I was supposed to be in London this week for a holiday, and one of the things we were planning on doing while we were there was to see Hamilton on the West End. Sadly, a certain event happened and we couldn’t travel. In a moment of beautiful coincidence, when Disney announced they were going to release the recorded performance of Hamilton onto Disney+, the release date fell on the week my family and I would have seen it.
I’ve been…
While it begins as another Scorsese gangster movie, The Irishman evolves into this melancholic and reflective tale of mortality and a beautiful and haunting portrait of men facing their own aging bodies.
The Irishman is not just a gangster film, it is a film that just as much about Scorsese and De Niro facing their own life as it is about the characters reflecting and looking forwards on theirs. It’s personal, and it really feels like it is. There is…
Every time the score came in, all I could think was that Badalamenti anecdote talking about when he was writing Laura Palmer’s theme with David Lynch next to him.
“Oh Angelo, you’re tearing my heart out!”
The Straight Story is like a warm hug. An almost 400km lawnmower ride through aging, family, past ghosts and regret, done with the kindest heart imaginable, Lynch shows once more why he is maybe one of the most sincere and humanistic filmmakers around. It’s beautiful, empathetic, regretful and painstakingly kind. Farnsworth is remarkable and heartbreaking. There’s nothing quite like it. A masterpiece.
I find it hard to put into words just how magic this film is. I always watch Wonder Woman and find it somewhat hard to believe that they just nailed it this hard. How Jenkins and Heinberg craft a perfect origin story as a coming of age story dressed as a WW1 superhero movie, a story of discovery and understanding, of growing and realising that the world is not as morally black and white as you wish it to be, but…
John Wick: Chapter 4 is the result of a fully synthesised Stahelski, the action epic child of Leone and Keaton, ruminative, awesome and sometimes morbidly funny. Stahelski is able to fill it’s near 3 act runtime with the quiet and subtle space for it’s continued, and more nuanced, exploration of consequences, all the while pulling out some of the coolest and best action and stunt work seen in a major Hollywood movie recently. It’s stunning from start to finish, but…
I’ve watched Into the Spider-Verse seven times over now. It’s been four and a half years since its release. I’ve watched it in so many ways, in a cinema, at home, in a lecture theatre, I’ve watched it in individual chunks for essays, and analysed scenes over and over and over again.
And yet, the magic of this film never ceases. I still get chills down my spine during the leap of faith sequence, I still laugh at all the…
