United States
Sequels sell like hotcakes. Filmgoers cannot be faulted for summing up today’s film industry simply as that. We don’t really need to draw up any charts or statistics to figure out that half of the films in 2015 consist of sequels.
Inside Out is the latest in a long line of Pixar films that deal with the personification of something that you may have thought to be emotionless. Rather than bugs, toys, or fish this time, though, it is dealing directly with emotions themselves. What if the inner workings of our head were similar to an operational business, where our emotions literally guide and influence the actions in our daily life?
Like many people, I was a great fan of Bridesmaids and The Heat, so it was likely that the newest film to pair Paul Feig and Melissa McCarthy would be right up my alley. Likely, but even I had my doubts over Spy. A spy comedy?
The Voices, the English language debut of French-Iranian director Marjane Satrapi, unarguably gives Ryan Reynolds the best acting role of his career. Sadly, his gleefully maniacal performance is the sole positive – and that is most likely due to the lack of interesting roles he’s been given throughout his career that make this performance stand out in comparison. The character he’s playing is badly devised and written, yet Reynolds somehow manages to make the character compelling.
The central idea to Tomorrowland, Disney’s latest attempt to turn a theme park attraction into a blockbuster spectacle, is flawless. Instead of being pessimistic about the future, why don’t we adopt the same attitudes of previous generations and look at the future with a sense of optimism, awe and wonder? After all, today’s younger generations are being fed miserable visions of the future by pop culture, with every major summer tentpole movie of the past few years having villains who argue that the best way to save both the planet and humanity as a whole is to destroy it.
For most people Pitch Perfect wasn’t something they saw in the cinema. They watched in on DVD on a whim or chanced it after hearing about it from a friend. Released just as Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson’s careers were on the rise (and was possibly one of the films that gave them a leg up) it initially went under the radar, but as the years have passed the film has garnered great reviews and the Barden Bellas now have a huge fanbase.
They say that love conquers all. Whether that is racial or gender inequality, the struggle of the underclass, global conflict or even the gulf of time. No matter what, there is a belief that love can cross all boundaries and transform the lives of those who experience it.
This April, Cobain: Montage of Heck, the new rock doc by Brett Morgen, was released into the world. I was a little apprehensive because I felt as if all the insight that we would be given into the life of Kurt Cobain had already been exposed.
When I think back to Avengers: Age of Ultron, the best thing I can compare it to is a multi-layered Impressionist painting. From up close, it often looks and feels like an over-stuffed mess, as if director Joss Whedon was trying to cram as much as possible into his 2 hour and 20 minute timeframe.
There is no formula for making a perfect kids film, yet studios have set up entire animated devisions that churn out movies under the tried-and-tested “jokes for the parents and jokes for the kids” formula. The twin assumptions that filmmakers don’t feel children are sophisticated enough to understand certain jokes in a movie tailor-made for them and that parents also need to be pandered to in order for them to enjoy the film are relatively new. After all, back in the early days of silent cinema, most movies were experiences for the entire family, with everybody (no matter how young or old) being catered to equally.
Even though I may make it look like any idiot can do it, writing reviews is far from easy. The hardest things to review aren’t the plot-heavy science fiction movies or the obscure art house efforts with impenetrable plots like you would imagine – the most difficult movies to review are the films that are just plain boring. I watched Child 44 two days ago, where I made up 100% of the audience for that screening – in the two days since, I have found myself struggling to remember quite a lot of it.
No matter how good their circumstances are, many young people wish they were born in a different time, in a different place, belonging to a different generation they believe they fit in with more. This is almost definitely due to the influence of pop-culture; the 80’s weren’t exactly the best time to live in, yet show a John Hughes movie to any impressionable teenager and they will almost definitely long to have lived in that time period. While We’re Young, the best film to date from director Noah Baumbach, takes a unique look at this theme in the space of one of the best movie montages in recent memory – whereas the young, hipster types long to live in an area of vinyls, VHS tapes and typewriters, the ageing are trying to stay relevant to today, filling their lives with useless technology in order to stay relevant in an ever changing society.
Maps To The Stars is about the aspects of Hollywood that, as a film fan, I‘d rather not think about. Written by the acerbic Bruce Wagner, it is about the cynicism of the industry, about the actors who are motivated by vanity and the money-minded executives who exploit them. These people’s heads have been long removed from their shoulders, their molly-coddled lives are run by other people as they incessantly try and top up their serotonin through drink, drugs, sex and bastardised spiritualism with increasingly less success.
Rejoice, all, for love and magic have been made real again and no longer confined to shallow movies that preach the wrong topics filled with two dimensional protagonists that do nothing but fulfill ageless and traditional characterizations. Cinderella manages to be the most refreshing new Disney movie out, by paradoxically undergoing the least transformation. Directed by Kenneth Branagh with the utilization of his perfectly suitable Shakespearean mastery, and supported by a cast of actors and actresses that look like they came straight out of the storybook, Cinderella is a delightful reiteration of the classic story that we’ve all grown to know.
Electric Slide is based on the life of the bank robber Eddie Dodson. Originally a furniture salesman, Dodson found fame in 1983 when he robbed a number of banks – 64 banks in 9 months to be exact. Directed by Tristan Patterson (his first fiction feature film), it stars Jim Sturgess as Dodson and Isabel Lucas as his girlfriend Pauline.