Reviews

Knives Out has found a way to turn many of the genre's tropes on their heads and that very much deserves to be praised. Ana De Armas is touching, vulnerable, truthful, endearing, and outshines pretty much the entirety of the remaining star-studded cast, which is also very impressive. Overall, after a very clunky beginning, we get into the story and it moves pretty smoothly throughout, and the movie keeps its momentum going until at the very least, the end of the second act.

But when we get to the third act, it starts to feel like the need for never ending twists takes over at the cost of logic and realism, which obviously is often the case in these kinds of movies. But, I would argue a truly successful murder mystery should end with the realization that we have been staring at the truth all along and yet couldn't quite see it - and in that respect, I feel like the movie fails. It also fails in portraying characters that feel real for the most part - with the exception of Ana De Armas, everyone feels a little bit like a caricature, best exemplified by the sixteen year old teenage boy who spends his entire time on his phone to promote the alt-right. Many of such cliches are played for humor, but for the most part, the few comedic moments of the film fall flat - in particular, Daniel Craig's sadly clumsily delivered Detective character, meant to be an American Hercule Poirot, but whose quirks are simply forgettable and frankly, unimaginative.

Finally, the story simply does not fully deliver on its themes, its conclusion feels rushed and shallow: good people end up happy, and bad people are punished, no redemption or nuance whatsoever, the story is black and white, and that may have worked during Agatha Christie's time, but I don't think modern audiences will accept it as easily.

The Art of Self-Defense has a lot more to offer than the good old fun it seems to be at first. It follows the story of Casey, a nerdy accountant with very little social skill, and a total pushover by every possible measure, a role which, obviously, fits Jesse Eisemberg perfectly.

Casey doesn't have much going on in his life, but on the surface, he seems perfectly content to let other people step all over him. As long as they leave him alone for the most part, he's happy to go on with his frighteningly boring routine.

However, one night, Casey gets attacked by a mob of a few bikers, who mug him and mostly beat him up badly enough to send him to the hospital. After his painful recovery, Casey stumbles upon a Karate class, and decides to join it. But the eccentric Sensei (Alessandro Nivola) soon turns out to have a lot more to teach than Karate moves - he teaches an entire way of life, one that will put Casey on an entirely new path, one that threatens to change him to the very core.

Now it would be easy to summarize the film as a satire on hypermasculinity, but yes, on the surface, what Sensei is preaching is essentially for his pupils to become some sort of hyper virile, violent beings defined only by their strength - and the film is pushing this to the extreme and spinning it on its head to hilarious effect. But on a deeper level, what this is really about is Casey's journey from being weak, to being strong, and what are the moral repercussions of exerting that strength. What does it mean to stand up for oneself, and then for others? In many aspects, what the film explores is how strength and its intrinsic values lead to various forms of conflict, to confrontation, and what are the consequences of dealing with these forms of conflict?

All I can say without spoiling, is that the film explores this theme with a fresh, and most often, hilarious point of view, and it's definitely worth seeing for that reason, if not for the terrific performances of the leads (including Imogen Poots, who I didn't get a chance to mention to avoid spoilers).

The recent output from the studios has been divisive to say the least. It is undeniable that we live in the age of sequels, franchises and reboots and, an age where studios take almost no risks and apply the same overused formula to every movie to a point where their plots seem indistinguishable from one another. If you disagree with that statement, you will probably disagree with my assessment of Alita.

Now Alita is certainly not fully an exception to the rule, it is after all based on existing intellectual property, it is gearing up to be a franchise of its own, and it certainly follows many canonical plot elements that we have seen many times in recent years.

However, what is incredibly exciting about it, is that it does so in a way that feels fresh and new, rather than stale and vapid.

I would prefer not to spoil anything, the trailers have been surprisingly good at not revealing too much of the plot so I hope we can all keep it that way. However here is a very basic summary of the premise: Set five hundred years into a future where humans and cyborgs seem to have a fragile coexistence in a kind of lawless town, Dr. Dyson Ito (Christoph Waltz) finds Alita (Rosa Salazar) in a scrapyard and reanimates her. She has no memories of who she was before being found, but she turns out to have an incredibly strong and independent personality, with a childlike innocence and yet a deep sense of justice and, last but not least, combat skills that are unheard of. Her journey is therefore one of self-discovery, as well as a struggle to defeat the forces that corrupt and destroy what she holds dear in this city.

Now there are many aspects that make this film incredibly unique and unlikely in the current production landscape. There is something genuinely heartfelt and innocent about it, just like Alita herself. We go on this journey through her perspective, and both her personality, Rosa Salazar's performance, and her CGI appearance make her powerfully endearing from start to finish. The film is filled with sweet and intimate character moments that allow it to breathe away from the otherwise intense, action set pieces that also turn out to be surprisingly fresh and new as well.

Alita also explores the inevitable sci-fi theme of what it is to be human in a world where our bodies can be almost completely synthetic, and, unlike Ghost in The Shell which couldn't stop spewing out pseudo-philosophical garbage every five minutes, Alita does it subtly, keeping everything subtextual, letting us taking it in and focusing primarily on her own humanity and journey.

