Reviews of the Bosch

The word “Titanic” has perhaps unfortunately become as synonymous with James Camerons’ 1997 epic romance as with the actual world-shaking tragedy itself that claimed the lives of some 1500 people when the extravagant passenger liner struck an iceberg on April 15 th  1912. More than any other movie, Titanic  has attained a pop cultural capital on par with the historical event it’s based on –the world being far enough away from that disaster now for it to no longer be sacred ground, but not quite so far that this fact isn’t a little bit troubling. Almost since it came out, Titanic  had its detractors, though not usually for this fact or even matters of historical accuracy, as much as for its sentimental romance and gall to become one of the most profitable movies of all time off it. But for those intolerant of such themes or just looking for a different perspective on the Titanic  sinking, there was already a movie forty years older to whet that appetite. P...

Each Guy Ritchie movie since The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  has found a new way to disappoint me. His King Arthur , which could have been something truly different from him, was a disastrous marriage of his distinct laddish style with a classical medieval story. Aladdin , where that style could have made the movie interesting, was neutered by Disney homogeneity, leaving the film effectively bereft of any personal touch and hollow in multiple ways. And now The Gentlemen , which stood to be a return to form, a reprisal of the kind of British gangster movie that Ritchie made his name on, is let down by its own cynicism, a script far too pleased with itself, and an absence of the humanity that made his first two movies in this genre resonant. In fairness, it is a better movie than his last two, Ritchie palpably much more at ease in his comfort zone of slickly edited interweaving storylines characterized by sharp wit and specifically pronounced accents. He’s delighted too by his nonlin...

The idea that the Academy Awards are prestigious was more or less invented by the Academy itself. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences didn’t originate to recognize artistic achievement, it was created in 1927 by Louis B. Mayer to circumvent the rise of labour unions in the Hollywood industry. And the awards was just a part of that with the added purpose of raising the esteem of Hollywood’s product. According to The Academy Awards: The Complete Unofficial History : “…It was decided that the Academy would serve as its own censor before the government got into the act. Though the movies had become the fourth-largest industry in America, there were already rumblings about its often titillating product from concerned mothers and clergymen. The industry needed a touch of class and a public relations coup. The idea of awarding a golden statuette to the best of the best was just the ticket.” Louis B. Mayer Much like auteur theory, the value of the Oscars, as it was offi...

That was a lot to take in! Whatever you think of him, Chris Chibnall is certainly a bold storyteller. He was on Broadchurch , and especially this series, he’s proving to be on Doctor Who . Re-introducing serialization and multiple long-term story arcs has given him the opportunity to flaunt that audacity largely in the form of big dramatic twists with major implications and plenty of intrigue. “Spyfall” had one, “Spyfall Part 2” had another, and “Fugitive of the Judoon” has one as well, the second bombshell following what might be the best surprise character reveal since Tom Baker’s ‘Curator’ showed up at the end of “The Day of the Doctor”. None of these are cheap storytelling tricks, but rather large gambits that are extremely exciting to watch. However, that onus to follow-up is all the greater, to build on such developments or resolve them in equally exciting ways. And it asks for a lot of your trust. Fortunately, and without that end in sight presently, these choices are rem...

Uncut Gems  opens in Ethiopia at what looks to be a fairly severe accident at a mine. A couple men, uninterested or unmoved by this keep up the work until they find a rock with shards of extremely rare black opal embedded all over it. The camera moves in on the opal, magnifying its magnificent fractals of the whole colour spectrum, to a microscopic degree until it appears to be its own little galaxy, that itself gradually evolves into something organic, something beating like a heart, no longer dazzling but discomforting. We soon realize we are seeing the inside of a human body, and it becomes apparent (especially to anyone who’s underwent it) that this is a colonoscopy, and sure enough the pan widens to reveal the image on a medical screen in front of a doctor and a patient on a surgical bed, his face turned away. As Uncut Gems was making the rounds at TIFF and various press screenings over the past few months, I was hearing a lot about these new young filmmakers the Safdie...

Whatever else it may be, a Makoto Shinkai movie is always beautiful. The quality of his stories may vary, but his animation style, frequently making use of more pronounced shadow and texture than the average anime film, employing interesting CGI techniques and evocative “camera” positioning and movement, is almost always breathtaking. And it seems to grow richer with each passing project, bold and vivid and captivating and innovative in new ways. Such is the case with Weathering With You , his follow-up to the wildly successful Your Name . Like that film, it’s a teen romance with heavy supernatural elements, the story of a runaway boy in Tokyo who falls in love with an orphan girl possessed with an ability to control the weather. And like that film, there’s more going on, larger contexts and metaphors beneath the surface that naturally invite comparison and contrast to the prior work, which remains better. But it’s not saying much that the film is unoriginal in structure a...

On Wikipedia’s page for Underwater , the interesting fact is noted that this is the last film released under Twentieth Century Fox, prior to its name change a couple days ago to Twentieth Century Studios (making it much harder for film writers to use shorthand for the studio now that ‘Fox’ no longer exists). It’s fitting though, given how much this movie has in common with another famous …er… ‘Twentieth Century’ title, Alien . Director William Eubank doesn’t do much to hide that fact, or if he does he’s not very good at it. From the small team isolated in a dark abyss being picked off one by one to the mysterious nature of their inhuman adversary, kept in shadows, to even the contradictory natures of the two women in the group, one primarily headstrong, resourceful, and commanding, and the other anxious and seemingly timid, there’s not much plausible deniability for where this movie is deriving most of its influence, both narratively and aesthetically. There’s even an infant cre...