Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. Oh my Christ that was awful. I mean, really bad. What the hell happened? The script was straight out of a terrible TV show from the 1980s.
4/10.
Run All Night Wow what a surprise. I'm not a fan of the current swathe of revenge genre films but this is great.
There is no denying that the physical transformation Jake Gyllenhaal went through to play boxer Billy Hope was amazing. He is almost unrecognisable as the same man who played Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler . Sadly this film cannot hold a candle to that one . Having grown up watching and enjoying the Rocky films you would have thought i would have embraced this film but i didn't and that's simply because the boxing scenes were so terrible. With Rocky you expect the exaggerated punches and cartoon like action but with this i wanted more realistic sporting action. Sadly it almost bordered on comedic. The best bits of this film were definitely all outside the ring and even those were packed full of head shaking cliches. The rap based soundtrack irritated me too . This is film that promised so much but failed to pack any significant punches.
There is no denying that the physical transformation Jake Gyllenhaal went through to play boxer Billy Hope was amazing. He is almost unrecognisable as the same man who played Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler . Sadly this film cannot hold a candle to that one . Having grown up watching and enjoying the Rocky films you would have thought i would have embraced this film but i didn't and that's simply because the boxing scenes were so terrible. With Rocky you expect the exaggerated punches and cartoon like action but with this i wanted more realistic sporting action. Sadly it almost bordered on comedic. The best bits of this film were definitely all outside the ring and even those were packed full of head shaking cliches. The rap based soundtrack irritated me too . This is film that promised so much but failed to pack any significant punches.
Rom-coms are way down on my list of genres of films to watch usually .They are usually reserved for the wife to watch but strangely enough on the odd occasion i watch one i more often than not end up liking them and Man Up is no exception. This is the story of a woman who is mistaken for a blind date partner due to a mix up at a railway station and ends up going along with it. After watching this i had to go and check if this was a Richard Curtis film. It isn't but it might as well have been. It's a very British comedy full of wacky , likable , middle class characters and Simon Pegg could quite have easily been Hugh Grant. Pegg is good but the stand out star is Lake Bell who plays his date. She is very funny and carries this film to a large extent. There are some very funny moments and the usual schmaltz as you would would expect but overall i really enjoyed it.
Went to see Everest, just beautiful on the big screen (certainly the place to see it) if ever I have a mid life crisis I won't be taking up mountain climbing.
Preferred it to Gravity and Interstellar , if I was being hypercritical I'd say it was a tad self indulgent, but I'm a Matt Damon fan, and I do like stuff that has a bit of empathy for a character, with a not taking yourself too seriously.A lot better than the trailer, and better than I thought it was going to be, I want to grow some potatoes next year!
First i have to confess that before watching this i didn't have a clue who NWA was. The Hip Hip / Rap scene passed me by or more accurately i avoided it because i really can't stand rap. F. Gary Gray lazily presumes the audience is already familiar with these people and that annoyed me. I did not have a clue who the members of NWA were and i think that put me at a massive disadvantage when watching this film. The characters aren't the most likable of people. They seemed to spend the majority of the film scowling and arguing about money rather than making music and it this grated on me ( but not as much as the music) . Only in the last half an hour of the film do we actually see any form of compassion or humanity from the band members . It wasn't until the film showed a few real film footage clips near the end did i realise how well they did with the casting as the actors as they really do look like the real artists. Sadly that wasn't enough for me to like this film but i'm sure fans of NWA would totally disagree.
This is the story of Greg who spends his spare time avoiding trouble at school and making film parodies with his unlikely friend Earl. One day his mother asks him to visit Rachel , a girl who he has hardly anything to do with but has just been diagnosed with Leukemia. Now the premise of this film may sound a little depressing but it totally isn't . It's also not a romantic story in any way. This is a funny , extremely well written comedy that just makes you smile. Thomas Mann is excellent as Gregg as is RJ Cyler as Earl and these two make the film what it is. Their movie parodies titles are very funny i only wish we got to watch some of them ! . If i had to be slightly critical it would be that the last half an hour of the film doesn't live up to the rest of it but all in all i found myself smiling through out most of this.
Man with a movie camera is a 1929 silent documentary film, with no story and no actors re-released this year for the BFI film festival. This is one of the most hypnotic films i have seen i a long time even though this is just basically a man , with a camera shooting everyday things in 1928 Russia. He's obvious raw talent for film making makes this an absolutely fascinating watch. The people he films are normal Russians going about their everyday life yet i could watch them for hours. I couldn't help looking at the young people wondering what would have happened to them 10 + years later in the war against Germany. He also tries to experiment with the camera quite a lot and the outcome is quite crude yet i imagine ground breaking for the time. The soundtrack can be a little annoying at times but i recommend this highly to lovers of the history of film .
