Lucky Day (2020) - Movie Review

Time for a step into genre weirdness as we look at what can only be described as the closest we’ll ever get to an ‘official’ Tarantino knock-off. Writer/director Roger Avary worked quite closely with Tarantino himself in the ‘90s, doing both credited and uncredited work on Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and even Tarantino’s writer-only gigs with True Romance and Natural Born Killers. With Tarantino seemingly hitting the twilight of his career, given his latest felt like a loving goodbye letter to the medium he adores, I’d argue that there might be some use out of a production like this as a further testament to that legacy. But that’s not the result we get, though.

Astro Kid (2020) - Movie Review

 

From the writers and producers of the bizarre talking animal superhero movie The Jungle Bunch, this film is the latest from French studio TAT Productions, which is dangerously close to outright saying “This was made by garbage”. Originally named Terra Willy (renamed because I’m assuming they didn’t want parents to think this featured grisly emasculation), it’s about a boy who gets stranded on an alien planet and, with the help of his robot Buck, tries to survive long enough to get rescued.

Proxima (2020) - Movie Review

 

While the last several years have shown a growth in the sub-genre of psychologically-tinged space operas, where the mental effects of space travel have been examined to largely enthralling effect in films like The Martian, a relatively smaller sub-sub-genre has grown alongside it, that of the parental astronaut. Films like Interstellar that highlight the difficulty in disconnecting from our little blue marble through showing one of the strongest relationships we are capable of, that being the one between a parent and their child. And this French offering from writer/director Alice Winocour looks to be another in that trend.

Spycies (2020) - Movie Review

Oh look, another decent animated film that got shafted by terrible marketing. Only this example might be even worse than Red Shoes And The Seven Dwarfs, as the slip-up here is… well, you can see the title; it doesn’t get any more obvious than that. And I’ll admit, my initial interest in this movie came out of wanting to find the story behind what is easily the worst pun title I have ever seen. But, like I said, I’m not here to rag on yet another dreadful talking animal movie. Instead, I’m here to highlight a surprisingly solid feature.

SamSam (2020) - Movie Review

Some family films are better described as kids’ films, as they usually end up entertaining the kids but making their chaperones wish they were doing anything else. Some kids’ films are better described as family films, as they manage to give just as much entertainment value for the adults as it does for the kids (sometimes more so for the adults). This film somehow falls right down the middle of those two: It’s an animated film most definitely made for kids, one I can easily see being engaging for little’ins, but is rather inoffensive for adults. Not entertaining, just… inoffensive. And that’s not from lack of trying, just to make things more bizarre.

Non-Fiction (2020) - Movie Review

After co-writing a film with Roman Polanski (what’s the French word for ‘oof’?), writer/director Olivier Assayas has returned to his French-language roots with a look at the modern-day publishing industry. Yes, this means that we’re still in ‘writer porn’ mode from the last review, although I’d argue that this makes for something far more substantive than Vita & Virginia. The reason why I specified ‘porn’ to describe it is that it functions in a similar fashion; art it may be, but substantial it is not. Where that film ultimately faffed around with flowery prose, making half-statements about the worth of such wording but never really getting to the heart of anything, this film goes beyond just the philosophy of writing: It’s also about the logistics of writing in the Internet age.

Portrait Of A Lady On Fire (2019) - Movie Review

Sometimes, the best pieces of art are the ones that keep things simple. Sure, I take great pleasure in watching and analysing films that have a lot going on, giving me ample opportunities to look at all the little pieces of the production and story and seeing how they all fit together. However, what can easily result from trying to aim for many things at once is missing all of them. Keeping a story’s scope narrower means that the filmmakers are able to focus on a singular notion, building on it so that it supports the entire production all on its own without the added garnish. I don’t usually vibe with films that are this low-key, but then again, not every low-key film I’ve reviewed is as stone-cold brilliant as this little number is.

The Night Eats The World (2019) - Movie Review

I’ve gone on record a few times in previous reviews that I have a serious weakness for zombie movies. Far as I’m concerned, the weirder, the stupider, the more outright insane, the better. And yet, with how much I’ve delved into my love for this sub-genre, one question still seems to elude me: Why? Why is it this specific brand of genre cinema that sticks to my heart the easiest? I could just chalk it up to nostalgia for Planet Terror, the film that made me realise I loved film at large, let alone zombie films, but that still doesn’t seem to fit. I bring all this up because today’s entry in the genre makes for a distinct diversion from the norm… and honestly, it helped me finally pin down why I love this genre so damn much.

