Reviews of the Bosch

Moses and the story of the Exodus is one of the most influential mythologies of world history. It’s a centrepoint of the Abrahamic religions, and has directly influenced the society, culture, values, and laws of many civilizations. Not to mention, it’s a very powerful story, and one that unsurprisingly continues to resonate incredibly across the globe. In western culture, the story of Moses has been retold dozens of times in various mediums, most recognizably in the last century through film. And these adaptations have ranged from the iconic: Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments;  to the infamous: Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings . But everyone seems to forget the one movie between those two that I’d argue has them both beat. As perhaps the best telling of one of the most influential stories of all time, I feel people don’t talk about The Prince of Egypt  nearly enough. The 1998 animated epic from DreamWorks is a breathtakingly stunning, concise but compelling, ...

If you were to go off the poster and trailer for Love, Simon  you would expect it to be just another stale, sappy teen movie to consign to the same bin as all the other YA adaptations that have been forgotten over the years. But this film, directed by Greg Berlanti and based off of the novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda  (a much better title) by Becky Albertalli, knows it’s dealing with fairly new subject matter for a mainstream film, and approaches it with genuine interest and humour. Simon Spier (Nick Robinson) is a closeted high school student who discovers via his school’s online forum the confession of another anonymous gay teenager. Reaching out under a pseudonym of his own, the two bond and Simon begins to fall for him. But when a classmate discovers their communications and blackmails Simon, he’s forced to meddle in the lives of his friends, while at the same time trying to figure out who his confidant is and when and how he should come out. Despite the r...

This was a strange film -which is something to be expected from arthouse director Sally Potter. She’s known for being experimental, which has led to a very mixed reception towards her films over the course of her career. However I’ve only seen one of her movies, Orlando , her most popular. But I really liked it. So I came to The Party  fresh, expecting some stylistic flourishes and narrative flexibility. And I certainly got that, as well as additional unusual choices. Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas), the recently appointed Shadow Minister of Health is hosting a party with her disengaged husband Bill (Timothy Spall). The guests consist of two couples: April (Patricia Clarkson) and Gottfried (Bruno Ganz), Martha (Cherry Jones) and Jinny (Emily Mortimer), and Tom (Cillian Murphy) whose wife Marianne is due to arrive. But each character has a secret, and over the course of the evening, tensions rise, revelations come to light, and chaos erupts in the relationship of this socia...

I didn’t particularly like Pacific Rim  -Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 homage to kaiju movies. It had a few likeable elements: some creative world-building, nice production design. and decent effects, but felt overall like a hollow rehash of other mecha fiction, particularly animes like Neon Genesis Evangelion . It’s sequel, Pacific Rim Uprising , loses del Toro as director (he’s busy making Oscar winners) for Steven S. DeKnight, who lacks the vision del Toro had, but manages to make this film no worse ….or better. Ten years after the war ended, Jake Pentecost (John Boyega), the son of Idris Elba’s Stacker from the first film, is a former Jaeger pilot now scavenging parts from defunct mechas to sell on the black market. After an incident with a teenage girl called Amara (Cailee Spaeny), he gets recruited back into the Jaeger Corps as a trainer, reuniting with war hero Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) and his former co-pilot Nate (Scott Eastwood). But an attack from a rogue Jaeger force...

How the hell had I not seen this movie before?? Time After Time  is just the right kind of cheesy for me. It’s the directorial debut of Nicholas Meyer, director of the best two original Star Trek  films, and it’s a pretty likeable if not quite technically adept first offering. The insane premise alone sells this movie, but the execution is nothing incompetent, so much so that you enjoy every minute of its bizarre story. In 1893, H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) has actually invented a time machine that he unveils to his club of science enthusiasts. However one of these guests, John Stevenson (David Warner), is actually Jack the Ripper, and when the police finally catch up to him, he escapes in Wells’ machine. Because of a key Wells has that retrieves the machine after use, it returns to his present. So he decides to pursue Stevenson into the future arriving in 1979. As Wells adjusts to the modern world of San Francisco with the help of a bank clerk called Amy Robbins (Mary...