This is the story of Greg who spends his spare time avoiding trouble at school and making film parodies with his unlikely friend Earl. One day his mother asks him to visit Rachel , a girl who he has hardly anything to do with but has just been diagnosed with Leukemia. Now the premise of this film may sound a little depressing but it totally isn't . It's also not a romantic story in any way. This is a funny , extremely well written comedy that just makes you smile. Thomas Mann is excellent as Gregg as is RJ Cyler as Earl and these two make the film what it is. Their movie parodies titles are very funny i only wish we got to watch some of them ! . If i had to be slightly critical it would be that the last half an hour of the film doesn't live up to the rest of it but all in all i found myself smiling through out most of this.
Set in an unnamed African country, this is about a young boy who, following the slaughter of his father and brother by government forces, is forced to join rebels led by a local warlord (Idris Elba). A powerful film, for sure, but it is unremittingly grim and violent and I personally found it just too one dimensional - 6/10.
This is the first film actually made by Netflix and, following a limited run at Curzon, it will be screened on Netflix later this month.
This is the story of two young lads who find a cop car they think is abandoned then take it for a joy ride which turns out to have serious consequences. This is a really good little indie thriller that has the feeling of impending doom about it. The two child actors James Freedson-Jacksonare and Hays Wellford are really good and lets face it , what's not to like about Kevin Bacon ?. I'm not sure what they were thinking when they named the movie because it's a naff title but the film itself is well worth a watch.
Just seen Macbeth. Fassbender and Cottilard are great as is Sean Harris and Paddy Considine. I read it for my GCSE's when I didn't appreciate or understand it. It took a while to get into it but beautifully produced/directed. The scene with lady Macbeth and the 'out damned spot' segment is outstanding.
Was off putting when at least 6 people walked out mid film! Not sure if they thought it would be a musical or what. Really surprised. The problem was with them rather than the film!
It' the LFF so going to some films I wouldn't ordinarily get to. This one is a holocaust-set story about a Jewish Auschwitz prisoner who's a 'sonderkommando' (which means he has the job of shepherding the new arrivals from train to, ultimately, ashes).
The lead character is pretty much central to the frame for the whole movie. It's shot on 35mm which means the image is almost a square, and the camera rarely points at anyone other than Saul.
The sound is therefore crucial for letting the audience know what's happening around him. It's quite an astonishing film but an exceptionally difficult watch. It's never as graphic as Schindler's List, but it's equally as disturbing and doesn't have that film's redeeming sequences. It won an award st Cannes and is getting five star ratings across the board, but it's no kind of fun to watch.
This is a movie about a man who is always angry, he doesn't seem to give anyone a chance.
It is one of Robin Williams final movies and watching it seems almost obvious now that he was either one of the greatest actors to live or he was already struggling with life in order to portray the lead character so well.
It is the story of man filled with regret and demons that tear at him and rather than face them he deflects them with anger.
This is until the ever gorgeous Dr (Mila Kunis) gives him a diagnosis that he has 90 minutes to live.
Robin Williams character spends the movie desperately trying to show he still loves his loved one's but battles his anger management issues.
Mila Kunis plays Doctor Mila Kunis in a typical Mila Kunis way.
Peter Dinklage plays the brother of Robin Williams character and does it well in places and not so well in a few others, but it's not really about him.
Robin Williams plays the role so well you can see it is coming from a man with pain and suffering in his heart.
The only time he is not believable is when he tries to smile and there is a scene with some very dodgy CGI.
All in all the movie was delivering a message, life is too short to be angry all the time as you don't know what's coming despite what has already been before.
I welled up in places, I felt emotion during some scenes and at the end I felt that I had been on that same journey with the cast.
8/10 It is a movie I'll remember for the right reasons. It touched me. I would have rated higher however the acting of the supporting cast was not nearly on par with R.Williams or even Mila Kunis!
This film has it's heart in the right place but sadly it fails on too many levels. It does have a few funny moments ( especially the scene in the shop with James Earl Jones ) but not enough to sustain the film. Robin Williams doesn't quite feel right for the role and perhaps with a slightly more prominent lead actor this could have been better.
I hate not finishing films. Once I've started I will very very rarely turn one off even if it's thie biggest pile of shite, and I've seen Sharknado and Sharknado 2:the second one. However, I managed, no I endured half of Southpaw last night before turning it off. Shockingly bad.
Roger Ebert is a remarkable man. Not just because he was probably the most famous film critic in the world but because the last years of his life when he had no lower jaw because it was removed because of cancer yet he still managed to write film reviews and his blog thanks to help from doctors and his wonderfully loving family. This film talks about his frosty relationship with his TV film reviewing partner Gene Siskel and the work he did with directors Russ Meyer and Martin Scorsesi but really this is about the last years of his life and it's very sad. He was a great and prolific writer but not the most natural TV presenter but because of the respect he had among his peers that didn't really matter. RIP Roger Ebert A brilliant documentary.
