Films/TV Reviews

My review of A Star is Born

There had been a lot of hype for A Star is Born building up for a while. I knew Bradley Cooper was directing, and that he would star alongside Lady Gaga and Sam Elliott. It seemed like a very familiar kind of movie that’s been done before, but because of all the attention and acclaim I decided that I would get around to seeing it when it finally comes out. I was not prepared for how incredible A Star is Born would be. The excellent performances, Bradley Cooper’s direction, the whole story, everything was incredibly done and all came together to culminate in a remarkable film and definitely one of the best of the year.

A Star is Born is actually the 4th remake of the original movie, I haven’t seen any of the previous movies and so I’ll treat this movie as its own thing. Going into A Star is Born, I was a little iffy with the story seeming really familiar. Despite the somewhat familiar story, it doesn’t at any point feel cliché. Any time that the story feels like it’s going to go down a cliché route, it subverts into a different direction. And the times where it does some go down the familiar story paths, it executes it in a way that feels genuine and real and not just because the story needed it to be that way. The whole film feels really honest and real, and there is a lot of emotion put into the story. While I haven’t seen the other movies, they did a great job putting this story in today’s time period. One thing that I heard that some people have said that the first half is a lot better than the second half, but while the first half is more enjoyable and entertaining, the second works as it should. The first half is really all about the rise and has a lot of music performances and the second half has some scenes which are a little hard to watch but that’s how it really should be for the story. A Star is Born is about 2 hours and 10 minutes long and from start to finish I was loving it.

Everyone acting here does incredibly well. There’s some recognisable people here but their performances are so great that you just see their characters, not the actors. Bradley Cooper has given some great performances in the past, but this is the best I’ve seen him, and that’s saying a lot. It’s incredibly subtle and nuanced, so believable. It’s also one of those performances where multiple times you forget that it’s a recognisable actor playing the role, and I’ve seen him in a lot of movies. I’m very familiar with Lady Gaga’s music but wasn’t familiar with her acting. She has acted on screen before, winning an Golden Globe for acting on American Horror Story even but her appearances in movies up until now has pretty much been as cameos. However as one of the leads here, she really proved herself to be a great acting talent. She’s not only great on the music side, like Cooper you don’t see her, you just see the character. This movie is heavily focussed on Bradley Cooper’s Jack and Lady Gaga’s Ally and their chemistry is incredible and believable. Sam Elliott is also great as Cooper’s brother. Elliott is always great in everything he’s in but he really brings it as well, again believable and subtle. Even Dave Chappelle and Andrew Dice Clay, both comedians, are really good and believable in their supporting roles in this movie.

A Star is Born is Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut but you wouldn’t know that just from watching this movie. His direction is absolutely great and it’s pretty clear that he’s a master behind the camera, I’d love to see him direct more things after this. There are some big concert scenes and it really puts you right there. Because of these scenes, I really do recommend seeing the movie in the biggest cinema near you, especially with a great sound system. One that note, the music is also incredible, with many memorable and great songs. All the singing that you see isn’t dubbed, it’s actual singing. Unsurprisingly Lady Gaga’s singing was great but Bradley Cooper is also impressive, especially considering he didn’t use to sing or play guitar and started it for this movie and he’s a natural at it.

A Star is Born is a fantastic film. Bradley Cooper (both behind and in front of the camera), Lady Gaga, Sam Elliott and the rest of the cast and crew has delivered a really great movie here. A Star is Born is one of the best films of the year and as of this point it might actually be my current favourite film of the year.

thecinemacritic.wordpress.com/2018/10/22/a-star-is-born-2018-review/

My review of Mandy

I had been looking forward to Mandy for a while, mainly because of Nicolas Cage. I do like Cage and I do think he’s a great actor but the movie itself looked good as well, from the trailer the whole look and style looked right up my alley. Even though it was being officially released online, I decided to wait in case it came to cinemas (as it was also being released in some select cinemas) as I heard it really benefits from watching it on a big screen. I didn’t even know if the theatre would come to a cinema in my city. I’m glad I waited though because watching in the cinema was one of the best experiences I’ve watched a movie in the theatre. Visually stunning and led by a perfectly crazed performance by Nicolas Cage, Mandy was one of the highlights of 2018.

