Reviews of the Bosch

For soldiers, it’s sometimes tough to put aside old grudges in peace-time. When many of one’s friends died fighting an enemy who’s no longer the enemy, it’s understandably an uneasy adjustment. This is one of the central theses of Scott Cooper’s Hostiles , which puts that theme in the context of the late nineteenth century American West and adds the tension of racism. It’s a generally well-received movie that’s notably been short-changed by the awards circuit -does it deserve more or less acclaim? Joe Blocker (Christian Bale) is a Cavalry Captain notorious for his exploits fighting and killing Native Americans. At a prison fort in New Mexico, he’s ordered, much to his dismay, to escort the dying Cheyenne Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) and his family back to their ancestral home in Montana. Blocker has a particular grudge against Yellow Hawk, but reluctantly agrees under threat of court martial. Along the way, they pick up Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), traumatized by a recent Com...

Few famous professional athletes are more worthy of cinematic examination than Tonya Harding, the controversial though misunderstood figure skater who rose to fame in the early 1990’s. However it seems very odd that it should be coming to us courtesy of Lars and the Real Girl  director Craig Gillespie. I, Tonya  tackles its subject and her life story in a tongue-and-cheek manner akin to the Coen Brothers, yet also maintains the legitimate drama at the centre of this aloof presentation, and it’s brilliant. Having been pushed and abused all her childhood to be a great figure skater by her controlling mother LaVona (Allison Janney), Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) faces backlash early in her career over her unorthodox candour. As she strives to be the best in each new competition, she also has to deal with an incredibly dysfunctional relationship with her husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan) leading up to the famous 1994 attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan (Caitlin Carver). T...

Call Me By Your Name  is an incredibly European film. Directed by Luca Guadagnino based on the book by André Aciman, it’s a coming-of-age love story entirely set in the Italian countryside. If that isn’t enough, it’s a through and through art film, full of rustic beauty and meditative lingering, in addition to erotic imagery and nuanced performances. These things aren’t completely alien to American movies, but together they give Call Me By Your Name  a very European identity. But does that identity translate as well as the films’ characters? Seventeen year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) is the son of an American archaeology professor (Michael Stuhlbarg) living in a small town in Northern Italy in 1983. When Oliver (Armie Hammer) arrives to be his fathers’ summer assistant, living with the family, Elio begins to find himself feeling attracted to Oliver. As the two spend time together and Elio experiments through this sexual awakening, a sincere but secretive romance d...

By far the better Beauty and the Beast movie this year! The Shape of Water  is Guillermo del Toro’s passion project. Equal parts fairy tale and monster movie, there’s an abundance of affection to this film that’s very easy to detect. Del Toro puts all the effort he can muster into every frame, and it results in the most beautiful movie of 2017. Set in the 1960’s, Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) is a mute living a lonely life in Baltimore with an unemployed advertising artist, Giles (Richard Jenkins). She works with Zelda (Octavia Spencer) as a custodian at a government research institute where Colonel Strickland (Michael Shannon) is keeping a mysterious amphibian creature (Doug Jones) he found in South America where the locals worshipped him. Curious, Elisa begins to form a connection with the creature, bonded by their mutual inability to communicate and works to save it from Strickland’s sadistic wrath. There’s nothing all that unusual about this synopsis. It’s the class...

I’m hesitant to use the word ‘masterpiece’ when talking about movies for fear of cheapening both the term and the art in one singular locution. A masterpiece is something hard to come by; in a film it has to be a work that achieves near the heights of what the form could and should be. It’s not a phrase to be tossed about, even when discussing very great movies. But  The Passion of Joan of Arc  is a masterpiece! It’s a French film that was made by a Danish director, Carl Th Dreyer, all of ninety years ago, and is truly phenomenal. A re-enactment as much as a dramatization of the trial and execution of Joan of Arc in 1431, it uses the actual records of the period, which combined with innovative filmmaking techniques and one of the greatest performances ever committed to celluloid, makes it a relentlessly heart-wrenching, beautifully evocative work of art. It’s the kind of movie that reminds me of the unique power movies have, and why I love them. This is a quintessentia...

