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.

Alone In Berlin (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: When news reaches them that their son has died on the front line, German couple Otto (Brendan Gleeson) and Anna Quangel (Emma Thompson) begin to feel disillusioned with the Third Reich. Wanting to voice protest, but knowing full well what the consequences of that would be, Otto decides to rebel in a different way. He starts writing postcards, detailing how the Nazi regime doesn’t have their best interests at heart, and leaves them all over the city of Berlin. However, once police detector Escherich (Daniel Brühl) starts to find them and senses a pattern developing, Otto and Anna will have to think fast if they want to keep spreading their message to the people.

Live By Night (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: Joe Coughlin (Ben Affleck) is a gangster in Prohibition-era America. Against the wishes of his police captain father Thomas (Brendan Gleeson), he gets involved in a gang war brewing in Boston between the Irish Gang, led by Albert White (Robert Glenister), and the Italian Mafia, led by Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone). As he becomes more embroiled in criminal life, and opens himself up to doing some favours for Pescatore, he eventually gets given an opportunity in Tampa, Florida that he grabs with both hands. However, it seems that his days at the top are numbered, as a series of obstacles present themselves that may prove too difficult for the nicest gangster in town.

Hampstead (2017) - Movie Review

A few times now in my reviews, I have mentioned a few ‘sentient red flags’ that have shown up in some films; actors whose recent track records are so consistently underwhelming that merely seeing them attached to films is enough to make sceptical. Usually, I’ve attributed that label to certain Aussie actors like Jai Courtney and Teresa Palmer, both of whom have been attached to some rather troubling works over the last few years. Well, it is my unfortunate duty to include another actor to that list: Diane Keaton. Over the last couple years, her live-action filmography has ranged from the bland with a touch of mean-spiritedness with And So It Goes to the casually spiteful and rather distasteful with Love The Coopers. Will today’s film show a change in that pattern, or will I have to see another lauded actor fall through the cracks of modern cinema? This is Hampstead.

Suffragette (2015) - Movie Review

In The Heart Of The Sea (2015) - Movie Review

Moby Dick, much like The Great Gatsby and Homer’s Odyssey, is in the great pantheon of books that you must read before anyone takes you seriously as an adult human… apparently. More importantly, it’s also one of the few literary works that helped turn Khan Noonien Singh into an obsessed psychopath; reason enough to avoid it, I reckon. All the same, it’s in that canon with good reason, since the term “white whale” has become ingrained in the human lexicon and Captain Ahab has been made synonymous with any fictional character in the grips of deep obsession. As such, a film about the purported real-life story that inspired that famous tale is going to be worth at least a gander. Then again, in terms of films about the stories behind the myth, the director this time round doesn’t have the best track record. So, before he resumes work on his next Dan Brown adaptation, let’s look into Ron Howard’s latest epic.