Mandy is a straightforward movie with a straightforward plot, pretty much just your normal revenge story. What makes it stand out is how it is done. One of the things you really should know about Mandy before going in is that although it seems like the whole movie will be the revenge story, it actually takes a while before it happens. The movie is basically split in two halves. The first half is mainly focussed on the character of Mandy (Andrea Risebourgh), Mandy and Red (Nicolas Cage), and Jeremiah (Linus Roache) and the Children of the New Dawn. Usually a revenge movie would have the whole revenge part kick in after the first act, however with Mandy, the whole revenge part came in the second half of the movie. You do need to know that going in because otherwise you’re going to be rather bored waiting for Nicolas Cage to kill someone. I actually do like the first half, it does help set the mood and unlike most revenge movies which have one act to set up everything before disaster strikes, you get to spend more time with these characters, so that events later on would have a little more impact. The movie is 2 hours long but I can see how others would feel like its a lot longer. You just have to really have the patience for the movie. The second half kicks the pacing into high gear, as it’s really the revenge section, where Nicolas Cage goes on his revenge path and it’s just insane and entertaining. Mandy is a hard movie to pin down to a singular genre, because it’s an arthouse film, a horror film, a revenge film, it’s multiple things at once.

Nicolas Cage delivers one of his best performances here. For the first half of the movie he is pretty subdued and unassuming. In the second half however he goes into a huge Cage rage, delivering one of his craziest performances yet, and that’s saying a lot. If you’re looking for a bunch of entertaining Nicolas Cage freak out moments, you’re going to get that in the second half. However it’s not just “here’s Nicolas Cage freaking out”, his reactions actually works with the character, you aren’t just entertained by his freak outs. With that said, there are also plenty of hilarious and wonderful Nic Cage moments that some people are going to love. I can’t think of anyone else who could’ve played this role, Cage is perfect for the role. Also good is Andrea Riseborough as the titular character Mandy. She has a real presence to her and her chemistry with Nicolas Cage is believable. We don’t really learn a ton about the two characters but it’s enough. Also deserving of some praise is Linus Roache as Jeremiah Sand, the cult leader and villain of the film, his performance really worked well.

This is the first film I’ve seen by Panos Cosmatos, I know he’s previously directed a movie called Beyond the Black Rainbow but I hadn’t seen it yet. Having seen Mandy, I need to watch it soon because his direction and style is really great and one of the most distinct parts of the movie. This is a very visually stunning movie. Plenty of people have described this movie as being like a drug trip and it really does feel like that. There’s a lot of bright vivid colours, particularly red, that are very apparent throughout the film. So many parts of the film feel like a giant painting, or a heavy metal album cover. Even outside the colours, there’s some moments that really feel trippy, such as a scene between Mandy and Jeremiah, which feels really surreal. There are even some brief animated moments, which would be out of place in any other movie but it works well enough here. It is also a very bloody and violent movie, you get to see Nicolas Cage deliver vengeance. There are some extremely gratifying scenes in the second half, one of which features a chainsaw fight between Cage and someone who has a bigger chainsaw than him. Mandy also has a score composed by Johann Johansson and it’s really beautiful and sets the tone of the movie really well. It’s also his last score, and he really ended it on a great note. A lot of what is seen could be described as being “very metal”. There’s a biker gang called the Black Skulls and they look like the Cenebites from Hellraiser. If you’re a big metal fan, you’re going to have a blast with Mandy. With all the visuals and the sound, all of it is enhanced and improved by watching it in a theatre.

Mandy is definitely not for everyone, it is a really slow movie (especially for the first half), it is heavy on its direction and style over the story and it just won’t work for everyone. However it personally really worked for me, the performances (especially from Nicolas Cage) were great, Panos Cosmatos’s directing style was visually beautiful and it was such a great experience for me. I will say that if you’re going to see it, try to see it in cinemas (I know its difficult), you really get more of the experience that way. Mandy is one of my favourite films of 2018 and I’m definitely going to need to check out Panos Cosmatos’s past and future work.

thecinemacritic.wordpress.com/2018/10/30/mandy-2018-review/

My review of Bohemian Rhapsody

I was mildly interested in Bohemian Rhapsody as a fan of Queen. I wasn’t sure about Bryan Singer directing (the main reason actually not being his directing skill) but the appeal of seeing Rami Malek play Freddie Mercury and really just the band on the big screen was just irresistible, so despite some mixed reception of the movie, I was holding out hope. I actually ended up liking Bohemian Rhapsody a lot more than I thought I would. It could’ve been better but I was entertained by it and Rami Malek was great as Freddie Mercury.

