Film Words

There are few cinematic experiences as fun as a good Austen adaptation, and should you find yourself in the mood there are no shortage of options. Despite being one of the lighter novels Emma has a pretty good track record of engaging and witty productions, so this new interpretation from first time fiction director Autumn de Wilde has a lot to contend with in terms of keeping your attention. Thankfully it does so with great verve.         Anya Taylor-Joy stars as the acerbic and solipsistic young woman around whom the citizens of a fictional English county revolve, at least according to her. It’s a great bit of casting, Emma is just as sharp as she’s ever been on screen but there are enriching layers to Taylor-Joy’s performance that keep you from settling on one strong opinion of her, giving the impression of a girl in the process of change as life begins to throw harder and harder choices her way. Not that her life is all that hard, the film plays everything ...

‘Underwater’ and ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ feel like movies out of time. The first is a beat for beat ‘Alien’ rip-off in which a small team of blue collar workers in the employ of a near-future mega corporation try to escape a claustrophobic environment as a hive of mostly unseen creatures preys on them from the shadows; the second is a family friendly action/comedy vehicle for a 90’s video game mascot featuring Jim Carrey as an exuberant villain who dances and gurns his way through a series of dated, by-the-numbers jokes. It feels genuinely bizarre that these films made it to UK screens in the year 2020 but somehow they got here, and I can’t say either of them makes me particularly nostalgic. That both films got released in the early year dumping ground (January/February are traditionally bad months for movies) speaks to their troubled productions. Underwater was shot back in 2017 before getting lost in the shuffle of Disney’s Fox acquisition, while Sonic got a digital overhaul after...

‘The Last Thing He Wanted’ is a journalism story that turns into an estranged father daughter story that turns into an international conspiracy thriller that turns briefly into a spy film before finishing up as a different, more schmaltzy type of thriller; Phew! A lot of A-list talent shows up in Dee Rees’ new Netflix movie, Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Willem Dafoe, Rosie Perez, Toby Jones, and all of them seem to have been drawn into a different type of project. Hathaway’s grizzled reporter and Affleck’s slick politician are never on the same page, with each other or with anyone else that pops up for short, confounding sections. The overarching plot never settles into a coherent point of view or establishes any dramatically gripping stakes, leaving the viewer to stumble from scene to scene with no real grasp of how we’re supposed to think or feel about anything that’s happening.   The cigarette stained production design would probably be the films best feature, but for t...

Recently Netflix came up mostly short at the Oscars despite having a slate of incredible films that debuted last year. They have guaranteed more prestige releases moving forward and seem intent on becoming one of the major Hollywood players, however since it’s only February it’s time for them to tick a different type of box with films that didn’t cost as much as the Irishman but nonetheless form the content backbone of their streaming service. That’s right; the middlebrow Netflix movie is back. The first of these new films might not be considered middlebrow at all given it’s a sequel to one of the most successful Netflix originals of all time, ‘To All the Boys I’ve loved Before’. The new teen rom-com has the garbled title ‘To All the Boys: PS I Still Love you’ and centres on the new relationship struggles of Lara Jean (Lana Condor) and Peter (Noah Centineo) as they each struggle with insecurities over the others former loves. It’s not an altogether terrible film, but it is a migh...

To whomever put money on Warner Bros’ Suicide Squad movie getting not just a sequel (of sorts), but a damn good one, congratulations. Nobody walked away from the dreary super villain team up looking very good, although I do remember thinking Margot Robbie had a little bit of promise as long time DC comics villain Harley Quinn. Well over the last few years Robbie has been working away as a producer on her own spin off / sequel / girl gang flick that arrived this week as Birds of Prey, and wouldn’t you just know it, it’s a damn good time.     Robbie’s original pitch has been written for the screen by Christina Hodson and directed by relative newcomer Cathy Yan, both of whom display serious chops in the mid-budget action comedy genre. Birds of Prey is a punchy, lively, aesthetically supercharged blast of feel-good girl power that bounces along while staying rooted in serious character growth. It has the kind of unapologetic confidence that comes when filmmakers genuinel...

The relationship between rich and poor has become an increasingly common area of interest for contemporary filmmakers, with such diverse offerings as Joker, Little Women, and Ready or Not being released in just the last twelve months. Some of these movies are broader or more successful than others, but none in recent memory is as sophisticated as Parasite, the latest from South Korean superstar Bong Joon-ho. It’s an exhilarating, surprising tale that refuses to dumb itself down or allow the audience easy answers, intent on keeping you precariously balanced on its moralistic knife edge.  The set-up is initially quite simple. The son of the comically poor Kim family Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) lands a job fraudulently posing as a tutor for the daughter of the equally comically wealthy Park family (Da-hye, played by Jeong Ji-so). Over the course of a few weeks he manages to land his parents and sister employment with the same family by engineering increasingly convoluted schemes that...

It should be clear by now that it’s hard to make a documentary about a musical superstar that has anything interesting to say. Even the biopics recently have been significantly watered down by the subjects they portray having too much influence over the final product. And few have more influence over their own final product than Taylor Swift, who’s recently teamed with acclaimed documentarian Lana Wilson for Miss Americana, a brief (85 minutes) look back at her world dominating career. Watching Wilson try to find moments of sincerity amidst the suffocating media management of Swifts life is one of the central tensions that makes this film just interesting enough to keep you engaged, if not enraptured. There are plenty of behind the scenes moments that will excite die-hard fans but the most personal and vulnerable issues, Swifts relationship with her new partner and sick mother, are skirted around. Fortunately there’s another relationship being examined here, a singer and her audi...