Maestro (2023) - Movie Review

Bradley Cooper is one of my favourite people working in Hollywood right now. As an actor, he just got done completing the heartbreaking character arc of a talking raccoon and solidifying him as one of the greatest modern superheroes with Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3. As a producer, he backed another whopper of a comic book flick with Joker, a film I still hold in rather high regard and am beyond curious to see what in the hell the sequel is going to shape into. And as a director, his debut with A Star Is Born was a monster hit when it came out, and one of my faves from that year. The man just keeps making power moves, and always with this unmistakable confidence that, no matter what direction he takes, it’s the right one for him.

It's the kind of quality that makes him helming a film like this (or, more specifically, why Steven Spielberg would emphatically insist that he helm it) make total sense, and something of a necessity in order to do it right. While I freely admit that I don’t know all that much about Leonard Bernstein, the legend around his name carries a lot of weight, and with the take that’s being attempted here, there’s a incredibly high degree of difficulty in making it work.

Nightmare Alley (2022) - Movie Review

Having managed to contextualise his entire career with his last film The Shape Of Water, it somewhat stands to reason that Guillermo Del Toro would then decide to stretch out into new territory with his following release. Stepping away from the more speculative genre fixtures that have populated his filmography up to this point, he’s now stepping into down-and-dirty film noir, with a sideways-remake of the 1947 Tyrone Power film of the same name (itself adapted from the William Lindsay Gresham novel of the same name). However, out of a want to keep whatever plot revelations are in this story intact so I can get the most out of them (after The Witches, I want to give Del Toro the best chance possible for a rebound), I have not watched the original nor read the source material. But even in that gap, this film has more than enough going for it to be worth recommending.

Licorice Pizza (2021) - Movie Review

I’m starting to think this is karma for having anything good to say about Cuties (yeah, don’t @ me, I’m not really in the mood for people being angry at a disturbing film for being disturbing). First there was Red Rocket, which hinged on a grown-ass man’s sexual relationship with a 17-going-on-18 year-old, and now we have a film about a 25-year-old woman and her romance with a 15-year-old boy. I would much rather not have to write about this and spare myself the mental gymnastics… fucking hell, even the notion that something like this would require mental gymnastics on my part is already making me feel sketchy; I don't want this to turn into another Breath. And yet, beyond my usual routine of writing about every new film I watch, there’s still a certain fascination that makes me want to get my thoughts down on paper because, honestly, I really liked this movie.

The Mule (2019) - Movie Review

After the tumultuous trainwreck that was last year’s 15:17 To Paris, I’ll admit that I was somewhat hesitant to see what Clint Eastwood had in store for his next feature. I mean, I’ve gone on record about how I don’t exactly agree with his politics, but I’m still willing to admit that when he has the right material, he can pull through with some genuinely moving cinema. And with him teaming up again with writer Nick Schenk, the scribe for one of Eastwood’s true classics with Gran Torino, and stepping back into the lead role for the first time since that effort, this at least has the potential to be a step back in the right direction. Well, as I’ll get into, this definitely works… although I question some of the aspects it ends up aiming for.

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) - Movie Review

 

Out of all the Marvel Cinematic Universe we have gotten so far, from the politically-driven thrills of Captain America to the Objectivist musings of Iron Man, 2014’s Guardians Of The Galaxy still stands as my personal favourite of the lot. Hell, my defence for Suicide Squad likely came from how much it reminded me of Guardians in both tone and intent. Apart from what people have come to expect from a modern Marvel film, like the pitch-perfect casting and the industry connections to some of the greatest effects wizards working today, it also opened the gates for a more bizarre and kitschy brand of superhero story, one that director/co-writer James Gunn was more than apt to tell.

 

Despite how late this review ultimately is, with the film in question being out for quite a while before I finally got around to it, I was definitely eager to see just how it would measure up to the original that I hold in quite high regard. Once again, this is the year that sees fit to kick audiences square in their expectations, so here’s hoping for a solid project.

War Dogs (2016) - Movie Review

A stoner war film… again. It’s weird that this is a niche that carries more than a single entry this year alone, but here we are.

Joy (2015) - Movie Review

 

David O. Russell might be one of the most emotionally intuitive filmmakers working today, if not ever. Every film he’s been attached to explores some inner working of the human psyche to (usually) great effect: Sex (Spanking The Monkey), personal identity (Flirting With Disaster), greed (Three Kings), comfort through the metaphysical (I Heart Huckabees), pride (The Fighter), depression (Silver Linings Playbook), deception (American Hustle) and… okay, I haven’t quite figured out where Accidental Love fits into this overall picture.

 

Nevertheless, the man is a phenomenally good writer and director, especially in recent years. After the largely confusing mess of Huckabees, which people seemed to love or hate for the same reason (that it made no sense), O. Russell went through a definite change in his tactics. His slapstick style of direction became more introspective, resulting in a trio of films that were not only good but were legitimately some of the best films of their respective years, if not the entire decade. So, given how much I clearly adore the man’s work, I look forward to today’s subject hoping that Accidental Love wasn’t some kind of ill omen. Even for filmmakers I like, I can’t help being cynical.

Burnt (2015) - Movie Review

Of the many, many things that I don’t possess nearly as much expertise in, or feign to have expertise in at least, as film, food would have to be one of the bigger ones. I have little to no interest in cooking shows that don’t includes the words “Iron Chef”, my taste buds have dulled from so much fast food that I wouldn’t be able to taste each of the secret herbs & spices even if I was actively told what they were, and I cannot for the life of me take the more cut-throat kitchen dramas out there seriously. Maybe if I spent long enough in the more hoity-toity restaurants of the world, then maybe seeing chefs completely lose their shit would make a bit more sense to me. Or maybe if I had watched a lot less of Gordon Ramsey’s signature freak-outs when I was growing up; that might've helped too. So, with all this in mind, I’m probably not the ideal audience for this kind of film. But it’s not as if this is the first, nor will it be the last time that this will happen, so it’ll be regular snarky business as usual.

Aloha (2015) - Movie Review

As much as I have frequently shown pessimism about the films I review, I don’t think I’ve come across a film yet that has given me this much reason to do so. Between the laughably appalling tagline "Sometimes you have to say goodbye before you can say hello", which rivals The Impossible’s "Nothing is more powerful than the human spirit" in terms of trite advertising, the extremely by-the-numbers plot as hinted at by the trailer and the sheer frequency at that trailer was shown, to the point where it has been playing in front of every film I’ve gone to see in the last couple months, I find myself largely sick of this movie before I even paid to see the thing. But, keeping in line with the feel-good mentality that permeates these kinds of films, I will try to keep an open mind about this… Let’s see how long that lasts.

American Sniper (2015) - Movie Review

I always feel good when I end up reviewing a film that involves a certain degree of controversy; it almost guarantees that I’ll piss someone off. Okay, that might be a little too cynical (even for me) but weighing in on films like this is still interesting in seeing how people will end up reacting. However, this is different to when I went after God’s Not Dead and for a couple of reasons. For one, I don’t have as strong a stance on the subject matter in question so I am far less likely to get as heated when talking about it, so hopefully I won’t be going on any massive rants here like I did in that review. That might end up making this less entertaining to read, but it’s not like that’s stopped me any other time I’ve written something on here.