Elvis (2022) - Movie Review

Baz Luhrmann. The Aussie king of camp. The Man from Showy River.

I don’t like Baz Luhrmann’s films.

His woeful adaptation of The Great Gatsby marks the first time I ever left a cinema actually angry at having wasted my time and money on a particular film. Romeo + Juliet was the first time a specific adaptation choice (the whole ‘Sword-branded guns’ thing) actively annoyed me. Australia was the first time I discovered how much test screenings can interfere with the creative process in rather peculiar ways (i.e. The Drover was originally meant to die, but test audiences didn’t want to see that happen to Hugh Jackman, so… that changed).

Yeah, he’s responsible for a lot of personal milestones, and none of them positive. The man’s insistence on absolute bombast constantly gets between him and whatever the hell point he thinks he’s making in his films, and even as someone who enjoys the patently ridiculous, Baz keeps testing my patience in just how loud he plays every aspect of his films.

But even with all of that in mind, one thing I have always maintained, alongside my utter contempt for the bulk of the man’s filmography (Australia and The Great Gatsby are easily on the shortlist for worst films I’ve ever seen, period), is that he is talented. He knows how to put a film together, he’s a properly unique voice in Australian cinema, and for as much as I personally can’t stand his work, I can at least understand why others would. Hell, I’ll even give him credit for Strictly Ballroom, which is a genuinely good film and something of a mission statement for Baz’s entire career to follow: Play to the crowds, don’t worry about the committees. It’s just that, with everything since Strictly Ballroom, that talent has been squandered on increasingly misguided and frequently exasperating storytelling decisions.

Suffice to say, I wasn’t really looking forward to his latest release. I may be growing more and more comfortable with lengthier films, but considering how much I just can’t with this guy to begin with, sitting down for a near-three hour presentation is one of those moments when this job of mine actually feels like work. Or, at least, that’s what I was expecting. In what is raring to be the biggest surprise of 2022 (pleasant ones, at least), this is the first Baz Luhrmann film I’ve genuinely enjoyed since Strictly Ballroom.

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.

Waves (2020) - Movie Review

Trey Edward Shults doesn’t do things small. His last film, the increasingly-relevant It Comes At Night, is one of the finest depictions of social isolation and paranoia of the entire 2010s, and that effect came about through a combination of lung-invading atmosphere and an uncanny eye for acting talent. And his latest is no different, pushing even further in visual ambition and emotional impact to make for one of the hardest hits of the year.

The High Note (2020) - Movie Review

Not even a full twelve months after landing on my Best Of 2019 list, director Nisha Ganatra has already delivered with another serving of industry comedy-drama, switching this time from world of professional comedy to a look at the music industry. While I could unfortunately argue that this isn’t as fiery, or even as funny, as Late Night (and of course, I will do exactly that in a bit), it’s still a solid feature that puts the ‘soul’ in ‘cinematic soul food’.

It Comes At Night (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: A mysterious contagion has reduced the world to a barren wasteland. Among the only known survivors are Paul (Joel Edgerton), his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo) and their son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), who have set up shelter in a secluded house in the woods. They soon come across Will (Christopher Abbott), his wife Kim (Riley Keough) and their son Andrew (Griffin Robert Faulkner), who stumble across the house and are soon invited in to share it. However, suspicions start to arise between the two families, with the constant fear of one of them being infected, some drastic measures may have to be taken.