Movie Review: TAKE SHELTER – Another great Michael Shannon performance highlights Jeff Nichols’ intriguing movie

take-shelter

A few months ago, I watched Midnight Special on the recommendation of a friend, and I liked it.  I’d never heard of Jeff Nichols before that, but I was impressed by everything about the production, despite not being overly wowed by it.  It’s definitely one of the best movies I’ve seen this year (to put that in context, I think I’ve watched about 30 – 40 movies so far in 2016.  It’s October 8th, as I write this), and it’s clear to me that Nichols is a name to watch.  His upcoming movie Loving, starring Joel Edgerton seems like a risky outside-of-his-box move, and feels like it Oscar-bait, but I’ll trust the guy based on the two movies of his I’ve watched now.  Other than Midnight Special, last night I watched his 2012 movie, Take Shelter.  I said Loving was outside of his box, and that’s based on seeing these two movies.

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Movie Review: RITUAL – indie horror that’s long on talk, but worth watching.

ritual

Finally got around to watching Mickey Keating’s Ritual last night – have a look at my reviews of his other movies (Carnage Park, Darling, Pod) if the mood grabs you.  If you do, you’ll find I’m mostly a fan of his work – I’m appreciative of how prolific he is too.  In terms of movie production, the only person I can think of who is that busy is Clint Eastwood.  It took me a while to find this movie, and although I generally avoid reading other people’s reviews, I was unlucky enough to stumble across a number of negative ratings on the web.  I’m not exactly sure why.

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Movie Review: THE LAZARUS EFFECT – familiar, and badly underdeveloped, horror plot undermines a decent initial premise.

lazarus

While I was watching The Lazarus Effect, I had a rough idea of what I was watching from recalling the trailers, but my perception of the movie was coloured by other movies, specifically Event Horizon.  If you’ve seen both movies, you might think I’m crazy – but I didn’t say it was a fair comparison!  Part of me was hoping it would be thematically similar to Event Horizon – a flawed horror movie, but one of my favourites – while the other part of me just hoped it wouldn’t suck.

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Movie Review: EXISTS – A sasquatch tale from Blair Witch Project’s Eduardo Sanchez that’s better than you might expect.

exists

Being as The Blair Witch Project is my favourite horror movie, and I decided to Watch The Objective last week because it was directed by Daniel Myrick, half of the team who made that movie, it seemed to be the right time to watch Exists, a 2014 found-footage horror movie directed by the other half of the duo, Eduardo Sanchez.

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Movie Review: THE NICE GUYS – Shane Black is back with his buddy comedy formula, but it peters out towards the end.

the-nice-guys

The Nice Guys, writer/director Shane Black’s first movie since Iron Man 3, is a throwback to his 2005 movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which featured a pre-career resurgence Robert Downey Jr, and Val Kilmer’s arguably last “big” role as a thief and a private eye respectively, thrown together by circumstances to ultimately investigate a criminal case.  Flash forward 10 years and now it’s Russell Crowe, enforcer-with-a-heart (kind of like Wade Wilson before he became Deadpool), teaming up with the private eye, played by Ryan Gosling.  Black is a sharp writer, but the biggest hits of his career, Iron Man notwithstanding, are buddy movies – he also created Lethal Weapon, and Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans had the same dynamic in 1991’s The Last Boy Scout.

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