The Jungle Bunch (2018) - Movie Review

 

The plot: After encountering the jungle hero squad The Champs, maniacal koala Igor (Keith Silverstein) is left stuck on a desert island. In his absence, the Champs Natacha the tigress (Dorothy Fahn), Tony the sloth (Kaiji Tang) and Goliath the rhino (Richard Epcar) decide to retire with Natacha and Tony taking care of the penguin cub Maurice. However, years later, it seems that Igor has returned to seek revenge. This time, it’s up to a now grown-up Maurice the tiger penguin (Kirk Thornton) and his own hero team, The Jungle Bunch, to stop Igor before he destroys the jungle.

Raw (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: Justine (Garance Marillier) is a lifelong vegetarian who has just started her schooling at a veterinarian college. However, during the hazing process, she is given her first taste of meat. As her stint at the college continues, she discovers that she has developed a real liking for flesh… and it’s not animals that she is hungry for.

Ballerina (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: In 19^th century France, orphan girl Félicie (Elle Fanning) hopes to escape the orphanage and go to Paris to become a ballerina. With the help of her best friend and hopeful inventor Victor (Dane DeHaan), they makes their way to Paris. As they chase their respective dreams, with Félicie accepting help from Odette (Carly Rae Jepson), a caretaker at the Paris Opera Ballet school, she finds herself fighting against rival dancer Camille (Maddie Ziegler) and her mother Regine (Julie Khaner) to keep her dream alive.

Marguerite (2016) - Movie Review

As I mentioned earlier this month, if an incredibly niche idea is worth making into a movie, might as well make it two. After sitting through Florence Foster Jenkins, and genuinely being quite impressed with the thing, discovering another film based on the same extraordinary person was rather intriguing. Rather than sticking to the real-life events of the tuneless songbird, this French outing instead touts to be inspired by those events and going in its own narrative direction. So, without automatically seeing fault in diverting from actual events (or it very well could be accurate and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference), how does this altered take on the idea turn out?

The Red Turtle (2016) - Movie Review

I’m not going to say that, back when I reviewed When Marnie Was There, I called it when I said that Studio Ghibli shutting down just wasn’t going to happen… not yet, at any rate. And it seems that that wound up being accurate, between Miyazaki himself announcing that he was working on one last film and the film I’m talking about today. However, the need to voice that is outweighed by the basic gratitude I have that one of the true titans of the industry is still going. With companies like nWave and Splash Entertainment showing us in this year alone that they were capable of producing absolute garbage to our screens, that thought is invaluable to someone who compulsively watches as many films as I do. So, with that out of the way, how does this Ghibli and French animation collaboration turn out?

Mommy (2015) - Movie Review

Everyone, to some degree, has a mental disorder that either has been dialed down and given a populace-friendly acronym or is undiagnosed but still more common than the person in question may realise. I myself have been handed a series of diagnoses over my lifetime, and may still have some waiting in the wings, but it’s not exactly something I treat that seriously. My thoughts about the debates going on about people on the autistic spectrum (which encompasses a metric crap-ton of labels) is along the same lines as my attitude to the ongoing LGBTQ debates: Admitting to such things isn’t automatically brave. It is rather unnerving that we live in a society where openly saying that you are one thing or another is something to be commended for, rather than just being a mundane part of the human experience. I come from a family that is very pro-autism awareness since my own diagnosis, and even though I applaud their enthusiasm on the subject, there’s only so many articles being shared on Facebook about who is and who isn’t an Aspie that I can take. Then films like this come along and remind me that, as much as I like to think otherwise, some people still need serious education on the subject.

Far From Men (2015) - Movie Review

In the world of film criticism, or at least how I perceive it, there are very few things that scream pretension as loudly to me as the phrase "French Film Festival". Sure, it may just be the still-lingering stereotype of what film snobs prefer to watch that I find myself clinging to, but there’s also the fact that I have little to no patience for pretence as my hatred for Terrence Malick and the Annie remake will show. However, there are always exceptions to arbitrarily written rules and I found myself going to a film that was screening for a French Film Festival in my area (Incidently, in the same cinema where I’ve gone to five interactive screenings of The Room). This is because I saw that Nick Cave did the soundtrack for it alongside Bad Seeds bandmate Warren Ellis. So, out of love for not only the man’s music but also 20,000 Days On Earth, I decided to give it a go.