Reviews Archives - Page 7 of 34

2 September 20218 January 2022

Review: ‘Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ is Marvel’s best new character debut in ages

It’s ok, folks; our long national nightmare is over. Marvel’s latest film is out, and we can all stop holding our breath because it’s pretty great. I know there are a ton of you out there waiting to see this, and you want to go in as blind as possible –and that’s honestly a good idea!– so if you want to bookmark this and come back later, here are the Coles Notes: it’s good! It has some great laughs! It has some absolutely dope fight scenes! Simu Liu and Awkwafina are great together! I think you’re going to like it!

1 September 202119 September 2021

Fantasia ’21 review: Dreams On Fire is a hypnotic and authentic drama where dance is the star

There’s an apt dreamlike quality to Dreams On Fire from the very first few minutes, where protagonist Yume announces her wish to become a dancer only to be chased out of her rural Japanese home by her fiercely overbearing father, while her mother can only cry in the corner. Soon she’s relocated to Tokyo, packing her whole life into a tiny noisy apartment that’s barely bigger than her single floor mat, and the rest of the movie’s two-hour-plus runtime takes its time to show us every high and low of her journey.

31 August 202119 September 2021

Fantasia ’21 Review: Alien On Stage is an irresistible creative journey

What do you want in your documentaries? Sweeping views of Colombian jungles? An in-depth exploration of the habits of migrating monarch butterflies? Or a group of bus drivers from Dorset who decide to put on their stage version of the classic sci-fi horror, Alien? Well, good news, you can have all three, but if you’re looking for an almost unbelievable underdog story that leaves you misty-eyed at the end, then the latter is perfect for you.

30 August 20218 January 2022

Review: ‘Only Murders in the Building’ is both lighthearted fun and a great send-up of true crime podcasts

True Crime is, debatably, the largest and furthest reaching of all the podcast genres. They reach mass audiences and have been adapted into television series that have gone on to critical acclaim. So it’s only natural then that someone was going to send them up. Luckily for us, that person turned out to be Steve Martin.

Martin, alongside producer John Hoffman and joined in the cast by Martin Short and Selena Gomez, created a delightful lighthearted comedy series and a delightful send-up of the true crime podcast genre itself.

27 August 20218 January 2022

Review: ‘Vacation Friends’ is fine, and that’s fine.

Stop me if you have heard this one before. A protagonist obsessed with planning, order, and things being just so, ends up in a situation where they have to spend time with a new friend who floats through life, embraces chaos, and for whom things always seem to work out. I don’t know what movie you are thinking of because there are so many possibilities, but I am talking about Vacation Friends, the new film starring Lil Rel Howrey and John Cena, which debuts on Disney+ Star (Hulu in the US) today.

To be clear, this set-up has been done so many times because when it works, you get comedy gold. However, there are two things that a film like this needs to hit that paydirt. First, you need a pair of charismatic leads who have excellent comedic timing and natural chemistry that allows them to bounce off one another seamlessly for the most comedic effect. Howrey and Cena are definitely this. Second, you need a really funny, original script. It’s a good thing that this movie has the first thing.

25 August 20218 January 2022

Fantasia ’21 Review: ‘Hellbender’ puts a hell of a twist on the coming of age story

The coming of age tale as a horror movie has been done before. Whether it’s vampirism, or lycanthropy, or witchcraft, the story of a young person discovering something new inside themselves and figuring out both who they are and who they want to be is a well-worn trope.

Hellbender manages to put a unique spin on things, not only by reimagining witchcraft through a hard rock lens but by being a family affair, both on and off-screen.

24 August 20218 January 2022

Fantasia ’21 Review: ‘Glasshouse’ is palpable with desire but reckons with memory

There has been a pandemic, as there has been a lot lately, and there probably will be for some time to come in the world that Glasshouse takes place in. Unlike the one in the real world, this one strips people of their memory, of the very essence of who they are. This plague, “the shred” as they call it, leaves a mother and her family in a hermetically sealed glass house to live out their days gardening, and also killing “forgetters” who stumble out of the woods into their lawn, until one of of the daughters brings in a wounded stranger.

