Rambles about the wonderful world of wrestling.
Sicario is at it’s best when, like it’s protagonist Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), you are in the dark as to exactly what is happening. It is a film which moves in the shadows, both in terms of the characters that inhabit it and how it slowly eeks out its plot to the watching audience. While this leads to some gripping cinema, it doesn’t exactly lend itself to writing up a comprehensive review.
A quarter of a mile up in the air is where The Walk does its best work. The story of Philippe Petit’s death-defying walk between the Twin Towers, it’s both a love letter to those towers and a look at a man whose passion takes him to the most ludicrous of places.
The story of Macbeth needs no introduction. One of Shakespeare’s most famous works, it’s a story that only seems to grow with time. Putting it on the big screen in 2015 is a tough task for that very reason. The list of names who have filled the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth reads like an introduction to acting royalty. From Kenneth Branagh to James McAvoy. From Judi Dench to Alex Kingston. Whether on stage or screen, they are large shoes to step into. So how do you make an adaptation of the Scottish Play stand out?
Science is cool. That is the idea that sits at the beating heart of The Martian. Without it nothing in this film works and yet it could have so easily been its downfall. Based on a book which tried it’s hardest to be scientifically accurate, The Martian may not have been the easiest conversion to the big screen. Science may be cool, but on a cinema screen it is rarely sexy. Yet somehow Drew Goddard’s script makes it not only work, but makes it sparkle. Throw in Ridley Scott doing his best work in years and The Martian may well be unmissable.
Walking into Miss You Already it’s hard not to want it to be great. So few films are released that can claim to star two women and even fewer that are also written and directed by women. For that alone I wanted Miss You Already to be classic.
A Walk in the Woods was a must see for me. Not because I’ve read the book, which shamefully I haven’t, but because I once set out to spend three weeks on the Appalachian Trail. Unbearably heavy rucksack strapped to my back, me and three friends started in the exact same place Robert Redford and Nick Nolte do in this film. Except we were sweating a hell of a lot more thanks to Georgia’s unbearable humidity. The fact that I only made it twenty-four hours before hitchhiking off the trail and that it was one of the worst twenty-four hours of my life is neither here nor there.
Wes Craven’s influence on the horror genre can not be underestimated. As the great Kim Newman put it, ‘Wes Craven reinvented horror at least four times, most directors don’t even manage it once.’ Arguably, his most telling influence on the genre was the creation of Freddy Krueger and A Nightmare on Elm Street. A film I was inspired to return to following Craven’s recent passing. However, that didn’t seem enough and I decided to keep going. In the last few weeks, I’ve watched every single Nightmare on Elm Street film, including crossovers and remakes. Why? Krueger only knows.
Continue reading “Halloween Binge: A Nightmare on Elm Street”
Horror and comedy are often dismissed as easy genres. Every year a plethora of films populated by jump scares and jokes about dicks are packaged up and inflicted on the public. They’re also inevitably crap. The truth is to make a horror film or a comic film is just as hard as making a sweeping war epic. To combine the two, is arguably even harder.
The story of Bill needs no introduction. I mean everyone has heard the tale of Shakespeare, who is still going by Bill at this point, being kicked out of his lute band (Mortal Coil) and moving to London where he and his first play get embroiled in a Catholic plot to kill Queen Elizabeth. It’s basically history 101.
Creating worlds around bad people is a tricky business. When done well, you get shows like The Sopranos or Breaking Bad. Filled with unpleasant people, who do bad things and also their families and the crap that they have to deal with in that world. Importantly though, we are never offered excuses for what they do, but instead just given a glimpse into what motivates them. When it’s done badly, you get self-aggrandising crap that tries to hide the fact these characters are bastards. Legend sits somewhere in between.
Ramblings About Wrestling 