Reviews of the Bosch

Well that was way better than Anon  or Fullmetal Alchemist ! Directed by newcomers Yolanda Ramke and Ben Howling, written by Ramke, and based off their 2013 short, Cargo  is an Australian zombie apocalypse movie on Netflix that’s one of the platforms’ best original movies so far this year. While it may seem like a traditional zombie movie, it actually does a lot to set itself apart, aiming to be a greater story of survival, endurance, and human nature. In the aftermath of a typical zombie outbreak, Andy (Martin Freeman) and Katy (Susie Porter) are living on a houseboat in Australia with their infant daughter Rosie. But when an accident leads to Katy becoming infected, it falls on Andy to get their daughter to safety before he too succumbs. Meanwhile, an Aboriginal girl called Thoomi (Simone Landers) whose father is infected, is journeying to her ancestral homeland to reunite with her people, inevitably to meet Andy along the way. The living dead have very little scr...

Many would argue about the most important qualities of a movie. Some would say it’s the story, some the performances, some the technical competence, some the greater themes and meanings, and some an amalgamation of all. It’s all part of the subjective nature of judging film of course, but for me, one of the most important qualities of a movie has always been its score. I wouldn’t say it makes or breaks a movie by any means, but a good score can really bring a lot to an otherwise bad or mediocre film while a weak score can be a slight disappointment on a good one. The brilliant composer Igor Stravinsky said “film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody’s piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.” It should be a natural part of the film experience, and some of the greatest moments in all of cinema wouldn’t be as special without the power of their musical accompaniment. Music after all is fully capable of moving and challenging us o...

Deadpool  has become a modern Hollywood success story: a beloved comic book character whose first screen appearance was met with universal disdain, then resurrected by an impassioned campaign led by the actor who played him, determined to now get it right. Despite its low budget by superhero movie standards, its edgy, twisted, nerdy sense of humour, unconventional lead character, meta narrative, and R-rating made it a massive hit. But it felt very much like lightning in a bottle. Deadpool 2  tries to recapture that, achieving some of its predecessors’ appeal, but with major hiccups along the way. Trying to find purpose, Wade Wilson a.k.a. Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) encounters a persecuted, powerful teenage mutant called Russell (Julian Dennison) whom he forms a begrudging friendship with. However a cyborg from the future called Cable (Josh Brolin) is hunting Russell, and Deadpool forms a team which he dubs X-Force to protect the boy, all the while making quips, getting ma...

Han Solo is a great character to base a movie around. Not only was he the fan favourite of the original Star Wars  trilogy, but that trilogy regularly hinted through allusions and off-the-cuff remarks that he had a very fascinating history. Solo: A Star Wars Story was then naturally inevitable, and after a bumpy start where comedy directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were booted off the project for the safer Ron Howard, it’s finally hit the cinemas. How does it deliver on the backstory of our favourite interstellar smuggler? After escaping the slums of the planet Corellia, Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) aspires to become a pilot so that he can return and rescue his girlfriend Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke). After some time in the Imperial Navy, he joins up with a smuggler Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson), who takes him under his wing ushering him into the criminal underworld. They undertake a job for a dangerous crime lord (Paul Bettany) and along the way Han is introduced to Chewbacca ...

I'm a big fan of Doctor Who . So the fact that not one but two Doctors (one canonical, one not) got their start in a cult British movie from the 1980s obviously makes me curious about it. Withnail and I is a 1987 dark comedy written and directed by Bruce Robinson that’s become something of a sensation in Britain in the decades since its release. It was the career-making movie for Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann and has that same grungy allure of other British youth culture movies like Shallow Grave  and  Trainspotting (though pre-dating them by almost a decade). It’s also ever so slightly dated, but still quotable and likeable enough for its plot, attitude, and performances. Withnail (Grant) and I (McGann) are a pair of down-on-their-luck actors living in squalid conditions in 1969 London passing their time looking for work and wallowing in the state of their careers. Withnail, an over-dramatic eccentric, arranges for the two to take a holiday at his Uncle Monty’s (Ric...

The last movie directed by veteran producer Dean Devlin was last years’ disaster Geostorm . His next feature, a thriller called Bad Samaritan , is definitely a lot better. Advertised as a home invasion horror film, Bad Samaritan  has more in common with Cape Fear  and The Silence of the Lambs  than Don’t Breathe  or The Purge . Though it certainly falls victim to some of the more contrived tropes of psychopath movies, it also takes some unexpected turns, keeps the tension engaging, and benefits from some really good acting. Sean Falco (Robert Sheehan) is a photographer and artist making ends meet as a restaurant valet in Portland, Oregon. In a scheme with a friend, he routinely steals clients’ cars to rob their homes, but on one such occasion discovers a captive woman (Kerry Condon) chained up in the home of a rich equestrian (David Tennant). As Sean tries to alert authorities and free her, her detainer catches on, and turns the tables on him in increasingly...

This review is late. I meant to see this movie two months ago when it first premièred on Netflix, but didn’t get to it before bad word-of-mouth got out. And I had other stuff to do. But I was still curious, and with limited options before  Deadpool 2 , I figured I should give it the benefit of the doubt. I’m a relatively recent but nonetheless enthusiastic fan of Fullmetal Alchemist , the animes based on the manga by Hiromu Arakawa. Both series are smart, imaginative, intriguing, and really gripping; and whatever shortcomings there are in one are rectified in the other. I’d recommend them to anyone who’s interested in unique fantasy storytelling or just as a gateway to anime as a whole. And Japan, as it happens, is just as prone to making live-action movie versions of popular TV shows as we are in the west. Fullmetal Alchemist , directed by Fumihiko Sori, is following in the footsteps of the likes of Attack on Titan , Black Butler , and  Death Note . So this was ...

So this is what the aftermath of  The Circle  would look like. Only the circles are replaced with squares. And it’s no less absurd here. Anon  is a new Netflix science-fiction movie from Gattaca  director Andrew Niccol set in a world without privacy that thinks it’s saying something prophetic about the technological age, but is actually just regurgitating a theme we all know thanks to common sense. Clothed in this unsubtle text is a neo-noir thriller plot borrowed from a variety of better sources. It’s a future of total transparency in an attempt to eliminate crime. A vast network exists on which everyone is connected through eye-pieces that allow them access to the personal information of everyone they come in contact with. This also means Big Brother levels of surveillance. A cop, Sal Frieland (Clive Owen), is put in charge of an investigation into a serial killer who’s managed to hack into other peoples’ eyepieces to keep their murders a secret. In this c...