Films like Alita are incredibly rare these days and they are constantly threatened to disappear under the pressure for studios to prioritize profits over everything else, so I would strongly encourage whoever is reading this to please go to the theater and support it so we can continue to enjoy these little gems every once in a while.

It's a daunting task to do this film justice with mere descriptions of what it may or may not be about. One thing is clear, it is about motherhood, it is about identity, and about self-acceptance, but one could argue most films are about identity and self-acceptance, which leaves us with motherhood.

It feels much more important to underline that Tully is a rare film with stunning writing and dialogue and acting, that takes the viewer through what it can feel like to be a mother of three children with rare sincerity, realism, lightness and freshness. Mostly, it just feels like we are there, we desperately want to lighten the load Marlo (Charlize) has on her hands, we are incredibly grateful for everything Tully (MacKenzie Davis - who is very far from Cameron Howe here, showing that she has great range on top of her talent) does for her. And when the film ends, it feels like what a movie is supposed to feel like: like we have journeyed somewhere else, both awed and scarred by some of what we've seen, and a little bit wiser than when we first came in.

It seems Alex Garland self-admittedly decided to take the concept of an adaptation very loosely, apparently only reading the first book the film is based on (which is part of a trilogy) once, and allegedly, writing the screenplay from his memory, 'like a dream.'

Now I don't want this review to be about how the film compares to the book, everyone hates that. It is a given that a film is going to be different from the book, it always will be and that's fine - and that was clearly the intention here. Besides, the book itself is a real challenge to adapt, and Garland probably saw it that way, hence his decision to depart from the source material as much as possible.

The problem is that, unfortunately, the result is absolutely awful nonetheless.

Let me try to summarize the premise without spoiling too much: Natalie Portman joins a scientific expedition in an area that has been quarantined for the past three years, from which nobody has ever returned, with the exception of her husband, who seems to have lost all his memories of his time there. As she begins to explore said area, she quickly discovers that the laws of physics seem to have changed there, and that the environment is hostile to human life.

That is a very great premise with a ton of potential for a thrilling movie. Somehow, it seems Alex Garland thought that he would use his fifty-five million dollar budget to make his own version of 2001, but sadly, he failed at that too. The first half hour of the film meanders in pointless exposition scenes and excruciating attempts to make us care about any of the characters. Natalie Portman focuses all her attention on looking tough and depressed, which only succeeds at alienating us from her completely.

By the time the expedition into Area X begins, we have already completely lost interest in the film. Yet it goes from bad to worse. I expected the story to at least gain some momentum once the expedition would start, but instead, Garland chose to continually slow everything down with pointless flashbacks of more of what already turned the first act into a borefest.

But not only is the second act as boring as the first act, which in itself is a significant achievement, it also turns out to abandon any form of logic or character development. Under the pretext that the members of the expedition are supposed to 'go crazy,' Alex Garland lazily makes them do whatever he wants them to in order to serve his otherwise completely bland and uninspired plot. The characters go from place to place without any logic or reason in a very Blade Runner 2049 fashion just to fill out the space while no tension is built or additional information really given. Characters continually spout out exposition based on rough observations they make on the spot - to a degree that is laughable by anyone who has ever opened the most basic science book in their life.

The main thread is also continuously interrupted by an interrogation scene that adds absolutely nothing to the movie, except additional overexplanations of what is happening that are already pretty heavy handedly over explained by the characters going through it - I wish I could quote some of the most awful lines, however, without context, they wouldn't make any sense, but let me just state that the film contains some of the most horrible dialogue I have heard in recent years, and there has been plenty of horrible dialogue in recent years.

Eventually, we reach a third act that is simply as flat as the previous two, but turns into a pseudo psychedelic 2001 inspired sequence at some point that is supposed to inspire awe and wonder in its audience, but can only generate contempt or at the very least, mockery, whether it is with the pathetic CGI that makes the movie look like an episode of Quantum Leap or Sliders, or the ridiculous concept it is trying to represent which essentially feels like a 3rd grade summary of philosophy for dummies.

Fascinatingly, nothing saves this movie in any way. The already terrible cinematography is constantly worsened by awful looking CGI flares that attempt to create an eerie atmosphere and instead constantly remind the audience that, yes, there is CGI everywhere. And then, Natalie Portman really struggles to bring any life to her performance, and one can't really blame her for it either: what could she possibly do when her character is written so superficially, when there is nothing human about who she is supposed to embody? The same goes for the supporting cast, which is as robotic as Ava was in Ex-Machina. Except that, this time, it shouldn't be that way.

What becomes very clear in the first five minutes of the film is how badly Kenneth Branagh has wanted to play Hercule Poirot, seemingly his whole life. It comes out of every pore of his being and yet, his unleashed and unchecked infatuation for the role only leads to a series of poor and mostly incredibly mindless choices.

One of the most talked about ones is clearly the mustache and it is a perfect symbol of Branagh's completely unrestrained and cartoonish take on the story. It's not unusual for the director, of course: restraint is not exactly the first adjective that comes to mind to describe his previous work, but here, it is simply so over the top that it becomes quickly unbearable.

