Thirteen Lives (2022) - Movie Review

I was initially planning to just skip this one entirely. After how badly Hillbilly Elegy turned out, I didn’t want to run the risk of Ron Howard screwing the pooch on a story that is far more important than the humble brag come-up of a venture capitalist. I even raised this same issue with fellow critic and top bloke Travis Johnson over at Celluloid & Whiskey, who understood my apprehension but suggested I still check it out. I’ve been to many a screening with this guy, and he knows his shit, so I figured it was worth giving a burl. And man, am I glad I did, because this is some of Howard’s best narrative work in ages.

Hillbilly Elegy (2020) - Movie Review

Ron Howard didn’t have a particularly good 2010s. Sure, Rush turned out pretty well, and his Beatles documentary was fantastic, but for the most part, his narrative films were mixed at best. The Dilemma was a tonal nightmare, In The Heart Of The Sea was entirely forgettable, Inferno made for a crappy finale to an already-mockable trilogy, and Solo… well, it was fun for what it was, but in hindsight, it’s also an example of just how non-essential Disney-era Star Wars has turned out. Whenever Howard’s movies succeeded, it was largely down to his talent for visuals managing to overcome the writing problems, and even then, that didn’t always work out. So what happens when Ron Howard makes a down-to-earth drama that doesn’t allow him to tap into his sense for panoramic grandeur? You get one of his worst-ever features.

Inferno (2016) - Movie Review

Growing up as I did when the big debacle concerning The Da Vinci Code made headlines, I’ve probably got the same mental association with Dan Brown films as the rest of the world: Convoluted mystery stories justified by a business-casual approach to history. Of course, I’ve spent the years since first watching Da Vinci and Angels & Demons playing a lot of Assassin’s Creed, so fidelity to history and genuine science clearly isn’t an entertainment factor for me… most days, at least. As such, I don’t take as much issue with these films as the general consensus. Sure, they fall into some pretty illogical pitfalls with alarming regularity, and main character Robert Langdon can shift erratically from smartest man in the room to worst investigator ever, but as a couple of potboiler mystery thrillers, they serve their purpose. Yes, I realise how long I’ve spent lambasting Akiva Goldsman’s work, but the Dan Brown adaptations are easily some of his most tolerable contributions. Since Akiva has stepped away from the typewriter for this one, there’s nowhere to go but up for this series… maybe?

The Beatles: Eight Days A Week - The Touring Years (2016) - Movie Review

Is it even humanly possible to overstate the legacy of the Beatles? I mean, when it comes to famous musical groups, they are pretty much the golden standard by which virtually everything else is measured. Aside from setting the blueprint for every single boy band that would come after them, whether they qualified as an actual band or not, their live shows gave the world its first real taste of what Lisztomania can do to people, re: hospitalising many unfortunate teenage female fans. Outside of surface reactions, their song catalogue contains heavy volumes of songs that have permanently ingrained themselves in the public consciousness along with albums that are instantly pointed whenever the subject of "greatest albums ever" is brought up.

With a band this ubiquitous and a pedigree this immense, one would be likely to think that doing a documentary on these guys after all this time would be a tad redundant. However, considering new and interesting titbits are being uncovered as recently as 2011, when fan documentary Beatles Stories uncovered that John Lennon may not be as liberal as his demeanour and discography may have led people to believe, maybe there’s still some water left in the well. Since this particular feature was made by Ron Howard, who later on in the year will give another example of historical ignorance with the latest and hopefully last of the Dan Brown adaptations, this film has pretty much gathered all of the expectations, conflicting and all. So, how does it measure up?

In The Heart Of The Sea (2015) - Movie Review

Moby Dick, much like The Great Gatsby and Homer’s Odyssey, is in the great pantheon of books that you must read before anyone takes you seriously as an adult human… apparently. More importantly, it’s also one of the few literary works that helped turn Khan Noonien Singh into an obsessed psychopath; reason enough to avoid it, I reckon. All the same, it’s in that canon with good reason, since the term “white whale” has become ingrained in the human lexicon and Captain Ahab has been made synonymous with any fictional character in the grips of deep obsession. As such, a film about the purported real-life story that inspired that famous tale is going to be worth at least a gander. Then again, in terms of films about the stories behind the myth, the director this time round doesn’t have the best track record. So, before he resumes work on his next Dan Brown adaptation, let’s look into Ron Howard’s latest epic.