Month: October 2017

A man (Bill, played by Timothy Spall) makes a great production of placing a vinyl record onto the turntable and starting it playing. It’s Blues. It gives the impression of a period piece, an impression that remains until the scene switches to the kitchen where a woman takes a call on her mobile phone and we suddenly realise we are in the present day. It’s a very clever way to frame a story in which social rules not really updated since the 30’s play such an important role. Continue reading Review: The Party→

All I really ask of a comedy, even a black one, is for it to make me laugh. The Death of Stalin made me laugh. A lot. Continue reading Review: The Death of Stalin→

Utterly ridiculous. Half disaster movie and half conspiracy thriller, not really successful in either genre yet somehow it still manages to be a lot of fun. Continue reading Review: Geostorm→

The film structure isn’t as tangled as the book though it wasn’t always obvious which bits were past and which present. The story is tighter and enough has been changed to keep some surprises and make the twists much more believable. But not enough to really save it. Continue reading Review: The Snowman→

It does a great job of replicating (forgive me, but it’s the right word) both the look and tone of the original. This sequel is more polished, and has the budget to build a larger world, but it’s very much the same world. Continue reading Review: Blade Runner 2049→

Winslet as Alex feels like a friend I haven’t met yet. She puts real feeling and humanity into her character and even when she was doing wrong, I wanted her to get home. Elba gives a characteristically powerful performance as the taciturn Ben, those moments when he lets the emotion out all the more shattering because you can see how much he’s repressing most of the time. Continue reading Review: The Mountain Between Us→