La La Land is a curious blend of the old art of Hollywood musical and contemporary romance movie, and somewhere along the way it hit me really hard! Two people looking to live the dream and excel creatively, one a jazz pianist and the other a budding actress, stumble into one another and embark on a…
Review: Split
Director M. Night Shyamalan has had a lot of disgrace in the past, but Split was a decent movie! James McAvoy plays a man with a multiple-personality disorder who kidnaps three young girls for unknown reasons. The girls, while fighting for their freedom, discover their captor has twenty-three distinct personalities inside him. This film, by…
Review: A Monster Calls
A surprisingly morose and sad story, old lessons exceptionally well explored. Conor lives with his mother who is slowly dying of cancer. The young boy’s life is a wreckage of bottled emotion and absent father figures and childhood, but when a colossal, fifty foot monster takes an interest in him, Conor is about to learn…
Review: Silence
Well, this was sobering. But I’m not sure what I think of it… In the 1600s two young Catholic priests journey to Japan, seeking their mentor who has apparently been converted from the faith during his work as a Christian Missionary. They journey however, becomes more like a battle of beliefs. Director Martin Scorsese is…
Review: Ace Attorney
OBJECTION! What, this wasn’t the video game adaptation you were expecting today? Ryuuichi Naruhodou is a young defense attorney at law, literally working his way out of the broom closet, he finds himself embroiled in The DL-6 Case, a case that involves mysticism, the murder of his mentor and the implication of a childhood colleague….
Best and Worst of 2016
2016 has been a brutal year for several reasons, a lot of people will agree that the year has taken its toll on culture, politics and even film. A lot of people will agree that they are happy to see the back of it! In terms of films, I was disappointed in 2016’s movies. Looking…
Review: The Handmaiden
A twisting, turning erotic thriller with a perfect screenplay and great performances. A Korean con artist wants to work his way into marriage with a rich Count’s niece solely to become wealthy himself. To do so he hires a young girl to become the noble woman’s maid to help setup his romance and convince her…
Review: Passengers
Star power alone can’t push this slow moving spaceship. An ark of five thousand stasis-sleeping passengers, on a trip to a new planet to call home, suffers from damage to its systems, waking two people while there’s still ninety years of travel remaining. They find the task of getting to know each other complicated with saving…
Review: Swiss Army Man
Apparently I am watching all the weird films I missed this year! Hank is marooned on an island after his boat is caught in a storm and moments before he is about to take his own life he sees a body on the beach. Through sheer determination to have a friend and a lot of…
Review: Anomalisa
What an incredibly moving, compelling and strange experience this was. Michael Stone is a writer successful in the field of retail and sales but is suffering from a crippling sense of apathy and loneliness in what to him is an incredibly mundane existence. But could all of that be about to change when he visits…