A large part of the criticisms are about the accuracies and portrayals and so I’ll just address that part first. As much as I like Queen, I’ll admit I don’t know a ton about them, so people who have much more knowledge about the band will probably pick up on some more inaccuracies than me. I did find there are some moments that did seem ‘movie-like’, like moments that probably never happened in real life and was just done for the movie as a wink to the audience. There isn’t a ton of those but they really do stick out when they happen. Also, there’s a bit where they come up with the song “We Will Rock You” and even I knew that they created it a number of years before when that scene takes place in the timeline. However one of the biggest ones I’ve heard after watching the movie was that Mercury’s AIDS diagnosis happens years later on than when the movie shows it. The main reason seems to be that the movie wanted to address the AIDS aspect but also wanted to end at the Live Aid, so they tried to rearrange events so that they could have both. With everything considered, I’m taking the accuracies somewhat loosely, most of it is probably accurate, but some of it isn’t. I know that originally there was going to be a Freddie Mercury film with Sacha Baron Cohen, which was going to be very much in depth with him and really go all the way, but while that sounds interesting, Bohemian Rhapsody isn’t that movie. This movie was more like a tribute and celebration of the band and Mercury, and in that it really works. Besides, just because we recently had a Freddie Mercury/Queen movie doesn’t mean that in the future we won’t get that sort of uncensored movie focusing on him/them.

Now for the actual movie. Bohemian Rhapsody doesn’t delve too much into Queen (its mostly focussed on Mercury) but it does try to cover a lot of what happened with them from 1970 to 1984, and so in that it does cover a lot of things briefly. It does feel like they selected a few things that they wanted to cover and were like “Wouldn’t it be nice to see them come up with Another One Bites the Dust and show how it happened?”. With that said, I liked seeing how certain things came to be, even if only scratched the surface of Queen and is well known (because as I said, I don’t know too much about Queen, despite being a fan). However, I think that the film is strongest whenever it shows the different sides to Freddie Mercury. One thing that some biopics tend to fall into is that they sanitise everything about the people their based on, but they don’t really do that here. They show Freddie for the musical genius he is but they also show his shortcomings and flaws, as well as the conflicts and problems that he has. Bohemian Rhapsody was about 2 hours and 10 minutes long but it never felt too long, it always had my attention from start to finish and I was never bored.

Rami Malek is fantastic as Freddie Mercury. When someone is portraying such an iconic person, they can often just slip into doing an imitation but Malek never falls into that. He really just becomes Freddie Mercury on screen and over time you just forget that its Rami and just see Freddie. Obviously the singing isn’t actually Malek’s but they did a great job at making him look like he’s doing it. He has the same onstage and offstage energy, the voice, everything of Freddie Mercury, really great performance. The rest of the cast is good as well. The rest of Queen, Gwilym Lee as Brian May, Ben Hardy as Roger Taylor and Joseph Mazzello as John Deacon were great, the 4 of them were really convincing in their roles and played off each other well. Other actors like Aidan Gillen, Lucy Boynton, Tom Hollander, Allen Leech and even Mike Myers were good, and served their roles well.

Now this movie is actually directed by two people, Bryan Singer initially and then later he was replaced by Dexter Fletcher. I didn’t notice any differences in the direction but it is flashy and entertaining. When it comes to the band performances, it’s flashy and entertaining to watch but you can see that they are restraining things, cutting things a little short, you’re almost just seeing them in montages and all that. Part of it is really because the movie is building up to The Live Aid performance in the last act, and that payoff is really great to see. We get to see a few songs from the crowd and from the stage, that whole sequence is really one of the highlights of the movie. With all that, Bohemian Rhapsody is really best seeing in a theatre on a big screen and speakers. It really was an experience watching Queen perform the songs and hearing them.

Bohemian Rhapsody is a little by the numbers and nothing special when it comes to music biopics but I had a good time with it, I had fun with it. Even for what it was going for, it could’ve been better, its not quite the Queen biopic that we wanted but I still liked it and there are some good parts to it. At the very least its worth checking out for Rami Malek’s fantastic performance as Freddie Mercury.

thecinemacritic.wordpress.com/2018/11/04/bohemian-rhapsody-2018-review/

My review of The Girl in the Spider's Web.

