Film Reviews by GI

A deceptively complex yet subtle drama about memory, childhood and possibly regret. It's set in the 90s and as the film progresses we see that the main narrative is indeed the memories, some faded and some perhaps misremembered, of the main character twenty years in the future. This character is Sophie (Frankie Corio) an 11 year old girl who goes on a Turkish package holiday with her dad, Calum (Paul Mescal). He's divorced from her mum and they are set to have some time together. Sophie is on the cusp of that moment between childhood and teenage years and Calum is devoted yet somewhat uncomfortable in his relationship with his daughter. There's nothing untoward in it but Calum is nursing a deep depression that occasionally shows itself during the holiday. The narrative has a simple structure occasionally like home movies being shown but there's an ever present sense of something not right as if a very bad or sad event is about to happen. In many ways it's as if there's a mystery lying under the surface of what you are seeing. This makes the film very compelling aided by two top class lead performances. This is a film of startling originality and it may take awhile for the subtlety and brilliance of it to reveal itself whilst watching it but once it's over it really does take a hold and you realise you've seen a film that is rather interesting and a pleasure.

Whilst Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) is a full on and an unrelentling chase film this prequel is a revenge narrative with a gut load of chase set pieces thrown in for good measure. Director George Miller has really nailed this dystopian wasteland world and he has produced here a worthy new film in the series. It's a bold, exciting action film with swift, bloody violence, awesome cinematography of the Australian desert land and also has a really well scripted story. This tells the story of Furiosa who was played in Fury Road by Charlize Theron and in this backstory of her character there's Alyla Browne as the young Furiosa and Anya Taylor-Joy as the older. The film tells of her abduction from her tribe by the narcissistic and psychopathic Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) the leader of a bike gang, who trades her to another tyrannical leader of grotesques, Immortan Joe (Lacey Hulme) where she rises to become a formidable driver of the 'War Rig' under the tutelage of Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke). But she is all the time plotting her revenge on those who have wronged her especially Dementus. With minimum dialogue and extended action sequences fans of the Mad Max series will love this. You do have to have seen Fury Road to understand the story and whilst there's no Max (if you're careful you'll spot that he does put in a small appearance) you do have Tom Burke whose character is a sort of pseudo Max here. I'm a fan so I absolutely delighted in this. The casting is impressive with Browne and Taylor-Joy uncannily resembling each other and Hemsworth is having a blast playing against type as the chief baddie. The longest Mad Max film to date this is a film to watch on a big screen. It's fantastic stuff, action cinema at its best.

A good solid drama told in a refreshingly straight forward way of the two New York Times journalists who doggedly investigated and broke the scandal of sexual harassment, assault and rape of young actresses and staff by the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan play the two reporters, Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, who struggle with the cover up and Non Disclosure Agreements that Weinstein and his organisation have used to silence the victims. The film effectively deals with the difficult presentation of journalists spending endless time on their mobile phones balancing the two women's own difficult lives as mothers and wives with trying to get the victims to go on the record. It's a powerful story, very well edited and directed and with first rate performances from the two leads ably assisted by Patricia Clarkson and Andre Braugher as their bosses. Ashley Judd, who was a key witness and victim the first to speak out, plays herself very effectively. Like other major exposé type dramas such as All The President's Men (1976) and Spotlight (2015) this is a disturbing true story and a tale of remarkable journalism. Well worth checking out.

Also entitled The Fate Of The Furious. If you take a moment to think about the evolution of this series where it has moved from cheeky illegal street car racing narrative to full on Mission Impossible/James Bond territory you will also be able to understand just how silly the whole thing has become. This latest instalment is definitely hi-octane action cinema that will appeal to those who just want full on stunts and action set pieces regardless of how utterly daft the plot is. But you can't take away from this that it's cinematically entertaining and if you've liked the series you'll continue to love this although it offers nothing particularly original apart from a nifty sequence where numerous cars in a huge chase are like a zombie apocalypse scene, that was clever.. It kicks off with an illegal street race just to ground it within the Fast & Furious world with Dom (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) living the good times in Cuba. The old team have retired and all is peachy until Dom is blackmailed by the big baddie (Charlize Theron) who has him stealing world changing gizmos and eventually up against his old team who are pulled together by Kurt Russell's covert agency to stop the baddies and bring Dom down. This cues a globe trotting mission of lots of fighting, shooting, chasing and everyone is having great fun. Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham are now allies after being big enemies in the previous film and back into the fray is Luke Evans bringing with him Scott Eastwood, who sort of replaces the Paul Walker character from the previous films and Helen Mirren has a funny cameo as Statham's mum. An action film, high production, fun in its own way and more of the same and you'll have to be up on the series to get the story and relationships.

