Review – The Boss (2016)

Directors: Ben Falcone

Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Bell, Ella Anderson, Peter Dinklage, Tyler Labine

Boss

Directors of comedies don’t tend to get the same credit that they do in other genres. Our attention understandably tends to focus on the comedic performer. But one can’t help but walk away from Melissa McCarthy’s latest star vehicle, The Boss, with an appreciation of the skills of Paul Feig. Feig has consistently got the best out of McCarthy in Bridesmaids, The Heat and Spy. The Boss, however, he had nothing to do with. Instead, McCarthy’s co-writer and director here is her husband, Ben Falcone, with whom she made the poorly received Tammy. While she can’t help but get laughs, the film feels a bit like when a great front man from a rock band goes off and does a solo album. It is not quite the same and not nearly as good.

McCarthy plays Michelle Darnell, the 47th wealthiest woman in America, the CEO of seven Fortune 500 companies and a bestselling author of financial advice books. She is a ruthless businesswoman, hardened by a childhood defined by rejection as foster family after foster family returned her to the orphanage. Continue reading →

Review – Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Director: Zach Snyder

Starring: Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Amy Adams, Jesse Eisenberg, Jeremy Irons, Holly Hunter, Gal Gadot, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne

Batman vs Superman

“Who would win a fight between…” has long been a favourite hypothetical of young comic book fans around the world. So for those boys and girls Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice must have sounded like a dream come true. Unfortunately though, if there is one audience this film is not for it is kids. In bringing together the world’s two most iconic superheroes Zach Snyder has made the darkest mainstream blockbuster in recent memory. It is a serious film without an ounce of lightness or humour that seeks to pose ethical and philosophical questions about power, but poor execution leaves it falling short of its lofty goals.

Batman vs Superman is in a number of ways a reactionary film. At an industrial level it is absolutely Warner Brothers and DC’s panicked response to the outrageous success Marvel Studios have had with their interwoven Marvel Cinematic Universe. What was originally supposed to be a straight sequel to 2013’s Man of Steel was seemingly co-opted by the studio to become the launching pad for the DC Expanded Universe. Continue reading →

Review – Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Directors: Joel & Ethan Coen

Starring: Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill

Hail Caesar

In recent years Joel and Ethan Coen have largely put comedy to one side to focus on existential explorations in more serious films like Inside Llewyn Davis and A Serious Man. While this has resulted in some great work, with Hail, Caesar! it is exciting to see the brothers return to the mode which brought us the likes of Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou. Unfortunately, this farce set in the golden age of studio Hollywood does not end up reaching those heights.

Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) is Head of Physical Production at Capitol Pictures. His job is to solve problems, to keep their productions on track and their stars in line. His number one priority is chaperoning their latest prestige picture, a Ben-Hur like swords and sandals biblical epic called ‘Hail, Caesar!: A Tale of the Christ,’ safely through production. But things threaten to be derailed when Capitol Picture’s biggest star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) vanishes, kidnapped by a group describing themselves as “The Future” and demanding $100,000 in ransom. Continue reading →

Review – Anomalisa (2015)

Directors: Charlie Kauffman & Duke Johnson

Starring: David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan

Anomalisa

With his screenplays for Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation, and his directorial debut Synecdoche New York, Charlie Kauffman has shown himself to be one of the cinema’s truly unique voices. He thinks outside the box. But where his experimentation is usually at the narrative level, with Anomalisa, which he has written and co-directed with Duke Johnson, the experimentation is stylistic. This sombre tale of alienation and despair is told through stop motion puppetry.

Michael Stone (David Thewlis) is a respected customer service expert and author of the bestselling book ‘How Can I Help You Help Them?’ He has flown into Cincinnati for one night to speak at a convention. While he has a wife and son back in Los Angeles he is desperately lonely and sad man, haunted by a relationship from a decade ago which ended badly, something which is particularly front of mind at the moment given she lives in Cincinnati. In the corridor of his hotel he meets Lisa, a customer service rep from Ohio in town for the convention, and is quite taken with her. There is something about her which makes her stand out from the sameness of everyone else. She is an anomaly, an Anomalisa. Continue reading →

Review – Carol (2015)

Director: Todd Haynes

Starring: Rooney Mara, Cate Blanchett, Kyle Chandler, Sarah Paulson, Jake Lacey

Carol

The psychological thrillers of American novelist Patricia Highsmith have for a long time proven a rich source for film adaptations (Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley’s Game). However her second novel, The Price of Salt, a lesbian love story set in the 1950s which she published under a pseudonym, had not been touched. It is difficult to imagine a filmmaker better suited to tackling this material than Todd Haynes. Over the course of his 25 year career Haynes has a tremendous track record of building films around complex female protagonists and exploring issues of queer identity, while being one of the very few directors to work in the classic melodrama genre. All of which contribute to the faithful adaptation of Highsmith’s work in Carol.

Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) is a quiet, shy young woman with an interest in photography who works in the toy section of a Manhattan department store. In the days leading up to Christmas, Therese meets an elegant society woman, Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett) who is shopping for a Christmas gift for her daughter. A slightly older woman than Therese, Carol is instantly fascinating to her. Continue reading →

Review – Deadpool (2016)

Director: Tim Miller

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T.J. Miller, Stefan Kapicic, Brianna Hildebrand, Gina Carano, Karan Soni

Deadpool

It is not often in Hollywood that you get a second shot at something, a chance to right a wrong. Ryan Reynolds’ first appearance as Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool, was a supporting role in 2009’s disappointing X-Men Origins: Wolverine. That incarnation of the character infuriated diehard fans by deviating significantly from the source material. Nothing more perfectly encapsulated that movie’s failure to grasp the essence of the character than the decision to take “the merc with a mouth” and literally sew his lips shut. Since then, Reynolds has worked tirelessly to get another shot at playing Deadpool in a film that got it right. Seven years later, that film has arrived and Reynolds has found the role for which he will be remembered.

Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) is a wise-cracking mercenary, a bad guy who makes a living roughing up worse guys. He meets prostitute Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), a kindred spirit who is compatibly messed up, and the two fall hopelessly in love. But no sooner have things started to look rosy for Wade he is diagnosed with late stage cancer. When all appears lost, a mysterious man offers him the chance to undergo an experimental procedure designed to accelerate any dormant mutations in his genes. If successful it will not only cure his cancer, it will turn him into a superhero. Continue reading →

Review – Spotlight (2015)

Director: Tom McCarthy

Starring: Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Brian d’Arcy James, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci

Spotlight

Revelations of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, and the institutional cover up which protected its perpetrators, have rocked communities all over the world. The effect has been particularly devastating in cities where the church and the wider community are almost inseparable. Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight takes its title from the small, four person investigative team at the Boston Globe who, in 2001, uncovered a scandal in the local archdiocese which started a snowball effect which would be felt around the globe and earned the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize.

The Boston Globe has a new editor, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber). Baron has worked at the New York Times and the Miami Herald, so he has serious credibility. But he is Jewish, unmarried, and doesn’t even like baseball. In other words, he is not Boston. In his first meeting with the Globe staff he draws their attention to a small column buried deep in the paper about a local priest who has been convicted of child sex offences and decides that this will become the next target for the Spotlight team Continue reading →

Review – The Big Short (2015)

Director: Adam McKay

Starring: Steve Carrell, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Rafe Spall, Hamish Linklater, Jeremy Strong, John Magaro, Finn Wittrock, Brad Pitt

Big Short

Seeing Adam McKay, the writer-director best known for his comedies with Will Ferrell (Anchorman, Talladega Nights and Step Brothers), as the Oscar nominated director of a Best Picture candidate about the housing market crash might seem strange to some. However, it is actually quite a logical extension of his talents. In a previous life McKay was a writer on Michael Moore’s series The Awful Truth and has written pieces for The Huffington Post. And anyone who saw the end credits of his comedy The Other Guys – effectively a PowerPoint lecture on Ponzi schemes and Bernie Madoff – will know this obviously is a subject about which he has strong views.

Based on Michael Lewis’s book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, the film follows a handful of stock traders, all loners and outsiders, who saw the 2008 housing market crash coming and managed to spin it to their advantage. Eccentric, mildly autistic, flip-flop wearing money manager Michael Burry (Christian Bale) is the first to spot that the housing market is being propped up by an increasing number of bad mortgages and is heading towards a cliff. Continue reading →

Review – The Revenant (2015)

Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Will Poulter, Domhnall Gleeson, Forrest Goodluck

RevenantUpon receiving the Golden Globe for Best Director for The Revenant, Alejandro G. Iñárritu said, “Pain is temporary, but a film is forever.” It is a mantra that he has obviously willed himself to believe because the stories from set in Canada suggest this ambitious frontier epic will earn its place alongside Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo as one of film history’s most arduous and challenging shoots. The film is an endurance test, for its crew, for its characters and even, in the best possible way, for its audience.

A revenge Western – though Iñárritu insists that it isn’t a Western – based in part on the 2002 novel by Michael Punke, The Revenant tells the incredible “true” survival story of frontiersman Hugh Glass. In 1823, Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) leads a group of fur trappers through the Rocky Mountains on a quest for pelts. Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is charged with navigating them safely through this dangerous territory Continue reading →

Review – The Hateful Eight (2015)

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth, Bruce Dern, Demian Bichir, Michael Madsen

Hateful Eight1

At a time when the film industry has become almost uniformly digital, Quentin Tarantino remains a passionate supporter of the celluloid process. With his eighth film, The Hateful Eight, he has put his money (or rather, someone else’s money) where his mouth is and chosen to shoot the film in the long dormant Ultra Panavision 70mm format. The last film to be shot on this super wide screen format (2.76:1) was Khartoum in 1966. Yet while employing a film format which is associated with epic spectacle, with its minimal locations The Hateful Eight is probably Tarantino’s smallest scale film since Reservoir Dogs – though twice as long and with fifty five times the budget, indicative of the increasing excess of Tarantino’s work.

Bounty hunter John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) is taking wanted murderer Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to Red Rock to collect the $10,000 reward. While most bounty hunters prefer the ‘dead’ option in ‘dead or alive,’ when John “The Hangman” Ruth catches you, you hang. Continue reading →