Reviews

Words Mike Beck

With a penchant for the spectacle, Roland Emmerich’s latest effort is a period piece adapted from events during the Second World War. Midway is a tour-de-force big-budget extravaganza, given a larger than life treatment in a way that only Emmerich knows how.

With screen credits that run long & strong in the disaster film genre, fans of Emmerich (Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, White House Down etc) won’t be let down with more of the same with Midway. Based on WWII conflicts between Japan & the United States, the film recounts the battle strategies & war-gaming from the late 1930’s to early 40’s, delivered stylistically to make you feel like you’re a player inside a chess game of big boys toys.

“This is typical Emmerich though; a hard focus on the spectacle, an affinity for elaborate action sequences”

The literally explosive battle sequences suggest much money has been put into bringing Midway’s visual effects laden tale together. The CG era enables battleships to come to their demise in ways never before seen, while dogfights are intricately & expertly rendered, with live-action & SFX blended brilliantly. No expense has been spared with casting either, as Ed Skrein (superhero pilot Dick Best), Patrick Wilson (Ed Layton) & Aaron Eckhart (Jimmy Doolittle) mix it with veterans Woody Harrelson (Nimitz) & Dennis Quaid (‘Bull’ Halsey). In this Top Gun style tale, they have all the right moves.

Midway does maintain its pacing at breakneck, with even the quieter moments driven along with a modern brooding soundtrack. This is perhaps intrusive & distracting at times; breaking the illusion of the time in which it is set, plus the lack of space and dynamics, particularly in pivotal dialogue driven scenes.

This is typical Emmerich though; a hard focus on the spectacle, an affinity for elaborate action sequences, with characters portrayed & played out as iconic hero’s tailor-made for the Hollywood system. Although based on historic figures with key involvement in one chapter of WWII, the storytelling & tone of Midway doesn’t make clear whether it is a pro or anti-war film. The tropes of honour, bravery, dignity & pride give the film a ‘Cowboys vs Indians’ matinee sensibility.

There’s another war film occupying our big-screens at present. 1917, by Sam Mendes, is very much the anti-thesis of Midway, set during the Great War, told in an intimate way with effects of a whole other kind. If you get to the cinema often & you’re a war film fan, go see them both. Midway will show you just what happens when fire meets fire, but for the cinephiles, Mendes’ film is something else.

words Wal Reid

” A system riddled with racial prejudice & social injustice, it’s difficult to believe this was Trumps’ America a couple of decades ago”‘

Usually Legal biopics bore the bat faeces out of me. The usual drawn out down-the-barrel style of courtroom drama usually ends in misery for the protagonist, so never any real surprises there. However, director Destin Daniel Cretton’s powerful drama, Just Mercy throws that idea into disarray.

An admirable line up of Hollywood stars here. Creed poster boy Michael B. Jordan, the versatile and talented Jamie Foxx, the sublime British actor Rafe Spall, and of late, Marvel’s Brie Larson. When it’s this good a cast it’s always hard to tell if this is going to be a winning formula or not. Rest assured, there are some great performances juxtaposed against the harrowing narrative of Alabama man African-American Walter “Johnny D” McMillian (Jamie Foxx), who in real life was convicted of the 1986 murder of Ronda Morrison.

Just Mercy recounts the true story of McMillian, who, with the help of young defence attorney Bryan Stevenson (Jordan), appeals his murder conviction. The film is based on the memoir of the same name, written by Stevenson. Cretton’s use of emotive in-your-face cinematography on people perfectly captures the emotion of his actors, to the point the viewer is sucked into his somber auteurist vortex.

Actor of the moment Brie Larson, who has worked on Cretton’s previous outings, The Glass Castle & Short Term 2, displays a certain empathy in her role as equal rights activist Eva Ansley. Her eighties wardrobe hangs off her character to a tee, as she teams up with screen hubby Doug Ansley (Dominic Bogart) to found the Equal Justice Initiative with Stevenson. Her support role in the film priceless.

“Be prepared to have your ideals shaken to the core and your tear glands charged..er… I mean challenged”

Just Mercy is a period commentary on the American economic and penal justice system, rather than a drama for drama sake. A system riddled with racial prejudice & social injustice, it’s difficult to believe this was Trumps’ America a couple of decades ago. It’s deeply seeded shame brought to light in these modern times absolutely defies belief, but makes for great viewing fodder.

I enjoyed this film. There’s nothing to dislike except maybe Larson’s benign pensive look throughout the movie, other than that, I had my eyeballs glued fixedly on the screen. Just Mercy is an emotive and powerful drama that is as every bit redemptive and its subject matter is morally unjust. Actor Tim Blake Nelson of O Brother, Where Art Thou? in my opinion, turns in the best performance of the film, as inmate snitch Ralph Myers. Even through his characters physical speech impediment, he shines radiantly.

