The Review at the End of the Universe
Finally it’s over. The Hunger Games franchise comes to an end with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 where Katniss and the rest of her band of rebels take the fight to the Capitol to change the world once and for all. Some of you may remember my review of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part…
Gabriele Muccino’s Fathers and Daughters is almost two films in one. One of them is the story of a man trying to raise his daughter the right way as his health fails and the other tells the tale of a woman struggling to forge meaningful relationships in her life. The biggest problem with the film…
Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs brings audiences backstage at 3 of Apple’s major product launches to show the personal and professional problems that plagued the Apple CEO at these key points in his career. The film basically takes the structure of a 3 act play with each launch representing one of those acts. It starts with the launch…
John Crowley’s Brooklyn is a coming of age story for a young Irish woman named Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) who leaves her humble village to make a life for herself in America. The most captivating thing about Brooklyn is how understated it is as an overall experience. There’s very little in the way of conflict or…
John Wells’ Burnt casts Bradley Cooper as badboy chef Adam Jones who tries to gain the coveted third Michelin Star to have a physical sign of the perfection that he strives to achieve. Burnt tows a thin line with the main character. On paper Adam Jones is everything that should be unlikeable. He’s rude, arrogant,…
Owen Harris’ Kill Your Friends tells a -hopefully- exaggerated story of how cut-throat the music industry could be at the height of the Britpop scene in the late 90s. The film is adapted from John Niven’s novel by Niven himself. His novel was based on his own experiences as an A&R man during this period….
Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster depicts a dystopian society where being single is so heavily frowned upon that remaining that way nets you a unique punishment. The focus for the audience in this bizarre world is Colin Farrell’s David, a man who is recently divorced and basically sentenced to stay in a hotel in order to…
Guillermo Del Toro’s Crimson Peak sees the director return to the horror genre with the story of a woman haunted by the ghosts inhabiting an old run down house. It’s been a while since Del Toro played around with horror. I’m not counting his TV Show The Strain or the sadly cancelled Silent Hills video…
Stephen Frears The Program tells the story of 7 time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong through his rise and fall as the truth about his performance enhancing drug use comes to light. Ben Foster takes on the role of Lance Armstrong and gives a fantastic performance as the unsympathetic disgraced cyclist but the script…
Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette brings to life the story of the struggle of women to win the right to vote in the early part of the 20th century. It’s a good story worth telling and it should never be forgotten how oppressed women were here in the UK -and across the world- not so long ago….
