The Review at the End of the Universe
A grieving father struggles to cope with the loss of his daughter until he is visited by representations of the universe to help him deal with his grief in David Frankel’s Collateral Beauty. That’s what the marketing of this film wants you to think it’s about and it definitely isn’t about that. I’ve heard a…
An uptight father butts heads with his daughter’s inappropriate internet millionaire boyfriend in John Hamburg’s Why Him? Frequent readers of this site will know that I don’t watch many comedies because the style of humour isn’t really to my taste very often. This particular one appealed to me because of Bryan Cranston. I think he…
A man on a trip to a new planet wakes up decades too early and has to contemplate life alone in the black silence of space in Morten Tyldum’s Passengers. On the surface, this seems like a fairly workable concept. People dealing with isolation is nothing new in films and can be done really well…
Gareth Edwards brings us the first stand-alone Star Wars movie with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story -hereafter referred to as Rogue One-; the story of how the Rebellion came upon the Death Star plans. There was a lot riding on this film. It’s the first in the planned Star Wars anthology stories that shine…
Oliver Stone’s Snowden tells the story of infamous NSA employee Edward Snowden and what led him to expose the surveillance techniques employed by the United States Government to the public. This is a story that is still very much going on so making a biopic about it at this stage seems somewhat baffling since the…
Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation tells the true life story of slave preacher turned revolutionary Nat Turner and the actions he took to stand up for his people. A film about slavery is always going to be an emotionally charged experience given the horrific things that were done to people when it was…
Ben Younger’s true life boxing biopic tells the inspiring story of Vinny Pazienza, the man who miraculously recovered from the risk of total paralysis to reclaim his title. Vinny is played by Miles Teller and I found him to be less than engaging overall. I doubt that any of this has to do with Teller’s…
A young girl struggles to make it through adolescence in Kelly Fremon Craig’s coming of age story The Edge of Seventeen. Angsty teen dramas are a dime a dozen in today’s entertainment landscape in both TV and film so it can be very difficult for one to stand out. The most interesting thing about this…
Clint Eastwood tells the true life tale of the 2009 passenger airliner miracle water landing that saved all aboard in Sully: Miracle on the Hudson. This is a hard story to put to film because it happened so recently so many people watching will already know the outcome. Building up to the event that might…
Disney bring us another Hero’s Journey with Ron Clements and Don Hall’s Moana; the story of a young girl who heads out to sea to solve the problem of dying food on her island. The titular Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) is the daughter of the chief and the early scenes are focused on her understanding what…
