Movie Review – The Revenant

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.

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Movie Review – The Dressmaker

TL;DR – Not what it seems, which is good, because it is better than it seems

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

The Dressmaker. Image Credit: Universal.

Review –

Wow, what a fascinating film. To be perfectly honest I was not going to go see The Dressmaker, but a colleague of mine challenged me to see a film I would not normally see, and boy did I end up picking a good one. The Dressmaker tells the story of Myrtle ‘Tilly’ Dunnage (Kate Winslet) who at the start of the film is arriving back in her hometown of Dungatar after leaving as a child under the cloud of scandal. She is back to see her mother Molly (Judy Davis) who has in the preceding years suffered from dementia and become a recluse in her house, garnering the nickname Mad Molly. But for Tilly, time away from Dungatar has meant learning fashion design from the greatest minds of London, Paris and Milan and maybe, just maybe she can use her talents as a dressmaker to win over the town. And in a normal film that would be that, stick a couple of scenes of a shirtless Liam Hemsworth and call it a day, but The Dressmaker is more than that, and it is so much better for it.

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Movie Review – The Martian

TL;DR – A movie with tension, humour and humanity, go watch it

Score – 5 out of 5 stars

The Martian. Image Credit: 20th Century Fox.

Review –

The Martian is a film about adversity and challenge in an environment that will kill you, which would make a very interesting film, now take that environment and put it on another planet and then leave your protagonist alone as everything crumbles around them.

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Movie Review – Paper Towns

TL;DR – It’s not a bad film, just somethings do not quite work.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Paper Towns. Image Credit: 20th Century Fox.


Review
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Paper towns is a name given to fake towns places on maps by cartographers so that they can check for plagiarism, (as a lover of all things maps, I love little things like this), it is also the name of a book by John Green and now a movie. Before I go on I should mention that I have read the source book Paper Towns and overall I had mixed response, some things really worked while others didn’t. I would talk about what those things were, but unfortunately, they are at the core of the book, so we would be not just dipping our toes into spoiler territory but diving head first, which is something I want to avoid. So with this is mind how does the film do? well not bad actually.

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Movie Review – Inside Out

TL;DR – Pixar at its best

Score – 5 out of 5 stars

Inside/Out. Image Credit: Disney/Pixar.
Inside/Out. Image Credit: Disney/Pixar.

Review –

In my younger years, Pixar was a company that could do no wrong, every film they put out was a masterpiece or at the very least amazing. Also, they were risk takers, dealing with issues such as mortality and death in children’s films. To this day the first 20 minutes of Up are some of the most heart-wrenching moments in cinema, but also a masterclass in how to tell a story with minimal dialogue. Then something went wrong, Brave, while interesting was more good than great, then Cars 2 streamed in, and Monsters University, and it looked like Pixar had burnt through all its good ideas.  Well if Inside Out proves anything, it proves that Pixar still has it.

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Movie Review – Tomorrowland

TL;DR – So close to being a great film, but just does not get there, because it takes no care in building the universe it is set in.

Score – 2 out of 5 Stars

Tomorrowland. Image Credit: Disney.

Review – Close, but no cigar, Prawie robi wielką różnicę, Knapp daneben ist auch vorbei, Melkein on metri maalista, and 功虧一簣, these are all things I would use to describe Tomorrowland. Tomorrowland is visually impressive, well-acted and has a good message but in the end, it just falls flat.

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