Cyrano (2022) - Movie Review

Well, Universal sent me to another preview screening, and even though I have some… uncomfortable history with the director behind this particular feature, I’ll admit that I was actually quite hopeful that this would turn out good. The last three write-ups I’ve done on the works of Joe Wright have been, in a word, disastrous. Pan and The Woman In The Window are so amazingly bad that they almost reach genius from the other side, and Darkest Hour ultimately didn’t pan out because it came out too soon after the similar (and superior, at least to me) feature Churchill.

But over time, I’ve at least made peace with the fact that these films exist, as the bread of that turd sandwich is the result of Joe Wright trying to work outside of the classically-minded, accessibly-presented, ‘ideal for high school classes studying the original text’ framework that made up the bulk of his filmography pre-Pan. They were failed experiments, but experiments nonetheless, and as soon as the trailer for his latest reached my attention, I was hoping he’d make a comeback by reminding audiences why his debut with Pride & Prejudice made as big a splash as it did: The man is talented, if given the right story to work with.

The Woman In The Window (2021) - Movie Review

There’s something… refreshing about this movie, and I mean that in the worst way possible. Where other films usually take time for the flaws within to really present themselves, The Woman In The Window almost seems eager to get it all out in the open within the first five minutes. As Bruno Delbonnel’s camera work glides across the house of Amy Adams’ Anna, a child psychologist with agoraphobia, it lingers on a TV set playing a stuttering slideshow of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. With how much older cinema gets shown throughout, including a few more Hitchcock efforts, it gives this inexorable feeling that I’m watching the result of someone who’s been stuck inside for months with nothing but black-and-white flicks for company, and decided to write a screenplay because they need something, anything, to alleviate the cabin fever.

Of course, the actual genesis of this story is far more complicated than that, to the point where it could take up the bulk of this review all on its own (here’s a beat-by-beat breakdown of the author done by the New Yorker a couple years ago), but that impression still lingers regardless. Not that this is the first modern film to crib heavily from Rear Window, but this is a weirdly straight-forward example of such, as if it’s trying to pre-empt critics and general audiences pointing out such things. Then again, that ranks fairly low on my list of priorities with this particular flick. I am far less sceptical of a story being retold than I am of it being retold well. And to be brutally honest, this isn’t Rear Window. Or Disturbia. Or even Bart Of Darkness. This film wishes it could reach that level of genuine quality.

Darkest Hour (2018) - Movie Review

 

The plot: After the resignation of the then-current British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup), Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman) is chosen to take his place. As he settles into his higher position, and tries to deal with his own parliament's apprehension about his policies, it seems that he will have to deal with more than just the approaching Nazi forces if he wants to see Great Britain survive this war.

Pan (2015) - Movie Review

In today’s day and age that everyone likes to think is where the practice of rampant recycling of media to create movies started, said recycling can take different forms. One of these is the oh-so-awesome prequel, easily the least successful of all of them. I mean, when online lists of the ‘best’ film prequels frequently bring up Star Wars, you know that the standards for quality aren’t exactly high amongst this pedigree. An offspring of this is the origin story, a film based around a beloved franchise character and how they became the one that we love to this day. Of course, once again, recent examples of this aren’t too promising: X-Men Origins Wolverine managed to ruin the reputation of more than just the title character, Dumb And Dumberer was about as pointless as you can get and Maleficent, while I personally liked it, was a major flop with critics and audiences. Hell, bring up the words ‘horror movie prequel’ in a crowded room and someone is bound to re-enact one of them using you as the victim; some people take this stuff a little too seriously. With all this in mind, ever since today’s film was announced as an origin story for that legendary Lost Boy Peter Pan, I was immediately sceptical (A shocking development, I know) about how well it would work out. And then I actually saw the thing… oh boy.