24 August 20218 January 2022

Review: ‘Black Conflux’ is a confident first feature from director Nicole Dorsey

Small town living can be, in a word, stifling. Yet, as much as it can be peaceful, they can also feel like grue traps, holding you in place. Black Conflux follows two people in small-town Newfoundland whose lives are wholly disconnected, but never the less on a collision course. The inevitability of this collision lends the entire film a sense of menace, dread, and purpose. Being set against the peaceful and serene backdrop only heightens it.

23 August 20218 January 2022

Fantasia ’21 Review: ‘Yakuza Princess’ is an intriguing setup with lacklustre execution

The largest population of Japanese people outside of Japan is actually located in Brazil. São Paolo, to be exact. Of the roughly twelve million people who live there, more than a million and a half of them are Japanese or of Japanese descent; the legacy of a bilateral agreement between the two nations to promote migration in the late 1910s. This is, in a word, fascinating.

Yakuza Princess is set in this diaspora, the story of an orphaned girl with no knowledge of her past who was secreted away after her family was massacred. Now, of course, she is going to find out, and vengeance will be hers. Eventually.

22 August 20218 January 2022

Fantasia ’21 Review: ‘The Night House’ is effectively creepy, foreboding, and scary

Grief is powerful and can mess with your mind and body in ways you wouldn’t expect. This makes it a perfect feeling to fill with horror, an emotion that also messes with your mind and body in ways you don’t expect. As a genre of filmmaking, horror has benefited from this union in many creative ways over the history of film, and it does so again in The Night House.

22 August 20218 January 2022

Fantasia ’21 Review: ‘Martyr’s Lane’ is about a haunting, in more ways than one

Ghost stories are among the oldest we have, and they come in many forms. While often scary, they are also inherently sad, depicting a spirit tied to this realm and unable to move on to a peaceful afterlife, usually due to some trauma.

Martyr’s Lane is one of these films. Told from a child’s point of view and full of both dread and melancholy.

21 August 20218 January 2022

Fantasia ’21 Review: ‘Ida Red’ makes reference to many, much better movies (but it’s fine)

Crime films are a fun genre, and within that genre live some of the best character pieces ever made. Writer and director John Swab clearly knows this, as his film is made up of references to lots of other films in the genre, and while two good performances save this movie, there’s not much here you won’t have seen before.

20 August 20218 January 2022

Fantasia ’21 Review: ‘Don’t Say Its Name’ lacks scares, but has two compelling lead performances

It begins with a hit and run. A young woman walking home alone at night, on the phone with her mother, is run down by a pickup truck. It growls like a wild animal as it races toward her, and it ends her life viciously. This is the opening scene to Don’t Say Its Name, the new film by director Rueben Martell, and the beginning of a story of blood and vengeance on a first nations reserve.

18 August 20218 January 2022

Fantasia ’21 Review: Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes’ is a delightful twist on the time loop genre

Time loops are one of the most well-worn tropes in cinema today. From Groundhog Day to Palm Springs, the key to making it work is a unique twist. This is exactly what Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes has going for it, a story in which a cafe owner inadvertently ends up with a viewport to the future.

17 August 20218 January 2022

Review: ‘Free Guy’ is a love letter to gaming and just the dose of summer fun we’ve been waiting for

If there’s a film genre with an uneven history, it’s the video game movie. Sure, there are some good movies based on video games, but not many. Free Guy, the first big release from 20th Century Studios in a post-Disney acquisition world, posits that maybe the best way to make a video game movie is not to adapt a game directly at all.

Adapting instead of the gameplay and tropes of massively multiplayer online shooters like Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto Online, the film ends up being a love letter to gaming itself rather than any game specifically.

Awesome Friday!

Category: Reviews