2016
Straight off a win from the 2016 Drunken Film Festival in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, comes a quirky, well written short. Though bleak and serious in its setting, there are definitely lots of laughs here. Polterheist, written by David Gilbank and Paul Renhard, is an entertaining watch, with a nicely planned plot.
Have you ever had a dream where you were being chased? In this dream, were you being pursued by a faceless monster? Or perhaps you were being stalked by a familiar presence in the waking world?
When deciding whether a story should be written as a book or a screenplay, a writer must decide which media would be the best platform to tell their story. The Light Between Oceans, based on a novel by M. L.
Edgar Ramírez is electrifying as welterweight boxing champion Roberto Durán in the new movie Hands of Stone. Unfortunately, writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz’s routinely conceived, routinely executed boxing biopic is a dull canvas for a performance, slashed in such angry red brush strokes. The movie goes the distance, though not as cleanly or directly as we might have wished.
In life there are many roads to travel and sometimes our paths align with perfect strangers that happen to be exactly who we need to run into at that point in our lives. This appears to be the case with Emma (Mela Hudson) and Judy (Tori Hall). They’re two completely different women who’ve led very different lives, but when both find themselves needing to make a trip to Western Massachusetts, they unintentionally become a part of each other’s journey.
Like much of writer/director Taika Waititi’s other work, Hunt for the Wilderpeople finds humor in asking us to laugh at its characters. They all have some ridiculous traits, and we’re free to have fun at their expense. Some of them are delusional, some of them are myopic, and some of them totally lack self-consciousness.
Kubo and the Two Strings is a genuine masterpiece. The word “masterpiece” might be used carelessly and far too often these days when discussing contemporary movies. At the least, Kubo has fulfilled the conventional definition of “masterpiece” no matter how semantically satiated the word has become, if not entirely forging a new meaning altogether.
Ben-Hur actually opens with the horses getting ready to bolt from the gates for the chariot race. That will seem heretical to audiences familiar with the Academy Award winning 1959 version of the story. Younger moviegoers may not even realize this is a remake, and may not even realize that the phrase “chariot race” used to refer to a big movie’s big action climax.
With an ensemble cast telling a relatable story about friends and lovers, Clea DuVall succeeds with her directorial and writing debut feature film. The Intervention stars Natasha Lyonne, Melanie Lynskey, and DuVall, bringing a But I’m A Cheerleader reunion to the screen, and also adds Cobie Smulders and Jason Ritter, among others. This is a fun and heartfelt story about four couples who gather for a weekend away at Jessie (DuVall) & Ruby’s (Smulders) family vacation house.
In the fifties, Tex Avery made a series of shorts for MGM collectively called “The World of Tomorrow” in which the animator imagined what wonders the kitchen appliances, automobiles and society of the future will offer. The cartoons present with one fantastical gadget after another, all quite utilitarian, but with tongue firmly planted in cheek. The message is clear, technology may be our salvation, but left in the hands of man there will always be something to muck up.
The Phenom is a difficult film to pin down. While trailers and taglines suggest a sports drama in the vein of, say, A League of Their Own or For The Love of the Game, this somewhat sombre drama feels tapered down, unwilling to pander to the feelgood melodrama that can sometimes overwhelm these kind of movies. It’s the story of the improbably named Hopper Gibson (Johnny Simmons), a talented pitcher thrust into the limelight after signing for a major league club straight out of school.
“It’s like everything changed in the blink of an eye. One moment we were fine, then everything turned to shit.” When I heard those words in voice-over I thought:
When it comes to World War II, there is never a shortage of stories that are needed and are waiting to be told. Anthropoid is one of these stories. The film begins with an introduction to the true events that have led up to the assassination of a high-ranking Nazi official to be rendered a necessary means in a time of war.
After School, directed by Alec Tibaldi and written by Tibaldi and co-writer Anne Berkowitz, is a film where the deserved praise goes to the technical crew over the story-line and talent. The film stars Piper De Palma and Ruby Modine as sisters Addie and Xandra in this short drama. Instead of a dramatic story, the film feels like a story about dramatic people.
Since the inception of the Bourne franchise in 2002, the blockbuster as we know it has undergone a dramatic shift. Variety is limited as superhero films have taken over the industry. There are lingering alternatives like the Mission Impossible and Fast and Furious franchises, but the Bourne films have been the thinking man’s blockbusters since the series began.