Colette (2018) - Movie Review

 

One of the better reasons for the continued existence of period dramas is that, in a historical sense, it can help brings modern-day issues into perspective. There’s only so much clamouring about "it’s just a trend" or "yeah, now you care about all this" when it comes to any social issue before it becomes quite grating to have to rebut over and over again. Since cinema is a great tool when it comes to information, and global history has all sorts of little nuggets that the world could use some reminders of, it can make for some rather revelatory moments. Like this film, the latest from writer/director Wash Westmoreland about a pioneering French writer and her struggle for recognition.

The Nutcracker And The Four Realms (2018) - Movie Review

  

After the snafu regarding the changing of directors in Bohemian Rhapsody, I thought that’d be it for this year. I thought I’d be able to get through this month without having to revisit that concept, or more specifically how too many cooks in the kitchen can turn in a mess of a meal. Then I saw this movie, and saw that possibility fully realised.

Collateral Beauty (2017) - Movie Review

Every couple of years, Will Smith looks at an empty place on his mantle and decides that he wants to fill that space with an Oscar. With that in mind, he goes into full-blown Oscar bait mode and stars in a vehicle meant to give him that acclaim. Unfortunately, up until this point, it hasn’t worked out for him yet. He’s gotten a couple of nominations for Best Actor, most recently in 2006 with The Pursuit Of Happiness, but he has yet to win one. Given the whole media furore over Leonardo DiCaprio’s similar position until his inevitable win for The Revenant, I don’t hold much stock in this need for this particular brand of validation, but nevertheless, he ends up bringing this side of himself to the screen every so often… with very little success, even ignoring the obvious intent behind it all.

I personally have a liking for some of his works in this style, like Seven Pounds and even last year’s Concussion, but there’s a very deliberate and manipulative air to most of them that ultimately make them fall short of their lofty ambitions. Then again, this is something that befalls an awful lot of Oscar hopefuls: They spend so much time trying to tap into some form of emotional complexity that the Academy loves so much, but they don’t spend enough taking a step back and realizing how those emotions are being presented to us and how insensitive it can get. And oh boy, nothing in recent memory embodies the term “insensitive” quite like today’s film.

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.

The Imitation Game (2014) - Movie Review

Looks like it’s typecast time again, this time turning our spotlight on Benedict Cumberbatch. He's made a real name for himself in the last few years playing neurotic and narcissistic geniuses both fictional (the titular detective in Sherlock) and non-fictional (Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate). In fact, Cumberbatch is getting so close to absolute overexposure that he might as well be called Rule 63 Jennifer Lawrence at this rate. However, also like Lawrence, his performances in films are pretty much guaranteed to be good even if he isn’t always in the best films (August: Osage County, The Fifth Estate, Star Trek: Into Darkness depending on who you ask) so I’m not in a good enough position to complain about that. What do we get with today’s film? Time to find out: This is The Imitation Game.