The Comeback Trail (2020) - Movie Review

How’s this for justifying a remake: It’s impossible to get a copy of the original.

Okay, not impossible, but in attempting to do background work for this new feature, I failed to find a way to watch the 1982 Harry Hurwitz original, legally or otherwise. And judging by the numbers onLetterboxd, I’m not the onlyone having trouble getting this thing. I’d make a joke about this being a literal ‘it’s better than nothing’ situation… but honestly, I’m a bit torn on that notion.

Under The Silver Lake (2019) - Movie Review

The latest from It Follows writer/director David Robert Mitchell is… a tough one. Like, this is the kind of film designed to be looked at over the course of several months just to figure out what in the fresh hell is even going on. It’s a puzzle film, and like the best of its kind, all of the pieces are presented to the audience, even if it isn’t entirely obvious that what is being shown is part of the completed picture. After having to admit to my previous critical shortcomings a few times already this past month, I’m in the mood for some serious deep diving, so if the following review comes across like the desperate scribbles of a madman, not only is that likely accurate, it’s also fitting for the film itself to be analysed in this way.

Nerdland (2017) - Movie Review

Already this year, I have gone into detail on my favourite director and my favourite actor. Well, considering how I exist as a series of words on a page, it only fits to reason that I would eventually get to my favourite screenwriter. And chances are, even if you don’t know the specific name, you have seen his work before. Ladies and gentlemen and others, may I present the one, the only, Andrew Kevin Walker.

 

As a writer, the man doesn’t just create stories; he creates breathing universes for them to inhabit. His best-known work as the writer of David Fincher’s Se7en had him give so much detail to an unnamed city that it became a character in its own right, one whose soul had to be fought for by the characters. No other writer that I have come across has shown such prowess at world-building and story detail, always being able to scratch that particular itch for me.

 

Naturally, with all this in mind, I’ve been keeping an ear out for when his latest film would become available over here in Australia; dude’s been quiet for a few years now and, even though films like John Wick have served well along the same lines of narrative dimension, I need my AKW fix. So, how does his latest venture turn out?

La La Land (2016) - Movie Review

The movie musical is dead. Or, at least, the original concept of the movie musical is dead. Starting out as a natural extension of film’s stylistic origins in theatre, it was full of big grins and bigger dance numbers about the ways of life and love. And then we started to get inventive with the format, using it less as a means of showing the fantastical nature of the musical and more to highlight it as a heavy contrast to the harshness of reality. Through this, we’ve gotten some proper quality musical films as Sweeney Todd, Repo! The Genetic Opera, Hedwig And The Angry Inch, Reefer Madness and a bunch of others that wouldn’t even be conceivable as viable musicals back in the old days. Now, as much as this evolution of the format has honestly worked out for the best all things considered, maybe a bit of revivalism could help keep everything in perspective. And thanks to rising star filmmaker Damian Chazelle, it seems that we have just that for today.

Hail, Caesar! (2016) - Movie Review

I have a bit of a hot and cold relationship with the Coen brothers. While their approach to crime stories is definitely commendable and they’re responsible for one of my all-time favourite films with The Big Lebowski, the majority of their work doesn’t elicit that much more than shrug from yours truly. Hell, their 2013 penned effort Gambit was ultimately so unengaging that I couldn’t even come up with a full review for the thing. Although, in the interest of fairness, that film was also riddled with production troubles and most of their actual script ended up being rewritten. Still, even with all this in mind, I can't help but admit to their obvious skill behind the camera as well as their aptitude for scripting. Considering that, even if today’s film doesn’t work out too well, it will at least show more effort than an awful lot of films released in the last two months. How much more effort, however, is the big question.

Entourage (2015) - Movie Review

Some days, I just don’t like doing intros for these reviews. I make it a point of trying to make these intros have some point beyond just opening each review like discussing certain topics like film trends or giving backstory on the creative teams behind certain works. However, given what’s on the chopping block this time around, I get the feeling that I would just end up trying to type out a weird abstraction that, when read aloud, would approximate the sound of a cat being crushed by a meteor so as to simulate the experience of how unpleasant it is to recollect this thing. But even then, such an image could at least make for something funny with the right emphasis or caption added to it, and this film and ‘funny’ are barely on speaking terms with each other. Time to get into the review before this ramble keeps going, even though it allows me to put off talking about this thing for a bit longer and my, the sky outside my bedroom window is probably the clearest I’ve… dammit.