The Review at the End of the Universe
Suburban espionage is the order of the day in Greg Mottola’s Keeping Up With the Joneses when new neighbours come to a sleepy neighbourhood and immediately dazzle them with their worldliness. As contrasts go there is a lot of mileage this. Putting the exciting world of international espionage alongside the day to day existence of…
Jack Reacher returns in Edward Zwick’s Jack Reacher: Never Go Back and finds himself on the run from the law with a framed Major. I enjoyed the first Jack Reacher film more than I thought I would. It was well paced, had some memorable moments and was reasonably clever in its own way. I know…
John Michael McDonagh is a director of some previous note. His first work in the big chair, The Guard, took triple its modest $6 million production budget, and his subsequent film, Cavalry, was a critical success, picking up several nominations for its cast and crew, even winning a Best Actor award at the British Independent Film…
It seems to be a common held belief that, of late, Tim Burton has lost his mojo somewhat, and become a bit of a parody of himself. Many would place the blame for this at the feet of such films as Charlie and the Chocolate factory, and Dark Shadows, where he has lent very heavily…
Tate Taylor’s The Girl on the Train adapts the novel of the same name written by Paula Hawkins. The story follows an alcoholic divorcee who finds herself caught up in a missing persons investigation. The Girl on the Train is a difficult film to review as so much hinges on the twists and turns built…
Hot on the heels of Ben Hur, Hollywood continues its headlong rush to remake every film in its back catalogue with The Magnificent Seven, itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Yet again this is a film no-one was calling out for, but with director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, The Equalizer) at the helm,…
The worst oil spill in U.S. history is given the film adaptation treatment in Peter Berg’s Deepwater Horizon. Berg’s film follows the events of that day and the effect it had on the people involved. Disaster movies are a dime a dozen these days and it could be argued that making a film about one…
In truth, I went in to see Hell or High Water with a sense of some trepidation. This movie comes from the pen of Taylor Sheridan, who brought us Sicario last year, a film that promised much, and delivered not much more than sweeping vistas punctuated by not very much else. The question here is…
Brad Furman’s The Infiltrator tells the true story Robert Mazur; a man who went undercover to uncover large scale drug and money laundering operations. Bryan Cranston plays Robert Mazur and his performance can’t be described as anything but magnetic. He nails every necessary beat throughout and crafts a compelling presence that you can’t help but…
It’s time for another dystopian zombie filled future in Colm McCarthy’s The Girl With All The Gifts. On the surface it may feel like there’s no room for yet another dystopian society where zombies outnumber human beings but this film does prove that there is mileage in the idea. It’s fairly common for films set…
