The first thing I noticed about Nanny is how confident it feels. Jusu has evidently been building up to this project with the work she’s done on short films over the past 15 years. The story is tidy, and the screenplay doesn’t hold our hands too often.
Read MoreCopshop is a cops-and-criminals thriller with a funny streak that features a number of recognizable talents: Gerard Butler and Frank Grillo onscreen, and Joe Carnahan behind the camera. But more than anyone, it’s co-lead Alexis Louder who grabs your attention.
Read MoreSteven Soderbergh’s latest film, available on HBO Max, feels like the product of the filmmaker getting together with some frequent collaborators to knock out a film just because they enjoy it, not unlike a jam session. The result isn’t particularly cutting-edge or fresh, but there’s something to be said for when creatives meet up to bounce ideas around.
Read MoreI had trouble sitting through this film without getting frustrated and throwing up my arms in disgust. It was far too simplistic, and too often I’m wondering why Julianne Moore, Brian Tyree Henry and Tracy Letts (who wrote the screenplay) were so underused
Read MoreWe might expect the rest of the movie to focus on Hannah coming face to face with another fire, and learning to overcome her misplaced guilt. This is a Taylor Sheridan movie, though. So in the tradition of movies he’s written (Sicario, Hell or High Water) and directed (Wind River), it needs to have some human evil on par with the natural menace.
Read MoreIt’s meant as a bitter commentary about the nexus between capitalism, ambition, and the way we treat our elders. But the bitterness is so intense that it lingers after the credits roll, causing you to wonder if the movie accomplished much at all, besides its stylish presentation and strong performances.
Read MoreSome credit has to be given to the filmmakers for the constraints they worked under: tight spaces, entry-level equipment, stringent health and safety protocols. But most of the stories still feel overly rushed, with unconvincing characters and scenarios that don’t rise beyond what’s been posted on platforms like TikTok or Twitter during this time.
Read MoreWith Tenet, Nolan presents his most brain-liquifying examination of time yet, “inversion”. In his earlier movies, Nolan’s playing around with time was wild but still largely comprehensible on first viewing. In the nested dream worlds of Inception, it’s easy to grasp how time slows down the deeper in the dream you travel. But in Tenet, the physics are so surreal we might as well be sipping coffee in the Black Lodge on Twin Peaks.
Read MoreShot in Ontario and Newfoundland, Canada, the precise setting is left vague, though we intuit it could be on either side of the American/Canadian border. Other details about the premise are just as sparse: Chris Davis (Mark O’Brien) is smuggling bags of cash across the border.
Read MoreIt’s a good-enough premise, but the moral question it posits is far more interesting. There’s a lot of torture, and a lot of it to good end. Important plot information is revealed usually when Nazis are tortured, and when the situation is flipped and the Nazis do the torturing, it’s usually to show the strength of Jews. I don’t think Hunters endorses torture, but simply by tolerating torture we may not be as progressive as we thought, especially given all the scientific advances made during the war years.
Read MoreEven if you’re not the superstitious type, Eggers is able to make you believe that a violent encounter between Winslow and a one-eyed seagull is like Winslow signing his death warrant.
Read MoreThe movie adds 167 deaths alone - more than half the total - and many of these come in lengthy, technically dazzling scenes whose only crime is that there’s too much of them. It sounds odd, but for all the thrills and grim laughs in Chapter 3, the movie could do with being 10 or 15 minutes shorter.
Read MoreNow with its new season (or “part”, as Netflix bills it) available after a three-year hiatus, the show remains an impossible-to-classify item in the platform’s catalogue, a show that makes you sound a bit crazy when you try to describe it.
Read MoreTriple Frontier, with its all-male cast of ex-special forces operatives who decide to rob a drug dealer's stash of cash, made you believe with its marketing that it was an action shoot 'em up with cliched one-liners about duty, honour and how their own society has rejected them as a bunch of marginal contributors.
That's not this movie.
Read MoreWhile Season 1 immersed itself with biker gangs, huge bags of cocaine, alcohol abuse and nihilism, and some edge-of-your-seat sequences, Season 3 prefers the slow burn, with tension, intrigue and drama taking center stage.
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