Month: March 2017

Movie Review: 99 HOMES – compelling drama told within the recent global meltdown, featuring standout performances by Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon

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There’s a scene in The Big Short where three of the protagonists fly to Florida to see for themselves just how quickly the housing market is approaching critical mass, and when they get there and cagily discuss the situation with two clueless douchebro real estate investors, they leave convinced that all the projections they’ve been privy to are actually on the level.  It’s one of the best scenes in the movie, and in a weird way, it reminded me of movies where a team of biologists try to track down the source of a disease outbreak.  Considering how the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market triggered a global meltdown, the disease analogy seems pretty apt.

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Movie Review: TRAINSPOTTING 2 – good, but uneven sequel that favours sentimentality over the anarchic spirit of the original.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews2 Comments

At least once in our lives we’ll be stricken with a certain trepidation about how the present matches up with memories of the past.  It can be an old flame that’s been rekindled over years; the reunion of a favourite band, the comeback of a sports idol, an attempt of ours to somehow recapture past glories, to see if we still have it.  Sometimes lightning can strike again, but more often than not we’re vaguely unsatisfied by version 2.0, and we begin to doubt ourselves.  Was the original time around really that good?  Are those memories seen through the rose coloured lenses of nostalgia?  There’s only one way to find out, though.

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Movie Review: THE GIFT – Joel Edgerton’s one man show can’t escape familiarity, but is still twisty and suspensful

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I don’t exactly recall why I didn’t want to watch The Gift theatrically, but there were a few reasons; the trailer was too formula – it reminded me a little too much of Lakeview Terrace, that Sam Jackson movie where he terrorizes his neighbours, which I did watch and found it to be a bit of a potboiler.  The Gift, then, was guilty by association.  Jason Bateman isn’t a particularly noteworthy actor – I’ve seen a couple of his movies, and he’s okaaaay, but I always think of him as Justine Bateman’s brother.  Then there was Joel Edgerton, who’s never really struck me as an actor whose work I have to rush to see – when I have watched him, he just feels like a background character, not someone overly interesting, or possessed of any great technique.  Three strikes, as they say.

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Movie Review: THE WHOLE TRUTH – a mostly uninteresting courtroom drama with a twist! Unfortunately, that’s not so interesting either.

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The Whole Truth is a curiosity to me, I have to say.  The courtroom drama, which stars Keanu Reeves (John Wick, The Matrix), Jim Belushi, Renee Zellweger, Gabriel Basso, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Dr. Who, and the San Junipero episode of Black Mirror, season 3), was directed by Courtney Hunt, whose sole movie to this point, Frozen River, garnered her an Academy nom for best original screenplay in 2008, and written by Hollywood veteran Nicholas Kazan, an Academy nominee in his own right for 1990’s Reversal of Fortune.  There are a number of reasons why this movie failed to engage me, the least of which was a super-late night viewing.

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Movie Review: A STREET CAT NAMED BOB – this true story of a recovering addict and his cat is sweet, surprisingly deep, and genuinely uplifting

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In my review of Einstein’s God Model, I described myself as an agnostic skeptic – I’ll add cynic to the list. In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say.  When people do bad things, my philosophy is that the underlying nature of the human race is deceitful, false, and hurtful, and I rarely get surprised.  Conversely, when people do good things, I tend to want to know what their true motivations are.  Like Holden Caulfield, I don’t put a lot of faith in most people.  Having said that, I try to keep my cycnism in check – I like people, and I also believe that cynicism is a personal philosophy that, like others, could – and should – be self-challenged.  This is how I choose to start a review of heartwarming British drama A Street Cat Named Bob?

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