Let’s just say that I had some very mixed feelings going into The Girl in the Spider’s Web. I loved David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it was so well put together and Rooney Mara was a perfect Lisbeth Salander. I haven’t watched the Swedish trilogy but I’m sure it’s great as well. Let’s just say that I was a little ticked off that not only was Sony skipping the adaptations of the second and third books, none of the cast or Fincher would be returning to be a part of it, really a wasted opportunity. But despite this, I decided to give this newer movie a chance, I decided to treat it like it’s the own thing. It still had some talented people involved, with Claire Foy and Sylvia Hoeks starring and Evil Dead remake and Don’t Breathe director Fede Alvarez helming the movie. Even when I put Fincher’s version out of my mind, things still weren’t looking all that great from the trailers, seeming more like a generic action thriller and looked like it was turning Lisbeth Salander into a superhero or a spy. I just had a really bad feeling about it but I still decided to check it out for myself. Long story short it ended up being better and worse than I thought it would be, with much of my fears of the movie coming true. The Girl in the Spider’s web definitely has some good parts to it and is entertaining but it is held back by a script and story which is trying too hard to be an action spy movie. Ultimately it doesn’t work as a Lisbeth Salander movie and it doesn’t work that much better as its own movie either.

The Girl in the Spider’s Web is better when seen on its own, in that when it comes to the plot/writing, I’m going to talk separately about it as a sequel/reboot, and then as a movie. First of all, it is based off of The Girl in the Spider’s Web book, I know that they changed some things but I haven’t read the book so I can’t exactly comment on how much was changed and whether it was for the better or worse. Sony was really trying to push the movie as a sequel to the Fincher film, to the point where the title is really ‘The Girl in the Spider’s Web: A New Dragon Tattoo Story’ (no way anyone is calling it that), which is a terrible idea because it’s a reboot with a completely different tone and takes on characters. Let’s just say for this movie, I’m glad that none of the original cast returned for it, because they would be completely out of place with this story and what’s being done with the characters. Whereas the Fincher film, presumably the Swedish movies and the previous 3 books were more dark mystery thrillers, this is a straight up action spy thriller. This movie all surrounds FireFall, a computer program that can access all nuclear weapons ever (and I mean like worldwide). This is far removed from the gritty and grim stories from the books, and is an attempt at being an espionage spy movie. Though to be fair, part of that falls on the writer of The Girl in the Spider’s Web book, David Lagercrantz (not written by the original trilogy of novels Stieg Larsson). Where Stieg Larsson explored trauma and the emotional pain that Lisbeth Salander suffered from, Lagercrantz pretty much tried to make a spy story with Lisbeth Salander, so it’s not all the screenwriters’ fault, it’s just they leaned in heavy with the spy aspect, maybe a little too much. Thankfully there isn’t a sequence where Lisbeth has a limited amount of time to press a button to stop all nuclear weapons from launching or anything like that, but it nonetheless feels a little silly. The silliness doesn’t just stop at the plot though, the movie itself has some pretty silly moments. I mean like at the end of the first act, you see Lisbeth drive a motorcycle off a bridge onto a frozen pond and drive to the other side on ice (which has no friction by the way) without the ice completely breaking under the weight of the motorcycle. The other stories are usually set in some form of reality but Lisbeth here is pretty much flawless with everything, especially hacking anything, doing impossible things. As for Lisbeth herself… I’ll address that when I talk about Claire Foy’s performance, because there’s a lot to talk about. The story is really sanitised as well. I don’t need to have like 5 graphic rape scenes or anything, but the general vibe of the story and scenes doesn’t feel right. It feels like they were trying to make it as accessible as possible for the general audience, while it certainly is more accessible, I don’t think it was really worth it. Honestly if you tone down some of the blood, violence and language, The Girl in the Spider’s Web could easily pass as a PG-13/M rating movie. Again, graphic content doesn’t guarantee that it will be good, but sanitising it to make it more into a conventional blockbuster removes a lot of the series’ identity.

