Peter Rabbit 2 (2021) - Movie Review

I didn’t really know what to expect out of this movie. Between the initial trailer being as middling as it was, it being one of the first films to be made to do the COVID shuffle, and the original being so wildly inconsistent, I went into this follow-up without much expectation, other than hoping it wouldn’t derail itself with food allergies again. And to its credit, it left the realistic Epi-pen shit alone this time around… but it still managed to derail itself. In monumental, rubber-necking, legitimately infuriating fashion. Slow claps all round.

Tenet (2020) - Movie Review

After diverting from his usual illusionist ways in 2017 with Dunkirk, writer/director Christopher Nolan seems to be back on his cerebral shit. In fact, he seems to have gone right back to Inception, as his latest is another example of high-concept complexity wrapped up in the kind of mainstream bombast that has allowed Nolan a foot in both houses for so much of his career. While I’d argue, both for subjective and objective reasons, this doesn’t quite reach the same dizzying heights as Inception, I’d also argue that this film has more than enough of its own finesse to succeed.

The Burnt Orange Heresy (2020) - Movie Review

Looks like the déjà vu train is still in service, only now we’ve gone from things I’d much rather not fixate on to something actually worth remembering. Specifically, we’re dealing with a slice of art-world satire wrapped up in genre thrills, much like last year’s Velvet Buzzsaw. However, while the two carry a certain similarity in tone, their respective approaches to the art world are somewhat different. Where Buzzsaw was informed by the perspective of the artist and largely stayed with it, even when focusing on other characters, The Burnt Orange Heresy is more intently trained on the role of the art critic… and why it’s really not worth taking all that seriously.

Vita & Virginia (2020) - Movie Review

I have a certain… weakness for what I’m tentatively going to call ‘writer porn’. Not written pornography, but rather media that writers indulge in the same way the layman indulges in pornography. Stories about writers, what inspires them, what it means to put words down on paper, the… ecstasy of creation, all to make this rather self-obsessed profession seem like a higher calling. Or, at the very least, to reassure other writers that they do indeed answer to a higher calling. As someone who is too verbose for his own good, there’s always gonna be part of me that finds a certain excitement from films of this nature. And this particular film is no exception.

The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) - Movie Review

 

A lot of things have come to define the Cloverfield franchise: Ingeniously vague marketing, a tenuous connection to each other and including individual films that stand out so strongly on their own that it’s enough to make said tenuous connections feel like a total non-issue. It’s a loose-knit anthology series that, even with only two prior entries under its belt, has helped cemented producer J.J. Abrams as a cinematic figurehead. And then this film happened. Well, that winning streak had to break eventually.

Widows (2018) - Movie Review

The phrase "honour amongst thieves" pretty much serves as the underlying mood behind most if not all heist films. Most of their main drive comes portraying thievery as a competitive sport. And with the placement in the realms of sport comes the preceding fixation on technical skills and strategy, with all the intensive choreography and smooth-as-butter timing that goes with it. There’s also an underlying aspect of revenge, or at the very least retribution, attached to a lot of them, with the heist being the means to get even with someone who doesn’t play fair.

Breath (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: Younger surfers Pikelet (Samson Coulter) and Loonie (Ben Spence), always seeking the thrill of the waves, make a connection with older surfer Sando (Simon Baker) and his wife Eva (Elizabeth Debicki), who teach them the ways of the world and how, while it may be risky, some risks are worth taking.

Peter Rabbit (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: After the sudden death of farmer Joe McGregor (Sam Neill), Peter Rabbit (James Corden) and his woodland friends use the opportunity to take back the farmer's garden, and his house, for themselves. However, once news of the death reaches Joe's nephew Thomas (Domhnall Gleeson), he plans to fix up the house, secure the garden and, if necessary, get rid of any pests that try to sneak into either. As Peter and his friends try to fend off the new neighbour, and Thomas strikes up a friendship with Bea (Rose Byrne), who takes care of Peter and his extended family, both Peter and Thomas are hell-bent on winning this fight.

Macbeth (2015) - Movie Review

Shakespeare is far and away the most adapted writer in human history, which makes the prospect of reviewing one of the thousand films based on his work a little daunting. Not only that, as much as some scholars would eagerly wish to argue, the man’s work is full of notoriously intricate language that can prove rather difficult to read. As someone who has a serious habit of comparing films to each other, even when it isn’t called for, how am I to know whether or not the supposedly 'fresh' ideas presented in one adaptation haven’t already been made cornerstones of the work previously? Is there nearly enough time in the world for me to spool through every work just to be sure? Is it even worth me doing so in the first place? This is where I come face-to-face with the reason I started this blog in the first place: To learn. I have never made any pretence about my own knowledge involving the medium: Everything I claim to know about film, I have learnt in passing and I am by no means a definitive voice on anything except my own personal tastes and opinions.

So, with that unnaturally heavy introduction to another one of my typically idiosyncratic and scatterbrained analyses out of the way, time to get into today’s film.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015) - Movie Review

Well… This is going to be a weird follow-up to my last review. I mean, after a film that broke me that much, I could be watching anything today and it would be a vast improvement. Not only that, it was about as far away from my comfort zone that I've reached yet, even considering my old YouTube days, so going back to my standard formula after that is going to feel a bit off. Still, I don’t want to grind that gimmick into the ground just yet, so for now it’s business as usual. And with that, it’s time for a film remake of a classic 60’s spy TV show… and no, I’m talking about Mission: Impossible