Because Everybody Else Has One

I forgot to post last week's review but, as it turns out, these two films make for a very interesting double bill. Both reviews are on Channel 24 too. The Old Man and the Gun What it’s about  Forrest Tucker is a career bank robber who has spent most of his adult life in and out of prison – usually out, thanks to his uncanny ability to escape even the most notoriously impenetrable prisons – but when he falls for a woman named Jewel, his life of crime comes to a head. Can he stop doing the one thing he’s truly good at and can he do so before he is brought down by a persistent young cop who’s obsessed with his case? Based on a true story. What we thought The Old Man & the Gun has been reported to be Robert Redford’s final film and, though there might be something ironic about finishing such a momentous film career with so small and unassuming a swansong, it actually turned out to be a fairly fitting farewell. It is undoubtedly a very slow, very serene and ultimately ...

Another week, another bad mo- Wait, this one is actually good!  This review is also up on Channel 24 What it’s about The third remake of the 1930s classic, this modern retelling of a Star is Born tells the story of a troubled and ageing rock star, named Jackson “Jack” Maine, who finds a new lease on life when he discovers a promising young singer/songwriter, Ally, by accidentally and drunkenly stumbling into the drag bar where she has a regular spot covering other people’s songs. All it takes is one performance of La Vie En Rose and he is smitten. The two quickly fall in love, even as he discovers that she is in possession of a keen songwriting talent to match her knockout vocal skills and stage presence. Shortly after convincing her to join him on stage to sing some of her own songs, Ally is discovered by a music manager who puts her on a quick and dirty road to guaranteed pop-stardom. As her career sky-rockets, though, Jack is torn between his love for Ally and...

Not so much burnt as under-done. This review is also up at Chanel 24 What it's about A disgraced American chef, forced to leave Paris thanks to a destructive lifestyle of drugs and booze, sets out to redeem himself by being awarded the coveted “Michelin 3 stars” by becoming head chef of an old friend's respected restaurant. What we thought I'm not much of a foodie so excuse the cliched metaphor but, for all of its charms, Burnt is more hors d'oeuvre than entree. It's tasty enough and it's not badly prepared, but it ultimately leaves me hungry and wanting more. Much like the dainty gourmet dishes in the film itself, in fact. Bradley Cooper returns to a role not too dissimilar from one of his earlier performances as a chef in the short lived TV comedy, Kitchen Confidential, but he has obviously racked up quite the resume since. He is, as is now pretty typical for him, in good form here and he elevates some of the more mundane and wel...

Oh, how wrong things can go. This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about George Pemberton's thriving timber empire is threatened by the pressures of the Great Depression, but when he meets and marries the enigmatic Serena, things take a turn – but perhaps not in the ways he was expecting. What we thought Serena should really have been something special. Based on a beloved novel, it reunites the wonderful Jennifer Lawrence with her increasingly impressive Silver Linings Playbook co-star, Bradley Cooper, for a thematically rich and complex period-drama, directed by Susanne Bier, an Oscar-winning Danish filmmaker. And it is something special. As long as by “special” you mean a stunning and singular example of a calamity of a film that is infinitely less than the sum of its parts. Serena had absolutely everything going for it but the result is a disastrous mess and one of the year's most tedious, dirge-like and frankly badly told movies...

Judging by international box office reports, every person on earth has seen this already and have already formed their own opinions. Still, there was no way that I wasn't going to throw in my two cents, so here's my own take on what is easily the most unexpected Marvel hit of them all. Proving that the Marvel brand is all but indestructible, Guardians of the Galaxy made, in the U.S. alone, a whopping 94 million dollars on its opening weekend. Think about that for a moment. This isn't a film based on a well known comics property, nor is it one that has as its star an A-grade action hero or an even remotely commercial director at its helm. Instead - and all of its marketing has reflected this - it's an unabashedly bonkers space adventure with some seriously quirky anti-heroes at its centre, coated in several layers of cheese, a day-glo colour pallet and a gleefully now-obscure 1970s pop soundtrack. It's the kind of formula that makes Joss Whedon's brilliant b...

After a lazy holiday period, I have a whole lot of catching up to do. I am tempted just to do a quick roundup of mini reviews but it would be a great disservice to some of the great films that have come out over the last month. As such, I'm going to try and bash out as many reviews as I possibly can over the next couple of weeks, mixing both new releases and some relatively older films that are hopefully still on cinema. And if they're not, well, just consider these advance reviews of the inevitable DVD/ Blu-Ray release. At this point, it's all but impossible to tackle Silver Linings Playbook without putting it in the context of the deluge of Academy Awards nominations it has received. It's up for best film, best adapted screenplay, best director, best editing and, as the first film to do so in many a year, in all four acting categories. And yet, at the outset, it's hard to imagine, let alone believe, that Silver Linings has received this kind of attention a...