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?

Spectre (2015) - Movie Review

You’d be hard-pressed to find a single film franchise that’s more iconic than the exploits of agent 007. The actors, the girls, the gadgets, the quips, the cars, even the booze; all of it has reached a phenomenal level of cultural relevance. It is almost to the point where, a thousand years from now, future civilisations are going to assume that British people did nothing but drink rocket fuel martinis and snark at each other all day… okay, bad example. What I’m getting at with all this is that, with each new instalment, there is an automatic expectation that comes with them. Now, bear in mind that anything and everything that is said here is from the perspective of a very recent casual fan of the series; hell, the first Bond film I saw in cinemas was Skyfall. To be fair though, that’s a pretty damn good place to start. But how does its sequel turn out?