Partly autobiographical coming of age drama from writer and director James Gray who has fallen into the trap of an overly sentimental story that ends up as heavy laden and too caught up in it's time setting. This is New York in 1980 and follows young Paul (Banks Repeta), the youngest son in a Ukrainian/Jewish family, who dreams of becoming an artist, rebels at school in small, puerile ways but is close to his maternal grandfather (Anthony Hopkins) who tries to instil some moral courage in the boy. There are the usual issues around racism, privilege and stereotyping that are far too often present in overly serious America dramas like this where great dinner table debates take place that are actually quite uninteresting here. Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong play Paul's parents and give the film some sense of the struggles with parenting in this era and the fear instilled by the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan who was banging on about moral armageddon much to the consternation of many. But you do get the Clash song Armagideon Time which is a bonus! A bit of a slog as a film though.

If you are a fan of the MCU world then I suppose this will entertain but this third film featuring the Ant man character is just an unashamedly derivative of Star Wars and the same ol' plot as countless other similar films that, despite whatever super powers are on show, it all ends up in a good old punch up. Ant Man (Paul Rudd), girlfriend The Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), his daughter and her parents (Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas) get sucked into the Quantum world and fight evil....... blah blah blah. It's all over the top CGI with strange creatures, bad guys and good guys and Bill Murray is a cameo. It drags on for too long, lacks any humour that isn't totally forced and resultantly unfunny. I'm sure there are links to other MCU films as there's 'multiverse' references etc etc but this is for kids who love comic book films. I get that the big money is in getting a franchise gig but these actors deserve better

I can see why this became an unlikely hit probably with a certain demographic as its very glossy and the two main protagonists are like an advert for swimwear as they cavort more or less the whole time in nothing but underwear or swim suits. But it's a fairly unfunny, thoroughly clichéd romcom that's all too predictable (aren't they all) and features two very beautiful people pretending to hate each other......and we're not fooled for one moment! Not least the central story, based around Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, that they have to pretend to be in love for reasons I won't go into but where actually just telling the truth would have been easier. The simple enough story has Bea (Sydney Sweeney), a young law student, and Ben (Glen Powell), a handsome finance guy, randomly meet, are attracted to each other and spend the night but through a misunderstanding end up with deep animosity for one another. Months later and surprise surprise they are both at a wedding in Australia where for pointless reasons they need to pretend etc etc but we all know they're in love really! It's a standard romcom set up with little gravitas and a silly script. It's has some entertaining moments but its all a bit stereotypical and empty.

A rather engaging growing up comedy drama set in the early 1970s and adapted from a popular novel. This seems to hit all the right notes in its portrayal of a pre-teen girl who has to navigate the emotional journey of puberty. Margaret (Abby Ryder Fortson) is a 12 year old girl who is less than pleased when her parents, Barbara (Rachel McAdams) and Herb (Benny Sadie), move the family from New York City out to the suburbs where Margaret must try to fit in at a new school and with new friends. Just as importantly for her is the separation from her paternal grandmother, the overbearing yet lovable Sylvia (Kathy Bates). With this wrench in her life she then has to cope with the pressures from her peers where boys, the arrival of breasts and periods become a daily issue. There are family issues too which are all too complex for the young Margaret. The film also has an interesting story arc for Barbara and McAdams really nails the nice balance of a mother trying to help her daughter and fit in with her new neighbours at the same time. What is equally refreshing is the film eschews the usual character tropes that are often present in this sort of comedy drama and characters that you think may follow certain traits will surprise you. The obvious ones being Nancy (Elle Graham), the leader of the 'club' that Margaret is invited to join and Nancy's mother (Kate MacCluggage) the head of the local PTA. This is one of the best coming of age comedy dramas that has arrived for awhile. A pleasant and engaging film that has humour and a main character beautifully played by Fortson. A film that all the family can enjoy.