Of all the video games that have gotten the movie adaptation treatment, Tomb Raider  has arguably had the most success. The first 2001 action-adventure earned enough for a less-renowned sequel before this reboot was developed with Roar Uthaug as director. This particular film is based on a 2013 reboot of the game that acts as something of an origin story for the franchise’s heroine Lara Croft. Whether or not this is an accurate interpretation of that game, I don’t know; but as a film itself I’d hesitate to call it bad, though I’m not entirely impressed. Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) has been living her life on impulse in London, cut off from her family’s vast fortune since the disappearance of her father Richard (Dominic West) five years earlier. After discovering his research into the tomb of Himiko, an ancient Queen of Japanese myth, she decides to embark on a quest to find him. This movie follows just about every beat you’d expect for an action-adventure, which keeps any...

Three years ago I talked about  a great Irish movie called The Guard from 2011. 2014’s  Calvary  is a spiritual sequel to that film, however this one is not one to watch on St. Patrick’s Day. But I’d already committed to the idea of reviewing an Irish movie for the occasion, and I’ve sung Song of the Sea ’s praises enough, so what the hell? This film was written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, and if that name sounds familiar, it’s probably because his younger brother Martin has been getting a lot of attention recent for his latest movie, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri . Calvary is definitely his brothers’ Three Billboards . Though there are fragments of the comedic tone of The Guard , this film is much more grim in its dealings with harsh subject matter. But through this, there’s a very particular message being imparted, and one that I think succeeds wholeheartedly. Set along the coast of County Sligo, Father James (Brendan Gleeson) is told dur...

When it came out in 1962, A Wrinkle in Time was a very significant novel. Finally there was a childrens’ fantasy story explicitly aimed at outsiders, with one such social outcast being the protagonist. It also can’t be understated the significance of the book being heavily female driven, with a mostly female cast, and written by arguably the first great woman writer in the genre, Madeleine L’Engle. The book has a really strong story, a ton of creativity, unique ideas and concepts, and memorable characters. But it does have a few issues, such as some poor dialogue, dated characterization and science, and the most rushed ending of any novel I’ve ever read. The key to adapting it into a good movie is discerning the elements to keep true from the ones to eliminate or update, while still making it accessible to a fresh audience. Ava DuVernay’s big budget film for Disney is quite problematic in that regard. Four years after her scientist father (Chris Pine) went missing, Meg Murry (S...

I don’t know the last time an espionage thriller like Red Sparrow was made; one that borrows heavily from the action and erotic subsets of the genre with some Soviet intrigue added to the mix. This movie, based on the spy book by Jason Matthews (a former CIA operative himself), was advertised to imply a plot about a cold, expert spy/assassin who was moulded through rigorous conditioning –it looked a lot like the inferred Black Widow back story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But that’s not exactly what the movie turned out to be. Which is a shame, because it would have been better as advertised. Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence), a former Russian ballerina, is in desperate straits to support her ailing mother (Joely Richardson). As such, she is pressured by her uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts), who works for Russian Intelligence, to seduce a corrupt politician. But when the action takes an unexpected turn, Dominika becomes a security threat. So she’s forced to train to become ...

   The Oscars are superficial. They don’t and never have alone denoted a movie’s quality. Some pretty terrible films have won Oscars while many classics and masterpieces never got one. This has been the case going back to the first ever Academy Awards where Wings won, while qualifying greats like The Passion of Joan of Arc and Metropolis got no recognition. Yet a lot of us movie fans still watch them fervently, but why? For me, it’s because they’re a celebration of film, and even if they don’t always pick the right nominees or winners, it’s fun to judge what films are worthy of the most adulation. Even those who don’t care for the Oscars use their categories as a template. It’s also curious, given the politics behind the Oscars, how they represent current attitudes in American pop culture and media; how certain choices are influenced by the conscientious and ideological tide of Hollywood. Sometimes, this results in Crash winning Best Picture; but it can also result in the...