So this is a film that came out on Netflix some time ago, but now that it’s got Oscar nominations, I’m compelled to watch it. Mudbound  is directed by Dee Rees from a novel by Hilary Jordan about two families of different races living in Mississippi in the 1940s, and the impact the Second World War veterans in each kin have on them. It boasts some unique direction and filmmaking, and quality acting, though it’s often narratively underwhelming and contrived. Owning a farm outside Marietta, Henry McAllan (Jason Clarke) has higher aspirations for his family, but is confined by his situation and a loveless marriage with Laura (Carey Mulligan). Working the farm is Hap Jackson (Rob Morgan) while his wife Florence (Mary J. Blige) is a caretaker to the McAllan children. Both Hap’s son Ronsel (Jason Mitchell) and Henry’s brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund) go off to fight in the war, but ultimately return changed, stirring up relations between their two families. This is one of those m...

Decades from now, film historians studying how movies reflect the times they were made in, are at some point going to have to discuss The Post . The Steven Spielberg-directed film about the Pentagon Papers with a heavy theme on the importance of the free press was obviously made in the current political climate for a reason. But even without that context, it is an intriguing story, brought to life skilfully by a team of professionals. In 1971, the Washington Post is a D.C. area newspaper timidly run by publisher Kay Graham (Meryl Streep) who inherited it from her late husband. After the New York Times breaks a story incriminating Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood) in a cover-up involving the Vietnam War, the Post manages to get their hands on four thousand pages of a document revealing decades of the government lying to the American people about the cost and necessity of the war. As editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) clashes heads with various directors, stockhol...

Cartoon Saloon is one of those animation studios that has the makings of being the next Studio Ghibli. If not for the infrequency of their movies, they would be already. So far their film output has consisted of mystical explorations of Irish folklore in 2009’s The Secret of Kells , and 2014’s Song of the Sea , the latter of which is one of my favourite animated movies that I've talked about   on multiple occasions . But both of those were directed by studio founder Tomm Moore and were entirely original, while their latest movie, The Breadwinner is helmed by Nora Twomey and based on the best-selling novel by Deborah Ellis. However, Twomey and her entire Irish and Canadian team are certainly up to the task, producing a gripping, emotional, and absolutely radiant drama. Set in Taliban-controlled Kabul around the year 2000, young Parvana sells family goods with her father in the town market until he’s unjustly arrested and taken away. Because of radical Islamic restrictions for...

it comes to childrens’ characters, the British seem to have a fixation with kindly, polite loveable bears, don’t they? Winnie-the-Pooh, Rupert Bear, and of course Paddington -the marmalade-loving stowaway from Peru adopted by an English family when they found him lost in his namesake train station. Though created in 1958, it wasn’t until 2014 that a movie based on this character was made by Paul King. And much like Paddington himself, it was cute, charming, and innocently endearing. With the death of Paddington’s creator Michael Bond last year, now seems a perfect time for another Paddington movie, and Paddington 2 , which reunites King and the cast, is much like the first. Paddington (Ben Whishaw) is still living with the Browns and has become a staple of the Windsor Gardens neighbourhood. With the 100 th  birthday of his Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton) coming up, he endeavours to send her an antique pop-up book of London. But when the book is stolen and he’s framed for the cri...

Well, Awards Season has officially kicked off, and as per tradition it begins with the least important of the movie awards shows: The Golden Globes! The Hollywood Foreign Press’ Awards show is known for its light atmosphere and laid back tone, however this year it had a responsibility. There’s a giant cloud hanging over Hollywood right now that all the awards shows will have to address and somehow get across the PR that it’s not quite the hive of scum and villainy it may seem to be. It’s no surprise then that feminism was the theme of the night, and will be of all the like shows coming up. Last year, Trump was the man of the hour, and while the oafish shit-weasel was derisively alluded to a couple times, the major purpose of commentary this year was on advocating change for and appraisal for women in the industry. There was a lot of emphasis on and addressing of the sexual harassment epidemic, particularly the multiple Hollywood scandals associated with it; both with senses of...

All the Money in the World  is a miracle. To get the elephant in the room out of the way quickly, this was the film directed by Ridley Scott who in one month completely re-shot and re-edited a chunk of the already finished product to replace the disgraced Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer, and still make its late December Awards contender release. And now that I’ve seen it, I can say with certainty, that that was accomplished! You can’t tell this film had been hastily reconstructed, and whether you like it or not, that’s an admirable and historic feat for a Hollywood movie. In 1973, teenager Paul Getty (Charlie Plummer) is kidnapped by a powerful crime syndicate while in Rome and held for a ransom of $17 million. The kidnappers expect his extremely wealthy oil magnate grandfather J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer) to pay it, however he refuses. So it’s up to Paul’s mother Gail (Michelle Williams), cut off from the Getty fortune due to a divorce, to raise the money or fi...