Luke has written 119 reviews for films during 2019.
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Jojo Rabbit 2019
Jojo Rabbit is a well acted and laugh filled good time but there were some factors and elements that really did drag the film down. My major issue with the film is it's balance. On one side Jojo Rabbit could be a very funny movie and on the other side the film could be quite dramatic to the point where both of these sides are a detriment to the other. The movie felt like it was having trouble deciding what…
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The Two Popes 2019
Despite stellar Oscar calibre performances by Jonathan Pryce & Anthony Hopkins and a great screenplay i ultimately did not find this particularly interesting. The first twenty minutes of the film did not do much to hook me in and it wasn't until i got to the scene where Pryce & Hopkins are having a conversation in a garden when things started to turn around and become intriguing. Although after that there was still the odd scene that brought things to a halt.…
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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker 2019
Star Wars as a film franchise is dead after this very lacklustre, very formulaic and very forgettable movie and the future and hope for this franchise now lays in the form of video games and TV shows. The moment this starts, something felt off. This is a film that felt like there was some behind the scenes drama, it feels like this was supposed to be a longer movie as we seemed to jump around endlessly and quickly from various…
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Marriage Story 2019
From the very start i was hooked, entranced and captivated. For the rest of the movie it was one of the most memorable, impactful and heartbreaking experiences i've had with a film in a very long time. Noah Baumbach is a director who has never clicked with me whether the humour in his films was off or the stories just didn't really interest me, fair to say and i will openly admit it, this film was not on my radar.…
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Home Alone 1990
A very generic feel good Christmas family film that i have a tradition to watch once a year in December just to skip to the scene where the kid murders the robbers. This whole sequence is better then the entire movie itself as every single time i watch it, it cracks me up to pieces.
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I Lost My Body 2019
The animation is absolutely gorgeous but the film does start to wear out its welcome as by the 10 minute mark i began to lose interest. This is a film that could have worked in 30 minutes or less as a short film but by extending it to 80 minutes as a feature length movie, the film really does drag. In the end the animation is a strong enough reason to check this out, but if you want a plot that can keep you invested, it's unfortunately not this one.
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Atlantics 2019
An utterly beautiful and intriguing film with a supernatural twist. Despite its very simplistic plot the film was able to remain engaging based on a few factors. The film was very gorgeous to look at with the ways it used colours. The cinematography while mostly hand-held, there was a very nice smoothness to it especially with the way that long takes were used. Atlantics also had a very peaceful and relaxing tone to it which made the film that little…
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The Irishman 2019
The Irishman to me at least felt like one last hurrah from Scorsese for the crime genre. Over the many decades that Scorsese has worked as a filmmaker, he has handled various films in that genre from Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Casino & The Departed. Each of those films had a specific type of pacing where Goodfellas & Casino were constantly moving and The Departed took more time to develop the characters and the situation. The Irishman goes for a very slow but…
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Knives Out 2019
Got to see an advanced screening of Knives Out and i thought it was great. Rian Johnson is a director who's films have rarely clicked with me and even some of his highly regarded films aren't exactly my favourites. So when it came to Knives Out i didn't have very high expectations but i was both pleasantly surprised and entertained. This is easily my favourite film from Rian Johnson.
Generally i'm not big on the whodunnit mystery in films as…
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Official Secrets 2019
Official Secrets is about a whistleblower who leaked documents about an illegal operation to sanction the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This was a story i was not aware of but after watching the film i was utterly fascinated. When we first see Katherine Gun played phenomenally by Keira Knightly, we see her living a normal and happy life, one day she receives an email about a top secret memo that pushes for an invasion of Iraq by blackmailing the UN…
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Joe Versus the Volcano 1990
I don't know what this was but i weirdly enjoyed it. This film was my kind of bizarreness, a film so random and filled with ludicrous WTF moments that i had a ball with this one. I will also add that later in the film, the movie pretty much turns into Cast Away as theres a scene where Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are stranded at sea and Hanks builds a raft out of luggage. At least i now know where he got his survival skills from.
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Eye in the Sky 2015
So i'm revisiting this film before i go see Gavin Hood's new film Official Secrets later this week and Eye in the Sky still remains one of the best films i saw in 2016. Yes, while the impact the film had on me when i first saw it has lessened, the movie still does it's job as a nail biting thriller along with telling a compelling story. The acting from all involved was on point and no one phoned it…