Month: July 2019

Movie Review: ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD – Not even close to Tarantino and DiCaprio’s best work. but Pitt is outstanding.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews4 Comments

I’m a big fan of Quentin Tarantino’s work.  Ever since Reservoir Dogs I was hooked.  He was a breath of fresh air on the movie scene which was, at that point, struggling to define itself for the new decade.  I consider both this movie and Pulp Fiction as two of the ’90s most important movies because of the seismic effect they had on the industry.  The ’90s was a decade of great cultural change, and Tarantino was a big part of that.  In 1997, I was fortunate enough to play the role of Mr. Pink in a stage production of Reservoir Dogs, and preparing for the role gave me an even greater appreciation for Tarantino’s ear for dialogue.  It’s not real, but he sure makes it sound like it should be.

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Movie Review: GREEN BOOK – Mortenson and Ali give life to the movie, but the story plays it safe

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Green Book is one of those movies that are so often described as the “feel-good movie of the year!” in marketing blurbs, and to me that generally describes something that’s wholesome to its core, generally involving good people doing good things (Forrest Gump), or mean people finally unlocking their inner good selves after learning some life lessons (Scrooge from A Christmas Carol).  Green Book doesn’t flip the script here, nor does it make any kind of valiant attempt to disguise its lack of ambition.  With this approach you sometimes end up with something closer in spirit to a Lifetime TV movie, but sometimes the talent involved can elevate the material, and that’s what saved Green Book for me.

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MOVIE REVIEW: MIDSOMMAR had the potential to be a terrific horror movie, but some unfortunate decisions towards the end reduced its power.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Uncategorized2 Comments

I was a fan of 2017’s Hereditary, unexpectedly so, considering I actually mocked the trailer when I first saw it.  I think I decided to watch it only because I’d heard it was worth watching, and while I saw a movie full of flaws – some pretty bad ones too – I was hugely impressed by the ending, which I now consider one of the greatest in horror.  This time around, Ari Aster’s second movie Midsommar is almost a reverse of that, where the ending threatened to undo what I liked about the movie.

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Movie Review: BRIGHTBURN – how they managed to make this horror movie take on Superboy is beyond me – but I loved it

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews3 Comments

While I’m a sucker for the Marvel movies, my personal favourite movie about superhumans is 2012’s Chronicle, a movie that appeals to the side of me that sees the crossover potential of the superhuman in fiction, and not keep it limited to the kind of material that’s been pounding the cinemas for decades now, and now Brightburn, a modestly made indie movie produced by Guardians of the Galaxy‘s James Gunn has cemented itself right by it.

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Movie Review: SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME a serviceable addition to Marvel’s growing list of franchise pics, but nothing more than that.

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It’s hard to believe, but as of this year’s Avengers: Endgame, Tom Holland has donned the spider-suit in more movies than any other actor, and it’s only been three years since his first appearance in Captain America: Civil War!  To my knowledge, only Nicholas Hammond has played the character more than him.  This time around, it’s in his second solo outing, subtitled Far From Home.

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