatever she wants. Not one to take herself too seriously, she appears to pick whatever projects look like fun while still producing top notch work. She has shown us she can sing with Mamma Mia!, Into the Woods and Ricki and the Flash, and now, with Florence Foster Jenkins, she has shown us, when needed, she can also sing terribly.

When gifted young pianist Cosme McMoon (Simon Helberg) is hired to play accompaniment for heiress Florence Foster Jenkins’ (Meryl Streep) daily singing lessons, he has no idea what he has got himself into. A socialite and patron of the arts, Florence is a lover of music, who just happens to be the worst singer in the world. Continue reading →

Review – Mascots (2016)

Director: Christopher Guest

Starring: Zach Woods, Sarah Baker, Tom Bennett, Parker Posey, Susan Yeagley, Chris O’Dowd, Michael Hitchcock, Jane Lynch, Ed Begley Jr., Fred Willard, John Michael Higgins

mascots

As writer-performer of This is Spinal Tap, and writer-director-performer of Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind, Christopher Guest is undoubtedly the godfather of the mockumentary (despite his open disdain for the term), and as such, the patron saint of modern television comedies like The Office, Modern Family and Parks and Recreation. So the announcement that he would be returning to the feature mockumentary for the first time in over a decade with the Netflix original film Mascots was met with excited anticipation. Unfortunately, after a long wait, Mascots doesn’t show us anything we haven’t seen before.

As the title might suggest, Mascots concerns those large fluffy characters who dance around at sporting contests to fire up the crowd. More to the point, it concerns the people behind, or rather inside, those characters. Continue reading →

Review – Weiner (2016)

Directors: Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg 

Starring: Anthony Weiner, Huma Abedin

weinerSometimes the best documentaries happen when things don’t go quite according to plan, when the story the filmmakers end up telling is not the one they set out to. This is definitely the case with and Weiner. When Josh Kriegman (former chief of staff to Anthony Weiner) and Elyse Steinberg approached the disgraced congressman about documenting his 2013 campaign for the mayorship of New York, they probably envisioned a comeback story, a tale of redemption. However they ended up getting much more than they bargained for. Continue reading →

Review – Zootopia (2016)

Directors: Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush

Starring: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, Nate Torrence, Bonnie Hunt, Don Lake, JK Simmons, Shakira

zootopia

In 2013 Frozen earned Disney praise for, among other things, its deviation from the well worn princess formula by showing the love of a sister to be every bit as powerful as that of a prince. With the charming Zootopia, the studio continues the positive evolution of its messaging for young girls by presenting a female protagonist who is not a princess but a police officer.

Since childhood, idealistic bunny Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) has dreamed of leaving behind the rural life of a carrot farmer to become a police officer in the big city. The more people told her it was an impossible dream, that there had never been a bunny police officer before, the stronger her drive got. The first to benefit from the mayor’s Mammal Inclusion Initiative, Judy graduates top of her class from the academy, determined to prove that she belongs and is “not some token bunny.” Continue reading →

Review – Suicide Squad (2016)

Director: David Ayer

Starring: Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman, Cara Delevingne, Viola Davis, Jared Leto, Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez, Adele Akinuoye-Agbaje, Karen Fukuhara
suicide_squad

Suicide Squad represents the brave next step in the stuttering DC Expanded Universe as, for the first time, it shifts its focus away from DC’s big two characters, Superman and Batman, instead looking to a band of misfit villains-turned-heroes. Redemption is the theme here. Redemption for these characters and redemption for the studio after the less than glowing reception of Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice.

The US government is still coming to terms with the presence of meta-humans in the world after the climactic events of Batman vs Superman. What happens if the next Superman isn’t such a nice guy? Intelligence agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) proposes an initiative called Taskforce X. In exchange for reductions in their sentences, a group of highly dangerous but highly gifted criminals in Belle Reve Penitentiary are engaged to fight America’s most dangerous foes. Continue reading →

Review – Jason Bourne (2016)

Director: Paul Greengrass

Starring: Matt Damon, Alicia Vikander, Tommy Lee Jones, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles

Jason Bourne

After a real misstep with the spin-off The Bourne Legacy, which tried to continue a franchise without its titular character, star Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass have been lured back after nine years to the franchise they both declared they were done with for Jason Bourne. However, in watching this fourth instalment in franchise (we should take our lead from this film and just pretend The Bourne Legacy never happened) it is difficult to see what it was that caused their change of heart.

Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) has been off the grid for a number of years but he is tracked down by old ally Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles). She has hacked into the CIA’s system determined to expose their black ops programs, including Treadstone, and in the process has uncovered some information about Bourne’s father. Continue reading →