First i have to confess that before watching this i didn't have a clue who NWA was. The Hip Hip / Rap scene passed me by or more accurately i avoided it because i really can't stand rap. F. Gary Gray lazily presumes the audience is already familiar with these people and that annoyed me. I did not have a clue who the members of NWA were and i think that put me at a massive disadvantage when watching this film. The characters aren't the most likable of people. They seemed to spend the majority of the film scowling and arguing about money rather than making music and it this grated on me ( but not as much as the music) . Only in the last half an hour of the film do we actually see any form of compassion or humanity from the band members . It wasn't until the film showed a few real film footage clips near the end did i realise how well they did with the casting as the actors as they really do look like the real artists. Sadly that wasn't enough for me to like this film but i'm sure fans of NWA would totally disagree.
If you start a film review with "I didn't have a clue who NWA were" and "I hate rap" your opinion is already invalid because it's going to be biased. No the filmmaker wasn't going to waste time introducing each character like some kind of reality TV show, it was hard enough fitting the 10 year story into a 2 and a half hours. I don't know anyone else who's given this film anything less than even 7/10 so this review is complete rubbish.
Comments
Oh my Christ that was awful. I mean, really bad. What the hell happened? The script was straight out of a terrible TV show from the 1980s.
4/10.
Run All Night
Wow what a surprise. I'm not a fan of the current swathe of revenge genre films but this is great.
9/10
There is no denying that the physical transformation Jake Gyllenhaal went through to play boxer Billy Hope was amazing. He is almost unrecognisable as the same man who played Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler . Sadly this film cannot hold a candle to that one .
Having grown up watching and enjoying the Rocky films you would have thought i would have embraced this film but i didn't and that's simply because the boxing scenes were so terrible. With Rocky you expect the exaggerated punches and cartoon like action but with this i wanted more realistic sporting action. Sadly it almost bordered on comedic.
The best bits of this film were definitely all outside the ring and even those were packed full of head shaking cliches.
The rap based soundtrack irritated me too .
This is film that promised so much but failed to pack any significant punches.
5 out of 10
Man Up
Rom-coms are way down on my list of genres of films to watch usually .They are usually reserved for the wife to watch but strangely enough on the odd occasion i watch one i more often than not end up liking them and Man Up is no exception.
This is the story of a woman who is mistaken for a blind date partner due to a mix up at a railway station and ends up going along with it.
After watching this i had to go and check if this was a Richard Curtis film. It isn't but it might as well have been.
It's a very British comedy full of wacky , likable , middle class characters and Simon Pegg could quite have easily been Hugh Grant. Pegg is good but the stand out star is Lake Bell who plays his date. She is very funny and carries this film to a large extent.
There are some very funny moments and the usual schmaltz as you would would expect but overall i really enjoyed it.
7 out of 10
8 out of 10, I'd watch it again.
Preferred it to Gravity and Interstellar , if I was being hypercritical I'd say it was a tad self indulgent, but I'm a Matt Damon fan, and I do like stuff that has a bit of empathy for a character, with a not taking yourself too seriously.A lot better than the trailer, and better than I thought it was going to be, I want to grow some potatoes next year!
Straight Outta Compton
First i have to confess that before watching this i didn't have a clue who NWA was. The Hip Hip / Rap scene passed me by or more accurately i avoided it because i really can't stand rap. F. Gary Gray lazily presumes the audience is already familiar with these people and that annoyed me. I did not have a clue who the members of NWA were and i think that put me at a massive disadvantage when watching this film.
The characters aren't the most likable of people. They seemed to spend the majority of the film scowling and arguing about money rather than making music and it this grated on me ( but not as much as the music) . Only in the last half an hour of the film do we actually see any form of compassion or humanity from the band members . It wasn't until the film showed a few real film footage clips near the end did i realise how well they did with the casting as the actors as they really do look like the real artists. Sadly that wasn't enough for me to like this film but i'm sure fans of NWA would totally disagree.
4 out of 10
Makes you wonder who's idea it was to cast the Kemp twins in the earlier film!
Me and Earl and the dying girl
This is the story of Greg who spends his spare time avoiding trouble at school and making film parodies with his unlikely friend Earl. One day his mother asks him to visit Rachel , a girl who he has hardly anything to do with but has just been diagnosed with Leukemia.
Now the premise of this film may sound a little depressing but it totally isn't . It's also not a romantic story in any way. This is a funny , extremely well written comedy that just makes you smile.
Thomas Mann is excellent as Gregg as is RJ Cyler as Earl and these two make the film what it is. Their movie parodies titles are very funny i only wish we got to watch some of them ! .
