Rambles about the wonderful world of wrestling.
Seeing dead people is not new ground for cinema. The iconic line from The Sixth Sense is almost as famous as it’s twist ending. However, very few people have made this supernatural power as dark and gritty as David Blair does with his thriller, The Messenger.
The great thing about the Edinburgh International Film Festival is the chance to stumble upon something that it is a pretty safe bet to say you would never watch otherwise. Surreal Hungarian comedy, Liza, The Fox-Fairy, probably falls into that category. It’s director Károly Ujj Mészáros‘s debut feature and according to the man himself, isn’t much like other Hungarian films.
A lot of people have played Sherlock Holmes. The Holmes character is such a part of British literature and film history, that it is easy to forget that he doesn’t actually exist. It’s a popularity that doesn’t seem likely to fade, with Benedict Cumberbatch bringing him to a whole new generation in Sherlock. Therefore, it’s kind of surprising that Sir Ian McKellen has never played him before.
The elevator pitch for Turbo Kid is ‘Mad Max on a BMX’ and with that simple sentence you begin to understand just a sliver of the lunacy in this debut full length feature from directorial trio François Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell. Set in a post apocalyptic 1997, it is an homage to 80’s action movies and sets out purely to entertain.
Skyfall wasn’t just responsible for elevating James Bond back to the top of the Hollywood totem pole. It can also take credit for doing the same for spy movies in general and this year there seems a bit of a resurgence in the genre. We’ve already seen Kingsman and later in the year we will have The Man From U.N.C.L.E. In the here and now we have Spy, from future Ghostbusters director Paul Feig.
Dinosaurs are fucking cool. That is just a fact. Everyone has at some point been filled by fascination when thinking about these giant creatures, which lived before our time on this planet. It’s that feeling of wonder which makes Jurassic Park one of the most iconic films of all time. It’s a feeling that Colin Trevorrow has been tasked with recapturing in Jurassic World.
We’ve had sparkly vampires and we’ve had funny vampires. We’ve even had whatever it was Johnny Depp was doing in Dark Shadows. However, it is safe to say A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is our first Iranian Western vampire.
It is safe to say that Al Pacino hasn’t done his best work in the twilight years of his career. While there is no denying his talent, recent years haven’t been kind to the great man, as the number of films he releases dwindles and the ones he does appear in hardly set the world afire. He’s not alone in this however and he’s joined a surprisingly strong list of actors who have attempted to stage a comeback, by playing a character in a very similar position.
There are plenty of films out there that just do the bare minimum. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are bad, but they play to an audience that they know exists and whether they are good or not, there is a decent chance they will find that audience. However, every now and then a film comes along that tries something a bit different and is full of big ideas. Quite often these films don’t quite work and something is a bit off about them. However, should these films not be celebrated over even the better of the safe films? Movies that go for broke and don’t quite make it are surely more exciting than movies that play be all the rules?
It has been said before and it will be said again, comedy sequels ain’t easy. Keeping what is good about the first, but not treading over old ground is a hard game to play. However, it has never stopped Hollywood churning them out at a rate of knots and with Pitch Perfect having been ten times more successful than anyone could have predicted, it is hardly a surprise to see number two hitting our screens.
Ramblings About Wrestling 