St. Vincent is a film that tells a story that we’ve seen many times before – a curmudgeonly older guy rediscovers life because of the influence of a child, while teaching that child about life. The difference between St. Vincent and those many other similarly plotting movies is that this film has a cast that […]
Tag: Movie Reviews
Ouija: Spiffy Premise, Cookie Cutter Movie!
Remember those Ouija boards that we used to use to scare ourselves silly when we were kids? Well, there’s a microbudgeted horror film about some kids who get into big supernatural trouble because they didn’t follow the rules. It’s a pretty lame effort at bringing classic (which is to say clichéd) tropes to an adolescent-friendly […]
Fury – Ideals are Peaceful, History is Violent!
Fury ratchets up the intensity from the opening moments and maintains it for over two hours through the introduction of characters that initially feel stock but become something else – and escalating violence and hints at the erosion of decency that war can cause.
Dracula Untold Just Another Superhero Origin Story!
Though there are few solid jump moments and a few genuine scares in Dracula Untold, it is, essentially, just another superhero origin story – albeit for a slightly darker character than usual. At least he doesn’t sparkle…
CIFF Review: LFO: Sounds Like Dark Fun!
A lonely, sad sack scientist wannabe discovers a combination of very low frequencies that appear to make people extremely suggestible. At first, he uses his discovery to act out his wildest fantasies, but then, as his past catches up with him, he goes farther than even he could have imagined. LFO is a micro-budgeted, low-fi […]
Gone Girl – Quite The Absorbing Exercise In Misdirection!
Nick and Amy Dunne has been married for five years – in fact, she disappears on the morning of the couple’s fifth anniversary. At first, Nick seems appropriately upset, but gradually his behaviour seems to be in conflict with his declared desire to find her. Did he kill her?
My Old Lady – Unexpected Connections Make for Dark Dramedy!
Mathias ‘Call me Jim’ Gold is broke, thrice-divorced and hoping that he can sell the Parisian apartment his father left him to get out of the hole. Mathilde Girard is the old lady who lives in the apartment with her daughter, Chloe. Thanks to a complicated French law, called a viager, Mathias must pay Mme. […]
Hector Mitty; Walter’s Search for Happiness!
I’ve seen Hector and the Search for Happiness three times and a bit – only the first two were versions of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Danny Kaye, 1947 and Ben Stiller, 2013) and the bit was parts of a TV series called My World and Welcome To It, all of which were based […]
The Equalizer: Fuqua and Denzel Top Training Day!
When a former special ops expert comes out of retirement to help a teen prostitute, things get violent. Based on the ‘80s TV series, Antoine Fuqua directs The Equalizer as a modern combination of ‘70s thriller and contemporary action flick – to devastating results.
CIFF Review: The Honour Keeper (Lajwanti)
Honour Keeper is yet another CIFF discovery – a delicate flower of a film by a first time director that unfolds to reveal itself in its own time and its own way. First time feature director/writer Pushpendra Singh has taken a Rajathani folk tale and placed in a setting that could be mistaken for centuries ago, […]
CIFF Review: Little Spartan!
Little Spartan is a strange little film from first-time director Dragos-Bogdan Iuga, who also scripted. It is a film that shot over sixteen years (talk about ambitious!) as Iuga follows the life of millionaire/billionaire (both terms are used in the film) little person Gabriel Dita. Ostensibly, it is about the efforts of Gabi to make a fictionalized […]