Treating the movie on its own, I’ll say that you’ll enjoy the movie much more if you haven’t watched the other movies or read the books. There aren’t any references to the previous movies or stories, so its not like you’re missing a lot. With that being said, since this movie doesn’t really explore or develop Lisbeth and Mikael, you’ll feel like you are missing some bits of story with them. I will admit that the first act started off okay, it had some silly moments and issues but I was enjoying it and I was on board with what was going on. After Lisbeth manages to survive an explosion however, from that point onwards the movie started sinking in quality, with occasional brief sparks of potential and solid moments. I was personally entertained throughout but it’s not because of the story by any means, the story itself is not really interesting, the writing is very messy and given Fede Alvarez and Steven Knight’s prior work, I’m not sure what happened here. The movie feels very repetitive, Lisbeth achieves something, there’s a convenient set back, rinse and repeat. There’s also nothing particularly compelling in the movie, the characters aren’t interesting and don’t progress or change at all(not even Lisbeth), the story is really predictable (there really weren’t any surprises at all) and you just don’t care about what’s going on with the characters or the story. Every time they start to add some emotional weight to the story, they cut it off too quickly by either moving on with the plot or jumping to an action scene. This is a movie that is all plot and no characters, the movie merely uses the characters to progress the story forward and that’s it. It’s almost like what we have here is an adaptation of a pretty decent first draft of the actual script that needed more revisions with depth before filming. By the end of the movie, you don’t care who ends up with FireFall, you’re just watching what’s happening with no investment in the story or the characters. There are a lot of conveniences as well, whether that being everything somehow working in favour for Lisbeth (or she’s superhuman, that seems equally likely) or things that could’ve been easily stopped holding her back from sorting out all her problems quickly. It’s worth noting that every character outside of Lisbeth is not smart at all, and there are many moments showing all of this. One of the most unintentional funny moments was when Mikael makes a breakthrough in his investigation… because he’s told by someone that a word that he found out is Russian. In fact there are many moments which are unintentionally funny. One of them was in the third act that involves a car crash, which is so absurd and anti-climatic that I couldn’t believe that the writers actually did that (you’ll know what I mean when you see it). Then there’s a bag scene that takes place in a hospital that’s so… bizarrely convoluted and randomly hilarious. I will say to the movie’s credit, some of its absurd moments did at least make the experience more entertaining. Thankfully this movie moves at a fast enough pace that it doesn’t give you a chance to be bored. Even when seen as its own movie, The Girl in the Spider’s Web still has a bunch of issues but it’s slightly less frustrating than when you consider it a part of the Lisbeth Salander series.

Claire Foy is one of the two main reasons this movie still manages to be somewhat okay. She does give a good performance as Lisbeth Salander, and she really does elevate her character. Now I say this, but it really is a bad sign when an actress playing Lisbeth Salander has to elevate the character, because it means that she wasn’t well written, which is the case here. There is problems with her character and it has nothing to do with Foy, again she elevated the writing of her character, giving it more than it deserved. This version of Lisbeth Salander is like people saw a brief summary of her, reading about how she rides a motorcycle, she’s a hacker, wears black and has a bit of a dark past and most of all that she’s ‘cool’ and they just ran with that. It’s such a shallow interpretation of this very unique character. I knew there was cause for concern when Fede Alvarez compared Lisbeth Salander to Batman, aside from the fact that one doesn’t compare Lisbeth to other characters (you compare other characters to Lisbeth Salander rather), but she is her own character and thing, and they shouldn’t be trying to make her like a superhero. Despite it delving into her past (for like the second half of the movie) we don’t really get to learn much more about Salander, and we don’t see her develop over the course of the story. Like with the story, they really did hold back with the disturbing aspects about her. By lessening the darker aspects and making her easier to like, you remove much of her uniqueness and you make her into a 2 dimensional ‘strong female character’ (and by that I mean the almost most generic version of a ‘strong female character’ that you could come up with). All the complex and disturbing aspects of Salander have been trimmed down so that she would appear as a rigid, selfless and more heroic character, and a result this made her a more boring character. Like I mentioned earlier, she fares better when not seen as Lisbeth Salander and rather as another character entirely, but she still feels lacking in some interesting aspects for other audiences to really latch onto her completely. She doesn’t really become one with the character of Salander, seeming to more imitate the persona more than anything. This is the only time I’m going to compare the other Lisbeths to Foy’s but the other versions seemed really intimidating and you don’t see the actress but rather the character they are being. Claire Foy’s version looks punk and ‘badass’ and all that but there’s not really a big presence with her it, not really intimidating, and you just see Foy playing the character more than actually being her. Claire Foy deserved a lot better than this, in a better written role, she could’ve been even better. I will say that Claire Foy is believable in the physical and action sections, she handled these scenes greatly. Foy’s performance thankfully elevates the character and movie quite a bit, on the whole though, this new interpretation of Lisbeth doesn’t add anything new or interesting, aside from doing more action and being more funny I guess…? (if you classify making a program flip the bird after hacking something or filling a bag full of dildos funny, no really, that happens in the movie as well).

