The Lost King (2022) - Movie Review

 

It’s been a while between drinks, but after a five-year gap since his last feature film, British director Stephen Frears is back in the cinema. Between 2015 and 2017, he came out with three films that I quite liked in The Program, Florence Foster Jenkins, and Victoria & Abdul, and as those were also my more formative years of trying to find my own voice as a critical writer, I’ve grown quite fond of the man’s style. And while I can certainly see what I liked back then still present today, there’s also a much more uneasy feeling attached to it this time around.

Spencer (2022) - Movie Review

Well, this should be interesting. Another biopic drama from the director of Jackie, a star turn from Kristen Stewart that has gotten her legit Oscar buzz for the first time in her career (I’d wouldn’t normally bother mentioning such things, but with how long she spent as a critical punching bag, it’s more than deserved by this point), and it’s written by the mental giant behind one of last year’s worst films in Locked Down, and 2019’s Best Worst Film in Serenity.

Oh.

Well, two out of three ain’t bad. (RIP Meat Loaf)

A Boy Called Christmas (2021) - Movie Review

I’ve encountered quite a few films like this over the lifespan of this blog. These family-friendly, secular-reason-for-the-season Christmas origin stories like Klaus and The Man Who Invented Christmas that, rather than just retell the Biblical genesis (heh) of the holiday, take a more contemporary approach that acknowledges that it’s not just the religious that celebrate this time of year.

And coming from these particular creatives, I’d lying if I said I was entirely hopeful that this could hold up alongside those other two classic efforts. This is directed and co-written by Gil Kenan, who is not only co-writer on the upcoming Ghostbusters: Afterlife, but who we last checked in on with the totally unnecessary remake of Poltergeist, and also co-written by Ol Parker of Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again fame. If nothing else, this should be make for some interesting write-up fodder.