Tag Archives: Drama

Movie Review – Nerve

Posted on by
2

TL;DR – Nerve is an ambitious film that gets a lot of credit for tackling one of the big problems of the Internet, its mob mentality, but it doesn’t quite stick the landing

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Nerve. Image Credit: Lionsgate.

Review –

Nerve as a film is sort of a first, well at least for me it is, as it is the first mainstream film I have seen that really attempts to address the rise of the YouTube celebrity, the Social Media star, the Internet Mob, and the clear problems that come from displaying your lives online for all to see. However, unlike other attempts to engage in this topic which come off as either old people making a film, they think young people will like or indeed, the moralising ‘lazy silly millennials have it too easy’, Nerve is trying to engage with these important issues, but not in a condescending way.

Continue reading →

TV Review – Stranger Things

Posted on by
10

TL;DR –  Engaging, Emotional, Tense, and about the most 80s thing you could ever watch, but boy should you ever watch it.

Score – 4.5/5 Stars

Stranger Things. Image Credit: Netflix.

Review –

Stranger Things is a weirdly wonderful TV show, it is a complex web of 80s references, homages to films of that era, and call backs to the classics of the horror genre. All of that could have been done as a ham-fisted cash grab, banking on nostalgia over substance, *cough* Transformers *cough*, instead it is a well-crafted story with real talent, both in front and behind the camera, that draws you in at every moment. Now as I am reviewing the entire season at once there will undoubtedly be spoilers ahead, so if you have not seen Stranger Things yet, beware, and maybe come back once you have watched it.

Continue reading →

TV Review – Cleverman Season 1

Posted on by
7

TL;DR –  Cleverman is revolutionary TV show in many ways, its freshman season was a powerful work of cinema, though not a perfect one.

Score – 4 out of 5 Stars

Review –

For those who have not seen the show yet, and you should go fix that, Cleverman is the story of Australia in the not too distant future. Where we lock people up just because they are different or because it is politically convenient for the government to shift the blame on to them, where people have to shed aspects of their cultural identity to try and protect themselves from harm just because they are perceived as being different, and where the government can use the catch-all excuse of ‘national security’ to hide things from the population and to deflect condemnation of the international system. So you know it’s clear that this is fiction because that would never happen in modern Australia…  To do my overview of the first season of the series I am probably going to spoil a couple of things, so you have been warned now to only proceed if you have watched the show.

Continue reading →

Movie Review – The Nice Guys

Posted on by
7

TL;DR – A pretty solid buddy/cop film, not something I have seen in a while, it does have a lot of style, but it hasn’t quite got the substance to go along with it.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

The Nice Guys. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Review –

This is an interesting film in that it is a good old fashioned buddy/cop film, and it has been a while since I have seen a good one, yes I am looking at you Bastille Day, in fact it is a genre that you just don’t see that often anymore, which is a pity because while it can be very cliché, when done well it is a lot of fun to watch.

Continue reading →

Movie Review – Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Posted on by
2

TL;DR – This is a film I should not like because it has many of the problems that usually frustrate me, but somehow it charmed me, and in the end I have to say I really liked Whisky Tango Foxtrot.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Image Credit: Paramount.

Review –

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a really interesting film for a number of reasons, it has Tina Fey in her first real attempt to move into more dramatic roles, it is dealing with the aftermath of the War in Afghanistan post-Iraq when everyone forgot about it, it is analysing the culture that gets created in such a weird situation of extremes, and also because it engages in so many of the things that I dislike in films yet I still really like it for some reason.

Continue reading →

Movie Review – My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

Posted on by
1

TL;DR – This film has a truly terrible first impression but it grows on you with a good story and amusing characters

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. Image Credit: Universal.

Review –

The first My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a sleeper hit back in 2002 and succeeded because it had a lot of charm, and it was quite different than a lot of the films of that time. So it has been 14 years since the first film so was the sequel worth the wait or do we have another Zoolander 2 on our hands, well, it’s complicated.

Continue reading →

Movie Review – Hail Caesar

Posted on by
2

TL;DR – Hail Caesar is an interesting film, with a lot going on, but that is much of the problem, its scattershot nature means the film lacks real substance, but it still has a lot of spectacle to make up for it.

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

Hail Caesar. Image Credit: Universal.

Review –

This is an interesting film, but it is also a very flawed film and that makes it quite difficult to review, or at least score. There are some really interesting ideas at play here, and there are also some amazingly wonderful set pieces throughout which are a joy to watch. However, it is trying to do so much, that it just can’t do any of the ideas justice, so it just feels like a scattershot of a film, which is a bit a disappointment.

Continue reading →

Movie Review – Three Wise Cousins

Posted on by
4

TL;DR – It is a film that treads over very familiar ground, the ‘fish out of water’ scenario, however, it has a sense of humour and identity that elevates it above many of its contemporaries.

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

Three Wise Cousins. Image Credit: Madman.

Review –

This is an interesting little film, I didn’t really know anything about it going in and had not seen a single trailer, so I was intrigued to see how it would end up. Three Wise Cousins tells the story of Adam (Neil Amituanai) who lives in suburban Auckland with his parents and is doing pretty much nothing other than playing his PlayStation and sleep. One day he stumbles across the woman of his dreams Mary (Gloria Ofa Blake) and overhears that she is only interested in island boys. So Adam decides to drop everything and visit his cousins Tavita (Fesuiai Viliamu) and Mose (Vito Vito) in Samoa to learn how to be an island boy so he can impress Mary. Of course, once Adam gets there he finds out it is more than he bargained on as Mose and Tavita play a kind of good cop, bad cop, to get Adam to … well then that is the crux of the film so I won’t spoil it here.

Continue reading →

Movie Review – Spotlight

Posted on by
2

TL;DR – This is a real life story that needed to be told, of scumbags who hurt children and them covered it up, I just wish it had been done a bit better.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Spotlight. Image Credit: Open Road Films.

Review –

Spotlight is the real life story of the Spotlight team of The Boston Globe. This is a team of investigative journalists who pick their own stories to investigate, sometimes spending years researching their cases. In early 2001 after some prompting, they start looking into the Catholic Church in the Boston area and how they handled sexual abuse cases. Here they discover that it is not just a couple of bad apples and that it is a much bigger problem, one the Church knew about and one they covered up.

Continue reading →

Movie Review – The Revenant

Posted on by
7

TL;DR – Bleak but Beautiful, Though provoking but brutal, Heart-wrenching but uplifting, One of the most visually stunning films I have ever seen but one I don’t think I ever want to watch again

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

The Revenant. Image Credit: 20th Century Fox.

Review –

Wow, the first movie for the year and boy is this an amazing work of art, this is a movie that is at times hauntingly beautiful and at other times horrifically brutal, this is not a film to take your children to, there are vivid violence and some very disturbing scenes. The Revenant is fictional retelling of the real life story of Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) who was left for dead after being mauled by a grizzly bear and has to try and survive in the barren frozen wastelands of (the now) The United States of America fighting his own body, the elements, and the indigenous population.

Continue reading →