The King's Man (2022) - Movie Review

I have been both anticipating and dreading sitting down to watch this feature in the cinema. And for reasons beyond the larger-scale “Sarge, we keep getting orders to let the virus win” idiocy that is the third year of the pandemic. On the one hand, it’s the latest Kingsman film, a series I have grown to love in all its suave ridiculousness, and having seen all of Matthew Vaughn’s directorial efforts to date, the man is yet to make a bad film. Flawed films? Oh, certainly; The Golden Circle had its share of issues. But never anything outright bad. As such, I’ve been hedging my bets on this film as my first review (on this blog, at least) for 2022, wanting to start things off on a good note.

1917 (2020) - Movie Review

It’s the production gimmick to end all production gimmicks. A combination of the director, cinematographer and editor(s) working in such perfect unison as to pull off a feat that makes film scholars drool all over the world. I am of course talking about the legendary filmmaking technique of the one-shot: A film where everything that takes place is captured in a single camera take.

Not that all one-shots are created equal, though. Some come about through enough clever editing tricks that separate shots are arranged so that it all looks like it was done in one take, like with Birdman or some of the more memorable sequences from the films of Alfonso Cuarón. Others are more legitimate in their claims as they actually are made up of just a single shot, like the legendary Alexander Sokurov film Russian Ark. And sure enough, the latest production to attempt this has been sparking all kinds of awards buzz for the last few months, and it’s only recently made it over here to Australia. But is there more to this film than just the gimmick?

They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) - Movie Review

In the grand horror show that is humanity’s history of war, World War I doesn’t seem to get brought up much anymore. The once-described ‘war to end all wars’ has largely taken a back seat to World War II, Vietnam and even America’s ill-guided ventures into the Middle East in the realm of cinema. Whether that’s due to a more immediate connection to our present, the heightened atrocities committed on all sides, or simply because the leaders in power during WWI don’t have the instant recognisability of Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt or even Menzies, it’s not entirely clear.

Enter Peter Jackson, heralded filmmaker, vanguard of modern cinematic technology, and a man whose grandfather fought on the western front alongside Tolkien himself. While Peter made no secret of how much that would help form who he is today, he has also turned that into a frankly startling look at the experiences of those soldiers with this feature.