Be prepared to have your ideals shaken to the core and your tear glands charged..er… I mean challenged. It’s a story that was needed to be told on the big screen, and deservedly so.

Words Sarah Kidd

“If seriously high levels of profanities and realistic blood splatters are not your thing, then this may not be the right choice for the weekly date night”

After more than a few years of dabbling in mainstream film endeavours such as Sherlock Holmes and the questionable Aladdin, Guy Ritchie has finally returned to his crime comedy roots with his latest offering The Gentlemen.
Fans of his similar earlier creations such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, the brilliant Snatch and RocknRolla will undoubtedly enjoy Ritchie’s new project which follows a similar recipe, updated for the 2020’s. Once again as he did in Snatch twenty years ago, Ritchie chooses to mix the waters, his star-studded cast including both American and English actors.

Wisely however, he casts one of his biggest names – Matthew McConaughey – in the role of Mickey Pearson, an American schooled and now living and running his lucrative marijuana empire in the UK; Brad Pitt may have been able to pull off the ‘pikey’ accent – to great effect – in Snatch, but with that distinctive Texan drawl, casting McConaughey as anything but an American could have derailed the film before it had even started.

Employing his usual nonlinear narrative, The Gentlemen takes a good twenty minutes to get its feet under the table, pour a cup of tea and weave its story, but once it gets going it offers up a good range of interesting characters and a plotline that sees a profitable Pearson crave retirement, but only if the price is right and only if he leaves with his gangsta reputation intact.

Cue sub-plots that involve everything from bribery to blackmail to personal bodyguards packing machine guns, and of course a questionable Irishman with a penchant for using farm animals to get what he wants (fans of the science fiction television series Black Mirror might spot the similarities) and wearing plaid shell suits; Colin Farrell seeming so naturally made for the role that you do have to wonder if he just wandered onto the set and started playing himself.

While the cast includes such actors as Henry Golding as Dry Eye, Jeremy Strong as the conniving Matthew Berger, desperate to get his hands on Pearson’s empire no matter what it takes, and the fantastic Michelle Dockery as the completely unflappable Rosalind Pearson, wife and Queen of the aforementioned Mickey, it is none other than Hugh Grant that is the keystone.

A journalist of questionable integrity Fletcher (Grant) has been squirreling away information like nuts for winter in the hopes of blackmailing Pearson and retiring to some tropical island for the rest of his miserable days. Not stupid enough to approach Pearson directly, he instead shows up on the doorstep of Raymond (Charlie Hunnam), Pearson’s personal shadow, who while despite being always impeccably dressed is not at all averse to using force in the form of a bullet to the back of the head if so required.

Despite the overall impressive casting, it is Hunnam and Grant that really make the film, those used to seeing Grant in his usual sappy roles in numerous rom-coms in for a pleasant surprise as his lecherous persona and humorous story-telling peppered with all the slang fans of Guy Ritchie’s have come to expect, intertwines itself throughout the plot. Balancing it all out, the cool, calm and ever calculating character of Raymond, sees a nice departure for Hunnam from his role as Jax in Sons of Anarchy.

“Despite the overall impressive casting, it is Hunnam and Grant that really make the film”

Needless to say, this is a Guy Ritchie movie, so if seriously high levels of profanities and realistic blood splatters are not your thing, then this may not be the right choice for the weekly date night.
But make no mistake about it, Ritchie is back.

Words Wal Reid

Every now and then there is a film that leaves you with a smile on your face. A sense of satisfaction that leaves you wanting, thinking out loud, “That was a good watch”.

The Good Liar is that film. Based on the novel of the same name by Nicholas Searle, it stars the impeccable Ian McKellen as a crafty career con artist who meets a wealthy widow (Helen Mirren) online, and then discovers that his plan to steal her fortune has unexpected roadblocks.

McKellen is brilliant as the cantankerous, wispy grey-haired con artist Roy Courtnay, even to the point you want to poke his eyes out with your fingers. Helen Mirren as Betty McLeish, plays a former history teacher at Oxford who lost her husband and has a considerable amount of savings, thus, becoming Roy’s latest target.

Mirren assumes her usual regal posture. She is astutely wooden with that shrewd gaze as if hiding a secret. It’s a delicious coupling that holds the mystery until the end. Actually, have to say that openly gay McKellen is also convincing playing her love interest. Such is the high calibre of acting, he turns in a sterling performance that keeps the viewer glued to the silver screen, guessing what his next move will entail.

Director Bill Condon (Beauty and the Beast) does a fantastic job of holding together the film’s pathos, delving to dark places during the World War II scenes and keeping the enigma of the characters intact until its reveal. It’s a compelling watch. If you like a good British thriller with the usual tripe; comedy, intrigue and a solid cast, including Jim Carter aka Mr Carson from Downton Abbey and Russell Tovey from the BBC/HBO black comedy Years and Years, then you will simply adore this film. That’s no lie.