The rest of the cast just didn’t work as well as Foy, it’s not their fault however, its more so the writing of their characters and how they were utilised in the story. Mikael Blomkvist is an important character in the books and the prior movies, with him pretty much being the secondary lead along with Lisbeth. In The Girl in the Spider’s Web however, he’s more of a supporting player. He actually did more in the plot than other reviews of this movie have implied, but it still feels weird for him not to do much. Him ‘doing stuff’ in the movie is him basically doing research and investigating certain things, though it’s so small and easy for him to do that you could’ve almost given the scenes to Lisbeth and just cut him out of the movie entirely. It’s like he’s only here because he’s an important character in the books and they had to come up with some things for him to do. I guess there wasn’t a huge problem with him being in a supporting role (outside of it being jarring), but outside of his first scene, it’s like he’s not nothing going on in his life at all, like Lisbeth and what she’s doing is the only thing he’s really focussed on throughout the movie (as I said ago with this movie, all plot, no characters). What is a bit of a problem is that the whole Lisbeth/Mikael dynamic doesn’t feel real or genuine at all. It’s mentioned a few times in the story that they had history together but the way they act it’s like they only just met, there’s no chemistry between them whatsoever, so the scenes when they interact with each other just fall flat. With that said, actor Sverrir Gudnason still does his best with this role, he’s definitely not the problem here. LaKeith Stanfield plays an NSA agent tracking Lisbeth after she steals FireFall. Stanfield does a good job with his performance but his character for like half the movie feels rather pointless, he’s trying to get to Lisbeth but not even getting anywhere close, constantly failing and so you’re left to wonder why he’s even in the movie if he adds nothing to it. The only reason he’s even in the first half is to set him up for being somewhat involved with the plot in the second half, which is when he actually does things. Stephen Merchant doesn’t get to do a lot of anything here but he’s good with the scenes he’s in. Fresh off her excellent performance in Phantom Thread (one of the best performances of 2017 in fact), Vicky Krieps is in this movie… playing a supporting character’s (Mikael) love interest for like 4-5 scenes, with 3 of them actually having her talking, ultimately not really serving anything to the plot at all. One thing that I was looking forward to was the villain played by Sylvia Hoeks. I would refrain from spoilers but since the trailers have already spoiled it plenty of times (and it’s easy to figure out anyway in the movie) I won’t hide it either, she plays Camilla Salander, Lisbeth’s sister. Though I didn’t read the book, Hoeks sounded like a great pick for her character, especially after her scene stealing villainous performance in Blade Runner 2049. However, she is so incredibly underutilised in the movie. She shows up halfway into the movie, and for a character who shares such a history with Lisbeth, they needed more scenes together. Even flashbacks with the character in childhood would’ve added something. Camilla is not interesting, and is really just a ‘burn the world’ villain, all dressed up in bright red and all around she feels like a mid tier Bond villain, specifically like Christoph Waltz’s Blofeld from Spectre. The two have a lot of similarities, and just know that when I say that I mean that in a bad way (if you’ve seen Spectre, you know what I’m talking about). With some of the confrontation scenes between her and Lisbeth, you can tell that the movie wants you to care about what’s going on but there aren’t enough scenes with them together that you just don’t, so it falls flat. Particularly the most annoying scene is the final scene with them together, because had we cared about the two of them up to that point, it really could’ve been a very impactful scene but it wasn’t at all, I felt nothing. Sylvia Hoeks does play up the role and is good with what little she has, she may be a little over the top at times but at least she’s trying her best. I’m not sure how it’s possible for one film to mishandle absolutely every character they had (not to mention the very talented cast they had), but The Girl in the Spider’s Web somehow manages to achieve that.

Fede Alvarez was the other reason this movie manages to be okay. He was an interesting pick for the movies, known for his horrors with Don’t Breathe and the Evil Dead remake. I was a tad worried cos from the trailers the movie seemed to look like it Fincher-lite direction. However, he actually did a good job, though it does feel like he was held back a little. Earlier I was saying about how I was always entertained and that was because of Alvarez’s direction, he injects every scene with energy that has you paying enough attention to what’s going on. The cinematography by Pedro Luque looks beautiful as well. I will say thought that I’m a little disappointed that despite Alvarez’s previous films, we don’t really get much horror elements, except for maybe a couple moments in the third act. With that said, there are still some well directed moments, one of which is of Lisbeth directly after a fight in the second act. As much as I dislike that there is action in the movie (and a considerable amount of these scenes), the action scenes are generally filmed pretty well. With that said, there are some fight scenes which are a little hard to follow what’s going on sometimes, with some shaky cam and a bunch of cuts, and it can be frustrating.

