London Film Festival 2021 - Tyneside Cinema
Jane Campion's first feature in over a decade, The Power of the Dog, is, and this really is the only word for it, a bona fide masterpiece. A Western in name only, it's a brooding, deeply disquieting watch, that serves as an exercise in building tension to its breaking point. It might just be Jonny Greenwood's incredible score, but I think a key touchstone for this is Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be…
Cineworld The Gate, Newcastle
This film was always going to face an uphill battle for me because I was always going to be disappointed that the John Hodge/Danny Boyle Bond 25 that this was meant to be never came to fruition - sadly creative differences may have meant we never get to see what could've been the most innovative action film since The Dark Knight. But in saying that, judging the film that actually exists, and not its context, it's…
A little baffled about why this was like the most popular thing on Earth for about a month...
The games themselves are fun enough I guess, but I really dislike how bleak it paints humanity. People are better than this, we don't have a nasty, brutish, short nature where we're destined to descend into some kind of Lord of the Flies anarchy at the slightest provocation. I really dislike that idea, and I really dislike this show as a result.…
The dancing is pretty beautiful, but the way it's shot gives the film a far too digital, music video quality, rather than being a truly cinematic capturing of ballet and contemporary dance. The Arri Alexa really not helping in this regard - some scenes have this sort of artificial digital grain, but it never feels close to being real. Similarly, to the plot, dialogue, and characters, none of which feel even close to real either.
The more films I watch,…
DISCLAIMER: I DON'T MEAN TO OFFEND ANYONE WITH THIS REVIEW. I ADMIRE EVERYONE INVOLVED IN MAKING THIS
Mank is a fucking DISGRACE.
On so many levels this is the worst film of 2020, and the worst film by quite a stretch. Morally, it's appalling. On a filmmaking level, it's incompetent. And on a personal level, it's just so fucking boring.
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Let's start with how this movie treats Orson Welles. Let me be clear, the movie could've done this and…
When Sofia Coppola started out her career, she was greeted with critical vitriol for her starring role in The Godfather Part III, her opportunities were blamed on nepotism, and a Razzie was thrown in to rub salt in the wound. How did she respond? Was The Virgin Suicides a pretentious, arrogant attack claiming she had been victimised and that she had been right the entire time? No, The Virgin Suicides is an entirely personal, introspective work, wherein she found her…