If i had to be slightly critical it would be that the last half an hour of the film doesn't live up to the rest of it but all in all i found myself smiling through out most of this.
7 out of 10
Great bit of musical film making, part of the Doc'n and Roll Festival. 45 years of waiting for this to come out, brillant stuff........
Man with a movie camera is a 1929 silent documentary film, with no story and no actors re-released this year for the BFI film festival.
This is one of the most hypnotic films i have seen i a long time even though this is just basically a man , with a camera shooting everyday things in 1928 Russia. He's obvious raw talent for film making makes this an absolutely fascinating watch.
The people he films are normal Russians going about their everyday life yet i could watch them for hours.
I couldn't help looking at the young people wondering what would have happened to them 10 + years later in the war against Germany.
He also tries to experiment with the camera quite a lot and the outcome is quite crude yet i imagine ground breaking for the time.
The soundtrack can be a little annoying at times but i recommend this highly to lovers of the history of film .
8 out of 10
A warm , funny and thought provoking film, that covers lots of topics, I enjoyed it.
8 out of 10
Set in an unnamed African country, this is about a young boy who, following the slaughter of his father and brother by government forces, is forced to join rebels led by a local warlord (Idris Elba). A powerful film, for sure, but it is unremittingly grim and violent and I personally found it just too one dimensional - 6/10.
This is the first film actually made by Netflix and, following a limited run at Curzon, it will be screened on Netflix later this month.
Cop Car
This is the story of two young lads who find a cop car they think is abandoned then take it for a joy ride which turns out to have serious consequences.
This is a really good little indie thriller that has the feeling of impending doom about it. The two child actors James Freedson-Jacksonare and Hays Wellford are really good and lets face it , what's not to like about Kevin Bacon ?.
I'm not sure what they were thinking when they named the movie because it's a naff title but the film itself is well worth a watch.
7 out of 10
Was off putting when at least 6 people walked out mid film! Not sure if they thought it would be a musical or what. Really surprised. The problem was with them rather than the film!
It' the LFF so going to some films I wouldn't ordinarily get to. This one is a holocaust-set story about a Jewish Auschwitz prisoner who's a 'sonderkommando' (which means he has the job of shepherding the new arrivals from train to, ultimately, ashes).
The lead character is pretty much central to the frame for the whole movie. It's shot on 35mm which means the image is almost a square, and the camera rarely points at anyone other than Saul.
The sound is therefore crucial for letting the audience know what's happening around him. It's quite an astonishing film but an exceptionally difficult watch. It's never as graphic as Schindler's List, but it's equally as disturbing and doesn't have that film's redeeming sequences. It won an award st Cannes and is getting five star ratings across the board, but it's no kind of fun to watch.
This is a movie about a man who is always angry, he doesn't seem to give anyone a chance.
It is one of Robin Williams final movies and watching it seems almost obvious now that he was either one of the greatest actors to live or he was already struggling with life in order to portray the lead character so well.
It is the story of man filled with regret and demons that tear at him and rather than face them he deflects them with anger.
This is until the ever gorgeous Dr (Mila Kunis) gives him a diagnosis that he has 90 minutes to live.
Robin Williams character spends the movie desperately trying to show he still loves his loved one's but battles his anger management issues.
Mila Kunis plays Doctor Mila Kunis in a typical Mila Kunis way.
Peter Dinklage plays the brother of Robin Williams character and does it well in places and not so well in a few others, but it's not really about him.
Robin Williams plays the role so well you can see it is coming from a man with pain and suffering in his heart.
The only time he is not believable is when he tries to smile and there is a scene with some very dodgy CGI.
All in all the movie was delivering a message, life is too short to be angry all the time as you don't know what's coming despite what has already been before.
I welled up in places, I felt emotion during some scenes and at the end I felt that I had been on that same journey with the cast.
8/10 It is a movie I'll remember for the right reasons. It touched me.
I would have rated higher however the acting of the supporting cast was not nearly on par with R.Williams or even Mila Kunis!
The great thing about movies however is whether you connect with them.
I enjoyed the movie as I was touched by it and my opinion therefore differs to those who weren't as connected.
Had I not been a 5 or 6/10 would probably have been more appropriate.
Life itself
Roger Ebert is a remarkable man. Not just because he was probably the most famous film critic in the world but because the last years of his life when he had no lower jaw because it was removed because of cancer yet he still managed to write film reviews and his blog thanks to help from doctors and his wonderfully loving family.
This film talks about his frosty relationship with his TV film reviewing partner Gene Siskel and the work he did with directors Russ Meyer and Martin Scorsesi but really this is about the last years of his life and it's very sad.
He was a great and prolific writer but not the most natural TV presenter but because of the respect he had among his peers that didn't really matter. RIP Roger Ebert
A brilliant documentary.
9 out of 10