Cult classic or style over substance? Oliver Stone's controversial indictment of a world obsessed by media and commercialism remains an interesting if disjointed and uneven film. Basically a modern satire that looks at the ease at which society becomes hooked on a low brow diet of biased news, TV and materialism. But it is a film that certainly is visually demanding with fast edits, colour palette changes, the mixing of clips from other films and TV to create a smorgasbord that assaults the senses like an LSD trip. With colour to represent emotions and black & white to show inner thoughts. The narrative is simple really. A young couple, Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) are thrust together having the mutual background of family abuse and go on a killing spree across country. On their road trip of murder they are pursued by a sex crazed cop (Tom Sizemore) and a narcissistic TV journalist (Robert Downey Jr). They get caught and are imprisoned where they are controlled by an effete Prison Warden (Tommy Lee Jones) who allows the journalist to interview Mickey. He has other plans of course and begins a violent break out, causing a riot, freeing Mallory and bloodily shooting their way to freedom and onto family bliss! This is not a film that you can really like. It's often gratuitous in its violence for effect long after that effect is no longer needed and whilst it has its entertainment value it's a film that loses any power it may have exerted on first viewing making further viewings rather dull. This leaves the film like a big adult cartoon and whilst Quentin Tarantino, on whose story this is based, is said to have not liked it it certainly has his directorial stylings all over it. A film to say you've seen but ultimately a failed experiment.

Ever since Liam Neeson reinvented himself as a tough guy action man in Taken (2008) he's hardly made a decent film and sometimes his hard man persona has stretched the limits of plausibility. So this latest offering I approached with caution but its turns out to be a more humble and entertaining film. Neeson plays Finbar, a quiet man posing as book dealer in a small village in western Ireland but in reality he's an ex soldier who works as an enforcer for the local criminal boss (Colm Meaney). The year is 1974 and the Troubles are raging over the border in Northern Ireland where an IRA team, after a bomb attack, cross the border to lie low in the very same village. When Finbar is forced to kill one of them he finds their leader, the icy hearted Doireann (Kerry Condon), is out for revenge. The Irish setting and much of the characterisations are a bit stereotyped but the director has had a stab at a local authenticity and the visuals of the rolling Donegal hills combined with the casual ruthlessness of the plot allows for a film that captures the time and the place quite nicely. Neeson plays his role down as the tired war veteran who now wants to retire from his job. Meaney is funny too in his small almost cameo part as his boss along with Jackie Gleason as Finbar's protegé and Ciarán Hinds as the local policeman but it's Condon who shines here as the cold and ruthless IRA terrorist. There's a good shoot out in the films climax and overall this is a solid thriller worth a watch.

This is a great cop thriller, uncompromising, gritty and a real thrill ride. Jason Patric plays Nick Tellis, a traumatised undercover narcotics detective, who has been suspended for 18 months after he accidentally shoots a pregnant woman. He is offered a way back to duty by agreeing to help in the investigation of the murder of another undercover cop. Nick is reluctant but he finds he has to work with a fellow detective, the unpredictable and violent Henry Oak (Ray Liotta) who is out to find and kill the murderers. Tellis has his own demons from his time working as a 'Narc', where he developed a drug dependancy that nearly drove him to madness. There's plenty of plot twists and the story has no spare fodder, everything you see is connected, and director Joe Carnahan films with a washed out look giving the film a bleak and highly realistic feel visualising Detroit as a grim, unwelcome and sorrowful place reflecting the deep chasms of emotion in the characters. This is a remarkable crime story, it's violent and tough but it's presented as a serious drama without recourse to cliché resulting in a riveting film. I highly recommend this so if you've never seen it then seek it out, you'll not be disappointed.

