Drama

Reviews

Mr. Holmes

By: Mark Barber Current representations of Sherlock Holmes are filled with weighty world-threatening stakes and explosive action sequences.  Bill Condon’s more peaceful and contemplative Mr. Holmes seeks to rectify that inclination, offering a more poignant take on the famous deerstalker-wearing detective. Indeed, Sherlock’s trademark cap never appears in the film, and for good reason.  Mr. Holmes is about the interplay between fact and fiction, spending much of its running time reconciling the elderly Holmes’ (Ian…

Reviews

Strangerland

By: Addison Wylie The characters in the Australian/Ireland import Strangerland are surrounded by miles of flatland.  The tattered town of Nathgari maintain a tight community, yet there is a sense of feeling forlorn and stranded.  Newly minted feature filmmaker Kim Farrant uses these qualities to effectively stir up restlessness and sputtering hope when her story of missing children is in full swing. Catherine and Matthew (played by Nicole Kidman and Joseph Fiennes) are still adapting…

Reviews

Assassin

By: Addison Wylie The vaguely titled Assassin has the ability to be cool, but instead settles on being “cool”. There are cool shots of hitman Jamie (played by Danny Dyer) on his motorcycle as he zips to a hired job and zooms off to collect his earnings, and I quite like what filmmaker J.K. Amalou can do with the correct lighting.  Then, there are those “cool” moments where popular songs ineffectively crash into a scene while…

Reviews

Eden

By: Trevor Jeffery If you walk in to Eden with little understanding of electronic dance music (EDM), there won’t be much of an issue because you’ll be left feeling about the same as when the movie started. In 1992’s version of Paris, teenager Paul Vallée (Félix de Givry) sits in the woods as he hallucinates on some sort of rave drug.  Over the next 20 years, Paul will: start a EDM duo who brings in…

Reviews

Fifty Shades of Grey

By: Addison Wylie I didn’t think it was possible for a film to be spoofed, and then be turned back into the po-faced material the parody was making fun of – then, I saw Fifty Shades of Grey.  The movie feels like someone picking up the pieces to a dated romance, and trying to glue them back together to make something even more manipulative.  Sam Taylor-Johnson’s film is so misinformed and shallow, you would think the filmmaker was making…

Reviews

Hunting Elephants

By: Shannon Page Hunting Elephants certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.  There are a few laughs sprinkled throughout, but don’t go into this film expecting a passive movie going experience. The film boasts an impressive international cast that includes Iraqi-born actor Sasson Gabai (who audiences may recognize, or not, from his role in 1988’s Rambo III), Moni Moshonov of Israel, as well as the incomparable Patrick Stewart as a struggling English actor looking for…

Reviews

Survivor

By: Trevor Jeffery ​Using the words “unabashed” and “propaganda” together seems redundant, but there isn’t a better way to describe James McTeigue’s Survivor. ​Kate Abbott (Mila Jovovich) is an officer with the US embassy in London.  While on duty, Kate asks a few too many questions to a man she suspects to be (and actually is) a bio-terrorist, before letting him through customs.  This sets him and his associates into freak-out mode, and they hire an…

Reviews

Results

By: Addison Wylie Early on in Results, two workout trainers are telling the other not to provoke them.  These two trainers are Trevor and Kat, played by Guy Pearce and Cobie Smulders.  Over the course of Andrew Bujalski’s film, the audience finds out that these two characters need to be provoked in order for them to be challenged, which in turn makes Results interesting. The person who does most of the poking and prodding is…

Reviews

Welcome to Me

By: Trevor Jeffery Kristen Wiig should keep doing her thing, because it’s definitely working for her, and Welcome to Me shows it. Shira Piven’s Welcome to Me introduces itself masterfully: five minutes in and you know Alice Klieg (Wiig), her recently-unmedicated illness, and you have a good idea of how her life up to now has been.  And, how someone like her winning $86 million can have negative consequences. Alice throws money around like most…

Reviews

Maggie

By: Addison Wylie Henry Hobson has been given a one-of-a-kind opportunity to showcase Arnold Schwarzenegger’s never-before-seen tender side with Maggie.  I welcome my readers to send in examples of other low-key films the Terminator star has acted in, but I expect to receive no tips. The post-apocalyptic film also hands the filmmaker a chance to re-imagine zombie movies that star “the infected”.  Screenwriter John Scott 3 has crafted a story concerning the rights of the…