The Girl in the Spider’s Web is such a mixed bag. On one hand, Claire Foy gives a good performance (despite being held back quite a bit by the writing) and Fede Alvarez does add a lot to the movie with his directing. On the other hand, without them the movie would’ve just been rather average and forgettable (or at least more forgettable than it is already). And all my problems don’t come from this the fact that it doesn’t have Rooney Mara, or David Fincher, or any of the 2011 film’s cast and crew, these are all issues that I have with it as a Lisbeth Salander movie and as a movie on its own. I know I’ve gone on about a lot of problems that I had (this review is definitely way longer than I initially intended it to be), mainly with it as a Lisbeth Salander movie, though I am aware that if you aren’t such a fan of the character or stories, this probably won’t bother you that much. With all that said, despite its many issues I wouldn’t say that it’s a bad movie per se, I was entertained more than I thought I would be and there are some legitimately good parts to is. If you haven’t read the books or watched the other movies but like how The Girl in the Spider’s Web looks, I’d say give it a watch, though it’s still got a lot of issues. I’m not quite sure what to say if you liked the other movies, except that if you are die hard fans of the books, you are probably going to have a ton of issues with the movie. I’ll just say that it’s not bad but not good either, and not the Lisbeth Salander or story that you know and love. If Sony tries to make another live action Lisbeth Salander story adaptation, I can say with certainty that it won’t be a film sequel to The Girl in the Spider’s Web.

thecinemacritic.wordpress.com/2018/11/12/the-girl-in-the-spiders-web-2018-review/

My review of American Animals

I had been hearing some small but noticeable attention for American Animals. The only names that I recognised were that of actors Barry Keoghan and Evan Peters and I knew that it was a heist movie based on a true story. Not a lot of people have seen the movie but the people who have really praised it heavily. After finally seeing the movie I can see why it has been receiving all the acclaim, especially with the performances and the way the story was told.

American Animals opens not with a message saying “This is based on a true story” but rather “This is a true story”, and it really does live up to that. It is worth noting that the director Bart Layton has made documentaries in the past, which has clearly influenced his way of telling the story. This movie has had some interesting ways of telling its story. Something that wasn’t shown in the trailers is that it’s partly retelling a story while also having documentary parts to it, with the real 4 people appearing on screen, mostly in an interview style to give commentary about their thoughts at the time and about what happened. Something I also liked is how it showed how some differently the real life people saw what happened, acknowledging the grey areas of what happened and that you have to pick and choose which you think happened (though the differences in perspectives were mostly focussed on smaller things). This can be a little jarring for some people but it mostly worked for me. I guess the only times that went a little too far is when the real life people interacted with the actors, that was a little too much but fortunately we don’t get a ton of that. The first half of the movie is very fantastical as the 4 main characters are planning out the heists. These people are shown to be amateurs with them using movies as a way to figure out how to perform the heist, they even give each other codenames at one point like in Reservoir Dogs. It’s fun to see them try to plan everything and it all feels like everything is going to go as planned. The second half of the movie however turns drastically realistic and darkly serious, when the actual heist happens. As comedic and entertaining as the first half is, the second half is very tense. These characters are not prepared for their situation and it all falls apart. All around the movie manages to be both thought provoking, yet entertaining as well.

The major characters are really the 4 main leads played by Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Jared Abrahamson and Blake Jennifer. All of them are great with Peters particularly standing out. They do a good job at not necessarily making them likable but fun and interesting to watch. They each have their own motivation, while they are trying to get money out of the heist, they really have their own personal reasons for doing all this. They particularly shine in the last half when the heist becomes really messy.

As previously mentioned, Bart Layton has made documentaries in the past, and so he brings his filmmaking style to this story. His direction is one of the most stand out parts to the movie and part of the reason it works so well. It is very stylistic and as previously mentioned it does a good job at portraying ‘true events’, with it also cutting between the actors and the real life people. The editing was a big part of why the movie worked so well, some of the best editing of the year. The tone in the story is complimented by the direction, the first half being fantastical, and the second half dialling up the tension level to 11, with the actual heist being incredibly stressful, its really like you’re right there with the characters.