A typically sweet British comedy drama set in a failing Yorkshire geriatric hospital. Adapted from an Alan Bennett play this has the witticisms that you'd expect from a Bennett inspired script and the well known cast are all on top form. The story is that this locally beloved hospital is scheduled for closure by the unfeeling bureaucrats in the Health Ministry because it's losing money. But a local campaign is underway to try and stop this. The staff led by the indomitable matron played by Jennifer Saunders rail against closure and the ignorance of the politicians who can't see beyond their spreadsheets. The patients are a collection of British stalwart actors such as Judy Dench and Derek Jacobi and who are played for laughs mostly by being curmudgeonly. It's Dench character, a retired librarian, who reveals a surprising plot twist that turns the film into a dark corner! But the focus of the film is around David Bradley's ex miner who exaggerates his illness in order to stay in the hospital rather than return to the care home he came from. He's visited by his son, Colin (Russell Tovey) who happens to be a Government mandarin and who is converted to the cause of people over money during the course of the film. Essentially this is an ode to the National Health Service and apart from the quite unpredictable twist the film follows a fairly obvious narrative arc. It's all pleasant and entertaining with several messages intermixed regarding death, the value of people even when old, the political ramifications of privatising the Heath Service etc etc and that's all wrapped up in a neat little film that probably worked better on the stage in some areas.

Greta Gerwig's debut as a director in this reportedly part autobiographical coming of age comedy drama is an excellent film, highly amusing and centred around the remarkable performances and on screen chemistry between Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf. Ronan is a high school student named Christine but who insists on being called Lady Bird. She has a creative streak but has reached that point where she finds the life in her home town and the rules of her Catholic High School to be too restrictive. She has a particularly sparky relationship with her mother (Metcalf) and their emotional battles form the centre of the narrative as Lady Bird decides she wants to go to college in New York much to her mother's consternation not least due to the expense. The family dynamics on show here are wonderfully scripted with Tracey Betts as her loving but depressive father and her two relationships with local boys including her deciding to lose her virginity, an act that brings some quick life lessons. The drama follows Lady Bird's emotional strife as she navigates being embarrassed by her family's relative poverty compared to some others and trying to be part of the 'cool' group, which threatens her true friendships. This is a film about family as much as growing up and Lady Bird's final scene as she realises the importance of it to her makes the film very heartfelt and deserving of its accolades.

Adapted from the popular novel this was a pet project for director Jean-Jacques Annaud. Sean Connery, whose career at the time was on the wane, gained a revived appeal (he went onto get an Oscar the following year) and he excels in this mystery thriller set in a remote monastery in the mid Twelfth Century. He plays William, a Franciscan friar, who along with his young novice (a fifteen year old Christian Slater), arrives at the monastery for a religious debate. But the strange deaths of some of the monks stirs William to investigate whereas the monks all think the devil is at work. William soon discovers the killings are somehow connected to the mysterious library. But the arrival of the Inquisition led by a malevolent F. Murray Abraham leads to a hunt for heretics and devil worship. This is a a fantastic whodunnit, in a unique setting and with a great cast of actors chosen for their grotesque appearances. It's essentially a Holmes & Watson type of story but Connery gives it gravitas and the director creates an unsettling vision of a time when religion and fear ruled. This is great film and I guarantee you'll love this if you haven't seen it.

A cross cultural romcom that has some entertaining moments and it's certainly lavish and ambitious, but ends up being predictable and a little clumsily scripted that it lacks the freshness of the best in this genre. Lily James, here with a role that has more for her than some of her previous films, plays Zoe, an award winning documentary film maker with problems forming relationships much to her sparky mother's (Emma Thompson) chagrin. When she bumps into her childhood friend, Kaz (Shazad Latif), a British born Pakistani man, she learns he is about to embark on an arranged marriage. Fascinated Zoe gets him to agree to her documenting the process from finding the potential wife to going to Pakistan for the wedding. On this journey they discuss issues of love and relationships. You can guess where it all ends up and you'd be right, the ending pretty much signposted from the get go. There's some laughs along the way although the comedy is sparse mostly down to the somewhat poor script and the film doesn't quite decide what it wants to say about the issue of arranged marriage in a modern cross cultural society. Perhaps that was the idea and it's more about the cultural anomalies as well as a look at modern relationships. Thompson is obviously having fun and has most of the funny lines and some of the characters are stereotypical but here is an enjoyable film that will bring smile and romcom lovers will not be disappointed.