Review: Spotlight

Oscar season this year is sure giving us a lot of intensity isn’t it? A nominee studded cast stars in this grueling true story. Spotlight is an investigative team of journalists working for The Boston Globe. In 2001 they were assigned a special task by their new editor, a task of uncovering the secretive world…

Review: The Big Short

An intensive, jargon-filled drama that does the absolute best job at explaining one of the most deliberately complicated financial disasters in recent memory. In 2008 America, and later Europe, was hit by one of the worst financial recessions in decades. But in 2001 a handful of people saw it coming, and saw the fraudulent activity…

Review: The Revenant

Leo is having a really, really bad day. Director Alejandro G. Inarritu returns after his colossal success with last year’s Birdman, and The Revenant is a whole new experience! In the 1820s, during an expedition on the Native American frontier for hide, a hunter accompanying them has his son murdered and is abandoned by his…

Review: Creed

A respectable and well crafted spin-off from the Rocky franchise, Creed doesn’t pull its punches; it excels as well as anyone could have hoped. Adonis Johnson is alone in the world and only wants to fight, ditching his decent office job to seek a trainer to teach him how to box professionally. He knows where…

Saga Review: Rocky

With Creed entering cinemas in the UK this week, I decided to watch and review all of the Rocky films to get my opinion on them all. While I have seen the original film and the sixth entry, I hadn’t seen any of the others before now. Rocky will always be Sylvester Stallone’s own; it…

Review: Bridge of Spies

Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ latest collaboration is a solid wartime drama, not extremely emotional, not extremely heavy, but simply a good watch. Following true events during the Cold War, Tom Hanks plays James B. Donovan, an insurance attorney who is called in for the spiky task of defending a Soviet Russian spy in American…

Review: Black Mass

Johnny Depp headlines this Boston crime lord biopic with a transformative performance, but excellence isn’t only reserved for him. Between 1975 and 1986, James Bulger started out as a low level criminal, but with a friend from the school yard now in the FBI and a senator for a younger brother, Bulger gained immunity for…

Review: The Martian (2D)

Director Ripley Scott delivers stunning visuals to accompany this space survivalist flick. Matt Damon plays Mark Watney, an astronaut botanist who takes part in a space mission to the planet Mars, but when their mission is cut drastically short due to a storm, the team lose him and presume him dead. With the crew returning…

Review: Legend (2015)

This black comedy thriller follows the exploits of the Kray Twins, notorious London gangsters during the 1960s. It feels quite long, but Tom Hardy has a dynamite performance as both twins. Ronald and Reginald Kray are living the comfortable life as gangsters on London’s east side, they are seemingly impervious to the police while running…

Review: The Philadelphia Story

This comedy from 1940 still holds a lot of good chuckles today thanks to a great witty script and acting talent. Katherine Hepburn leads this comedy as a rich woman on the eve of her wedding when her ex-husband arrives at her mansion with two reporters in tow looking for a potentially scandalous story for…