Tag Archives: Gary Oldman

Movie Review – The Laundromat

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TL;DR – A film with good intentions that nevertheless ends up talking down to its audience rather than empowering them as it is trying to do.    

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

The Laundromat. Image Credit: Netflix.

Review –

I think it is a good description of the world at the moment that a couple of years ago one of the biggest leaks of information that changed how we look at the entire banking sector and we have kind of forgotten about it. The Panama Papers was this huge revelation but it is almost surprising that we have not seen anyone try to encapsulate it in media form before now. Well, today we look at a film that does just that, in a weird, slightly absurdist way.

So to set the scene, we open in on Ellen Martin (Meryl Streep) who along with her husband Joe (James Cromwell) is starting the celebrations of their wedding anniversary by taking a boat tour of a local lake. Tragedy strikes when Captain Richard Paris (Robert Patrick) misses a rogue wave and is not able to turn the boat in time causing it to capsize killing Joe and many others. Ellen’s grief is amplified when they find out while the boat tour company thought they were insured, it was all fraud, a fake company, based out of a shell corporation, hidden behind a trust. Leading her down the well of how the wealthy hide their money.

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Countdown – My Personal Top 10 Films of All Time List

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TL;DR – Today we countdown my Top 10 films of all time; from towns where there are a lot of ‘accidents’, to all forms of Sci-Fi, to do you know the man with six fingers on his right hand, and everything in between.

Countdown –

Recently I watched the CineFix crew countdown their Top 10 films, and it had me thinking what are mine? Now it was at this point where I of course naturally spiralled as how can you reduce thousands of films that you have seen into only a Top 10. Just before I threw my hands up in resignation and chucked in the towel I happened to catch an episode of Movies with Mikey on how he determined the best sequel. With this in mind I wondered if there was a set of criteria that I could use to categorise the films into a list that I would be happy with, and after some work, I came up with the following criteria that work for me.

  • Films that are beautifully constructed
  • Films that mean something to me
  • Films that are always re-watchable
  • Films that have added to my love of the craft of cinema

With this criterion in mind I went through all the likely candidates and with a bit of a struggle I think I have been able to come to a final list, well at least until I change my mind next week, which is always a chance.

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Movie Review – TAU

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TL;DR – TAU is one of those films where there is an interesting core of an idea here, but then really the movie spends almost all of its time not exploring it.

Score – 2 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no Post-Credit Scene

TAU. Image Credit: Netflix

Review –

Watching a good film can be joyful, watching a bad film can at least be interesting, but watching a film that clearly had potential only to not deliver on it … well, that can be torturous. This week we look at TAU a film that unfortunately falls into the latter category. It is a film that is trying to take the AI computer genre in a different direction but unfortunately falls into just being a pastiche of other films, and not even a very good version of that.

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Movie Review – Darkest Hour

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TL;DR – A beautifully realised look at the world of British politics on the onset of WW2, but it loses some of its impact with an unclear portrayal of its central protagonist.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – No

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Review –

Well, today we are looking at our third Dunkirk related film in the last year. Dunkirk (see review) looked at the retreat on the ground, sea, and air, Their Finest (see review) looked at how Britain used the retreat to mobilise the populace, and now Darkest Hour looks at the politics behind it all. Today we are exploring the rise of Winston Churchill from being an outsider of the political spectrum to a wartime ruler facing the might of Hitler and his European blitzkrieg. So in today’s review, we are going to look at the acting and how it captured that moment in time.

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Movie Review – The Hitman’s Bodyguard

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TL;DR – A good case study on why it is so important to get your casting right

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

P.S. – There is an end credit thingy

The Hitman's Bodyguard. Image Credit: Lionsgate.

Review –

Making a film is a very difficult process, at every point, there are decisions that you need to make, some of which can make or break your film, and you might not even know what the outcome is until the film is released. Should you rewrite your dark realistic film to be a comedy week’s out from shooting, it’s a big risk, but it is one that I think made The Hitman’s Bodyguard a better film, or at least a film that suited its cast much better. Though before we go on, while I kind of liked it, you need to know it is a type of film that I’m pretty sure the f@#$ counter is in triple digits, and you probably know just from that if this is a movie for you.

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