American Animals is a surprising movie, with great performances and a unique take on the ‘based on a true story’ type of movie. It also features some of the best directing and editing in a film this year. Unfortunately, not enough people are seeing it, and if you haven’t you really should, it might be one of the surprise best films of 2018.

thecinemacritic.wordpress.com/2018/11/24/american-animals-2018-review/

My review of Mom and Dad

I was interested in Mom and Dad, mainly because its Nicolas Cage going absolutely crazy in a movie where he tries to kill his children, directed by one of the directors of Crank. It sounded absolutely nuts and I was on board with it. I wasn’t really sure what the actual movie would be like, I just knew Cage would be nuts and I heard that the movie is actually pretty good for the movie that it is, and that’s pretty much the case. Mom and Dad is an weird, insane darkly comic horror movie, which is quite entertaining and surprisingly works. Its two lead performances however are what makes it really work.

The first 20 minutes of the movie are setting up things before the whole “everyone tries to kill their children” epidemic happens. While the writing and dialogue can feel a little iffy, most of this is to establish the similarities between this situation and the troubled relationships between parents and kids. After that 20 minute mark though, that’s when the children murdering epidemic starts, and it doesn’t let up after that. There isn’t any clear explanation for why parents are killing their children, theories are thrown around and that’s it. That really worked for me personally, doesn’t overcomplicate the plot. The movie keeps things reasonably straightforward, the plot isn’t convoluted and the characters are really simple. The writing itself is basic enough but it works. The Crank movies at times can have some bad writing but for the most part you don’t see that in Mom and Dad (with the exception of one supporting character which was pretty much written to be a stereotype). Now it is worth noting that this is a dark comedy, because so much of what happens is so violent and over the top that it does much more than just border on hilarity, the humour is a big part of the movie. It’s not a straight up scary horror movie. It doesn’t take things too seriously but there is some subtext with the parents’ frustrations even before the epidemic starts, especially with flashbacks with Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair. While most movies (especially bigger movies) would have the parents be loving and all that before their rampage, they already establish them as being very unstable and not having the best of relationships with the children, which I think works well and makes it more effective. Mom and Dad is less than an hour and 30 minutes long and that really worked, there’s enough time to set up the characters and everything up before the epidemic starts, and after that point it’s entertaining right till the end. I will say though that a disappointing aspect was the ending. While I understand why they wanted to end on the note that they do, its rather abrupt and I wanted something a little more.

Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair are a big part of why this movie works. Sure the story concept sounds entertaining enough but it requires really convincingly unhinged performances to make it work, and they really brought it. They play both very convincing frustrated parents before the epidemic, as well as completely psychopathic parents who want to kill their children during the epidemic. Of course Nicolas Cage particularly stand out (as he would being Nicolas Cage), from the very beginning he’s crazy and has the movie goes on he just gets more and more crazy, and sometimes it can lead to some hilarious moments. I’m not going to reveal most of his big moments, but one of his stand out moments is when he screams the hokey pokey song while destroying a pool table with a sledgehammer. 2018 seems to be a comeback for Cage, with both this and Mandy. With that said, Selma Blair’s performance shouldn’t be overlooked either because she’s great as well. While Cage has a mix of being scary and funny, Blair comes across as being convincingly scary and unhinged. The kids of Cage and Blair played by Anne Winters and Zackary Arthur are okay, they serve their purposes well enough.

This movie is directed by Brian Taylor, who was involved with directing the Crank movies as well as Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance alongside Mark Neveldine, and if you have seen these movies, you’ll definitely pick that up watching Mom and Dad. Now there aren’t crazy stunts being done or anything, but he does bring the style from his previous movies here, with the editing, cinematography and all that. Some of the crazy and wild camera movements might be a little too much for some people (here it’s a little incomprehensible at times), but for those who have seen the Crank movies, it’s much more tame in comparison. This movie does not hold back at all, especially with the violence. It is brutal, and really ballsy considering much of the movie’s violence shown is against children. With that said it’s not nearly as bloody as you’d think it would be, I can’t tell whether it should’ve been more bloody or if the less is more approach was better. The music used can get a little repetitive and annoying, especially during the intense and violent scenes.

Mom and Dad is a completely nuts, darkly comedic horror movie, that’s simple but effective. The unhinged performances by Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair really make the movie work as well as it does. If you’re a big fan of Nicolas Cage, this is a must see movie. If you’re up for a darkly comic and over the top made by one of the directors of Crank, this might be right up your alley. Just know that if you are going to watch Mom and Dad, don’t take it too seriously.

thecinemacritic.wordpress.com/2018/11/27/mom-and-dad-2018-review/