#film criticism

#film criticism

We're Nothing at All kicks off with a moment of rupture: on a seemingly ordinary Valentine's Day in Hong Kong, a double-decker bus suddenly bursts into flames. The deadly explosion triggers a police inquiry led by Lung (Patrick Tam), a skilled forensics specialist whose investigation reveals a maze of intersecting lives. From inspecting the charred bodies of the victims rendered in lurid closeup to retracing CCTV footage, Lung's gathering of clues is crosscut with flashbacks concerning those involved in the explosion.

Some of these reviews are cracking me up. It's clear they have never played the game and have no idea what the fans want or ANY of the rules/ canon of Mortal Kombat. One reviewer was mad that a guy 'had a laser eye!' Why the fuck do we still allow people that don't have any love for the genre review these movies! Baffling.

Tom Mauser, whose son Daniel was among 13 students killed at the Columbine shooting, feels that leveraging such subject matter for a romantic comedy is awful.

War of the Worlds won five Razzies in total: worst remake, worst actor, worst screenplay, worst director, and worst picture. Critics panned the movie; it scored abysmally low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. Members of the Golden Raspberry Foundation described the direct-to-video War of Worlds remake as a 'cult hate-watch classic' and 'a near sweeper of our $4.97 trophy.'

From its opening scene-a shakedown of Armando Solimões (Wagner Moura) by local authorities at a rural gas station-Kleber Mendonça Filho immerses viewers in a world of casual corruption and clandestine violence endemic to authoritarian rule.

The appeal of a romcom is that we know what is going to happen; therein lies the comfort and joy. Previous reviewers have mistaken well-loved tropes for a lack of imagination. Done properly, a romcom takes our hand through a series of events that are both audaciously unrealistic and deeply familiar. Everything, every character, every line of dialogue, every Irish cow that blocks the bickering pair's journey is there in service of the love story.

James Lorimer, writing in the North British Review, promised that the novel would 'never be generally read.' Nearly two centuries later, it's regarded as one of the great works of English literature.

In the Netflix series, three longtime Belfast friends must revisit their childhood trauma to unravel the mystery of a fourth friend's disappearance- raucous Northern Irish hijinks ensue.

When a woman directs boldly, it's trashy. When a man does, it's visionary

Remember when "Wuthering Heights" first screened and all those glowing early reactions flooded social media-with even one "critic" calling it a "God-tier classic"? It turns out that was a carefully calibrated mirage concocted by Warner Bros. A report claims that "Wuthering Heights" had "one of the biggest global marketing juggernauts the world has ever seen." Hyperbole? Maybe. But what do you make of the claim that "almost 2,000 social media influencers were paid by Warners to post nice things about the film"?

Shuffling under the mortal coil this week (aka hosting the Gabfest), it's our OG players Steve, Dana, and Julia. Like a morose Danish prince contemplating a human skull, they gaze upon the Oscar nominated , based on the novel by Maggie O'Farrell inspired by William Shakespeare's life. Directed by Chloé Zhao and starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, Hamnet has brought some critics to tears and left others cold. Our hosts share where they landed.

There's a mildly amusing on-paper joke at the centre of manic art world comedy The Gallerist: what if someone was accidentally impaled on an exhibit but rather than report it, the corpse became part of the artwork? Sure, poking fun at the absurdity of modern art might seem a little dated and definitely a little too easy but maybe with a packed cast including Oscar winners Natalie Portman, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Da'Vine Joy Randolph, there could be a fun, fast-paced caper here?

Grief-porn, in relation to cinema, would suggest that the film in question is emotionally manipulative, formulaic; grief-art would suggest the film unleashes feelings both universal and true. It's curiously circular. In a film about grief, the valorised quality is depth of feeling; it stands or falls by how profoundly the hero(ine) experiences emotion, and the audience proves its acuity, buys itself into the imaginative contract, by its ability to mirror that profundity.

Fraser plays Phillip, a hapless unemployed actor from the US who a few years previously came to Tokyo to do a goofy TV ad for toothpaste and, having no friends or family back home, simply stayed on. He lucks into a weird new source of income: working for a rental family, based on firms in Japan which really do offer bespoke therapeutic role-play services, such as errant spouses, deceased