Add to that that his French accent is horrendous when it doesn't disappear almost completely (by the way, all artificial accents are awful in this movie, Judi Dench barely makes an effort to sound Eastern while Willem Dafoe doesn't even try to sound Austrian), and that all the details he adds to the character are so completely British that it is astounding that no one in his entourage ever stepped and said, wait a minute: "why the hell does Hercule Poirot give a damn about egg size? Seriously?"

He carries around a ridiculous cane that then serves to choreograph an incredibly lame and unnecessary action sequence that, I suppose, was attempting to add some excitement in an otherwise incredibly flat and boring series of interrogation scenes, and other than that, he spends a lot of time yelling for no reason, or making theatrical moralizing speeches that are completely ridiculous for anyone familiar with him:

Poirot's new arc is to recognize that there may be a gray area in our moral code. You have read that right, this incredibly intelligent man who has been in this world for decades didn't recognize until this particular point that the laws of men may be flawed and that everything can't always be black or white. How remarkable!

Last but not least, Branagh was so focused on giving himself screen time that we barely see any of the rest of the cast, which, granted, may not be a bad thing sometimes (Penelope Cruz is stunningly awful), and sometimes quite disappointing (more Michelle Pfeiffer or Lucy Boynton in particular would have been welcome).

I would strongly recommend watching the Sydney Lumet version instead, there is a chance you will actually enjoy it.

"Anger begets greater anger." says Penelope (Samara Weaving), Mildred's (Frances McDormand) ex-husband's totally non stereotypical nineteen year old new girlfriend, who delivers the film's theme in what is supposed to be another comedic moment where we are all supposed to laugh at this beautiful but shallow girl's attempt at sounding smart, and yet, it falls flat, like the vast majority of both dramatic and comedic moments.

I just want to clarify before going any further that In Bruges, Martin McDonagh's directorial debut, is one of my absolute favorite films. One that navigates comedy and drama perfectly, brilliantly written and acted, I could go on for days on how perfect In Bruges is, in my humble opinion.

Sadly, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri fails miserably where In Bruges succeeded. It constantly tries to navigate the difficult line between dark comedy and drama, and mostly, it falls flat on its head.

The thematic thread may be to blame here. Without spoiling the plot, the setup is simple: Frances McDormand wants some form of justice for her daughter's brutal murder. She gets the local police department's attention by setting up three billboards complaining about their inability to solve the case. But her action only generates more conflict in town and while it does draw attention to her daughter's case, it leads to increasing tension between her and pretty much everyone else around her. Her anger literally begets more anger and, ultimately, solves nothing.

This is a surprisingly simple moralistic viewpoint coming from the man whose first film was so morally complex and ambiguous and it results in the creation of equally shallow characters and a plot that desperately tries to make sense of its many pointless turns.

To be fair, McDonagh attempts to humanize its more prominent characters: Mildred (McDormand), in spite of being a tough and wooden most of the time, shows deep vulnerability in an unfortunately insufferably cheesy monologue she gives to a deer. Meanwhile, Dixon (Sam Rockwell), the "black torturer," displays humanity later in the movie and tries really hard to find redemption when he is shown the way.

Unfortunately those attempts are so sudden and awkward or poorly executed that they lack believability and feel like they were artificially implemented to make these characters seem deeper than they really are.

Throughout the film, it feels like the filmmaker is more interested in hammering his simplistic viewpoint and using small town America as a perfect setting for it - even though it never feels like he has actually ever spent time there - than to craft a story with a coherent through line and inhabited by humane, relatable characters.

There was so much talent involved in the making of this film - and in spite of everything, Sam Rockwell delivers a stellar performance - that it is truly frustrating that the end result be so mediocre. Hopefully, McDonagh will course correct on his next film.

This may be a somewhat controversial statement, but I think Apocalypto is probably one of the most underrated movies of the past decade.

I re-discovered it recently and I honestly think it is one of the most incredible action movies ever, and for several reasons: - First of all, it is an absolutely immersing experience: the language, the costumes and production design, the introduction scene, the lack of recognizable faces - we feel immediately transported into Pre-Colombian central America and we believe we are there, period, which is honestly a rarity for a period piece.

• The characters are instantly likable and I think the fact that again, there aren't any recognizable faces is really a plus in this case, and the acting is top notch.

• It takes a little while for the action to get started. Unlike most modern action films for which the action starts five to ten minutes into the film generally, this one takes its time to build character, take you into that foreign world. You travel with the protagonist and discover everything with him, which means that by the time the action really starts, you are completely invested in him, and the stakes have become much higher than usual.

• Once the action begins, which is really just a giant chase sequence similar to Mad Max: Fury Road, it doesn't stop, and it keeps you at the edge of your seat until the very end, and I don't think there is any film that does action quite like this. The camera work, the editing, the rhythm and sound design all converge together to make you feel every little detail as if you were there, and I found my heart beating faster until the very end.

Now, is there a strong character arc in this film? No, but it doesn't matter, it's not what the film is about, it's not even about the downfall of civilization, it's just about a man trying to reunite with his wife and kid, and that's all it needs to be to make for an incredible and unique experience!