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.

Straight Outta ComptonIt 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

Mission Impossible 5Ethan 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

DopeDope 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 →

Six of the Best… TV Remakes

Recently Warner Brothers and Guy Ritchie made the somewhat peculiar decision to adapt the 1960s television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to the big screen (read my review here). While Ritchie’s film wasn’t exactly a triumph, there have been a number of TV remakes which have been really good. Of course, there are also plenty which have been terrible (The Flintstones, The Smurfs, Lost in Space), but we are going to try and keep it positive here and look at six of the best TV remakes. To clarify, this is a list of the best TV remakes not just movies that have come from television shows. So I have chosen not to consider movies which feature the same cast as the television series which has disqualified films like The Naked Gun, all of the Muppets movies, Serenity, and films which originated as Saturday Night Live sketches like The Blues Brothers and Wayne’s World. So let’s jump in… 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

Man from UNCLERemakes 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

Ex MachinaWhen 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

TrainwreckThe 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 GirlMe 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 →

Review – Ant-Man (2015)

Director: Peyton Reed

Starring: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Peña, Abbie Rider Fortson, Judy Greer

Ant-ManYou just can’t bet against Marvel Studios at the moment. Every time they announce a new project based on some obscure comic that raises your eyebrows and makes you think, “Surely this is the one that they makes them stumble,” they find a way to make it work. Boy did it work with James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy last year and it has worked again, albeit not to quite as drastic an extent, with Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man, a light, funny and surprisingly heartfelt superhero movie.

Decades ago, when working with SHIELD, Dr Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) invented the Pym Particle, a formula that alters atomic relative distance, reducing the space between atoms while increasing their strength. Using his discovery he became the original Ant-Man. However, after a terrible accident he gave up the superhero life and, concerned by the potential weaponisation of his technology, vowed to keep his formula secret. But now his former protégé, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), who took over his company Pym Technologies and voted him out, is on the verge of unlocking the secret of the Pym Particle, Continue reading →

Review – Mr. Holmes (2015)

Director: Bill Condon

Starring: Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Milo Parker, Hattie Morohan, Patrick Kennedy, Hiroyuki Sanada

Mr HolmesSherlock Holmes has had somewhat of a resurgence in the last decade. Between Guy Ritchie’s films, the British television series Sherlock and the American series Elementary, the original super sleuth is once again front-of-mind. Rather than piggybacking on the popularity of these other texts, Bill Condon’s Mr. Holmes presents itself as an alternative, even an antidote, to the current Holmes craze.

Adapted from the Mitch Cullin novel A Slight Trick of the Mind, this is no modernised, stylised, cool Sherlock Holmes. Rather, we are presented with Holmes (Ian McKellen) as a 93 year old man. Having long since retired and moved out of Baker St, with Watson and Mrs Hudson both deceased, Holmes now resides in a country house in Sussex with his housekeeper Mrs Munro (Laura Linney) and her inquisitive son Roger (Milo Parker). While still a keen observer with sharp deductive skills, in his old age Holmes’s memory is starting to fail him. He is working away at his memoirs, trying to set the record straight and record the real versions of the stories that Watson had mythologised. Continue reading →