Film Reviews by MW

Any film starring Mel Gibson as a crooked cop spouting right wing racist rhetoric is bound to be controversial, but as director Craig Zahler points out, not all films should have appealing characters in the lead or be morally straightforward and in these days of big blockbuster fair at the cinema this is an increasingly rare thing. I really liked Dragged Across Concrete, it was very tense, really well shot, combining elements of cop thriller, exploitation flick and horror to create something unique and totally messed up! Like Zahler's other films Bone Tomahawk (which I love) and Brawl on Cell Block 99 (which I didn't like so much) it takes it time, building tension and character, It's 2.5 hours long but didn't feel like that to me. Gibson is very good too. Definitely not for everyone though. :-)

I enjoyed this more than I expected to. I liked Damien Chazelle's first film Whiplash but this is on a whole other level of filmmaking. Ryan Gosling is perfectly suited to the role of Neil Armstrong and gives what could be a career best performance. Claire Foy is also excellent. The thing I loved about the film was that it managed to be both epic and intimate, I believed and cared about the characters and their personal setbacks but was also utterly absorbed with the progress made leading up to and during NASA's trip to the moon. The space missions show what a great director Chazelle is, they could have been boring but I was captivated by them. Another review on here mentioned Apollo 13 and how this was not as good, anyone who knows Ron Howard's films knows his films are very crowd-pleasing. This film has more depth and for me a much better film and in fact in my top films of 2018.