Ambulance (2022) - Movie Review

Something weird has happened concerning Michael Bay’s reputation in recent years. After spending most of his career as a memetic punchline, the release of his last film 6 Underground seemed to spark a re-examination of his career against the larger Hollywood system. From what I’ve been able to gander, it seems that, in the wake of so much mainstream homogenisation of stories and even filmmakers, to the point where a lot of product can feel like grey mush shoved next to more grey mush, Michael Bay now feels like a breath of fresh air. There’s no mistaking his films for the work of anyone else, for better and for worse, and as an admitted auteurist, it is quite fascinating looking at this man’s body of work and seeing just how… fucking weird a lot of it is.

And I’ll admit it: I’ve taken part in that re-examination as well. After Pain & Gain showed flashes of a genuine talent underneath all the sensory extremes and bone-headed characterisation, and 6 Underground proving to be the most entertaining he’s been in ­years, I feel like I’ve also come around on the guy after spending quite a bit of my own time clowning on him. Some of that clowning is still justified, though, and the man is still on probation for his work on 2021’s crowning dumpster fire Songbird, but all the same, I found myself… looking forward to this movie?

Velvet Buzzsaw (2019) - Movie Review

After two very solid and quite grounded character pieces, the latest from writer/director Dan Gilroy is a beast of a different palette. Oh, it shows him still in his highly cynical wheelhouse, once again taking inspiration from the Los Angeles cultural landscape to show another story of people who are mainly in it for themselves, but his methodology this time around shows him in new territory.

Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) - Movie Review

Much like Ant-Man And The Wasp was for Infinity War, the latest big screen depiction of Spider-Man feels like exactly what Marvel needed after the culture shock that was Endgame. Just as much sci-fi tinged romantic comedy as it is superhero action bombast, Far From Home finds director Jon Watts and writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers still mining gold out of the juxtaposition of superhero life and ordinary high school life.

Okja (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: For the past ten years, South Korean girl Mija (Ahn Seo-hyun) has looked after Okja, a “super-pig” that is one of 26 specimens sent out by the Mirando Corporation to different farmers all over the world. However, when Mirando CEO Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton) takes Okja away to take part in a competition in New York, Okja finds herself in the middle of an open battle between Mirando and a group of animal rights activists led by Jay (Paul Dano) as to what Okja, and the other super-pigs like her, will become.

Life (2017) - Movie Review

Just as time loop narratives are currently reaching the point of potential oversaturation, it seems that the same can be said for films involving isolation in space. The Martian, Approaching The Unknown, Star Trek Beyond to a certain extent, even Passengers from earlier this year; we’re certainly not want for stories about how the vastness of space can make the average human feel infinitesimally small. However, as I’ve been making a habit of saying over the last few reviews, preconceptions like “Ugh, another space movie? This is gonna suck.” are made to be broken. Of course, bear in mind that another preconception I had with this film is “With these people attached to it, please don’t suck” so you can see the weird place I’m in before I even watch the bloody thing. So, is this going to fall into the cracks of the sub-genre or is it going to make itself stand out (hopefully, for the right reasons)?

Demolition (2016) - Movie Review

Nocturnal Animals (2016) - Movie Review

When it comes to the divide between mainstream blockbusters and arthouse features, the key difference I’ve found between them is how the audience... digests them, as it were. With mainstream films, they are designed to be enjoyed in the moment in a rather visceral fashion; this would explain why smaller release action films aren’t referred to as “arthouse” and instead as “straight-to-DVD”. Art films, like most other instances of Art with a capital A, largely exist for the sake of contemplation after the fact. The usually deeper subtexts and more intricate cinematic techniques stimulate further discussion after the fact, looking into the greater context of the work rather than instant gratification. Now, there is no singular ‘right’ way to make films and, when done right, both of these styles can lead to great works of cinema. However, of the two examples, I find myself being more hesitant when it comes to art films. After getting through today’s film, hopefully I’ll be able to explain why that is.

Accidental Love (2015) - Movie Review

Oh, how I have waited for this day… much like how I await the day I get castrated. Today is the day that I look at a film that has been disowned by its director. Not that this is anything new in Hollywood; google the name “Alan Smithee” and you’ll get an idea of how prevalent this is. However, what makes me so hesitant to look at this is for two big reasons: One of them being that disowning a project usually happens as a result of excessive interference/displeasure with said project, meaning that the end result more likely than not is going to suck. The other reason is that the disgruntled filmmaker in question today is David O. Russell, recent Oscar idol and a man who I wholeheartedly trust to deliver emotionally resonant, if sometimes incoherent, cinema. The man has a knack for delivering amazing work from rather unorthodox subject matter when left to his own devices. In other words, he’s pretty much one of the last people that should be brought under the fire of studio interference.

Everest (2015) - Movie Review

Way back when, long before YouTube put Andy Warhol’s words to their most logical extreme, great feats of physical endurance were usually carried out with some reward of societal achievement backing it: Swimming unfathomably long stretches of water, navigating ungodly deserts and scaling unimaginably high mountains; history has put a lot of weight behind the people who did these things first. Now, humanity seems to have stopped caring as much about discovering new frontiers to conquer (on Earth, at least) and now want to share the experience as much as possible. It could be argued that this idea of hosting events where these previously-superhuman feats are available to the everyman cheapen the challenge of the event itself, but there is a feeling of bringing the world closer together through collective experience that gives it some urgency. This is why the idea of scaling Mt. Everest, barring my own aversion to physical exercise, is weirdly appealing despite the very clear danger involved. Something tells me that the idea is going to be substantially less appealing after sitting through today’s subject.

Southpaw (2015) - Movie Review

Jake Gyllenhaal might be one of the last few ‘actor’s actors’ still working today that hasn’t become dulled with age. Between his obsessed cartoonist in Zodiac, his bubbling-under-the-surface detective in Prisoners and his complete psychotic in Nightcrawler, he has proven time and again that he throws everything he has into the roles he’s given. Well, save for The Day After Tomorrow, but barely anyone survives an encounter with Roland Emmerich and has a career left to tell about it. So, one look at Gyllenhaal’s scrawny visage in Nightcrawler to the gritty muscle he’s packed on for today’s film gives hope that this will be much the same.

Nightcrawler (2014) - Movie Review

Directorial debuts are kind of a bizarre thing to see happen in real time. Sure, looking at films like Alien 3 or The Pleasure Garden can be interesting considering what their respective directors David Fincher and Alfred Hitchcock would go on to make, but that’s only because of the gift of hindsight and knowing that they did go on to make more movies and become regarded as great directors. It’s another thing to see a directorial debut and it being the only thing to go on: It could be a great film and then the director drops off of the radar; it could be awful and yet the director goes on to make even more like it; or any happy medium between the two. A recent example of this going right would be Chronicle, an excellent found footage movie (Yes, those exist) whose director Josh Trank is currently working on the new Fantastic Four movie. Will we get such a success story with this?