Reviews of the Bosch

At the height of the studio system, it was hard for stars to break out of the character types assigned to them by their studios and the media. Janet Gaynor was always the wide-eyed ingenue, Clark Gable the rugged leading man, Cary Grant the stylish, charismatic leading man, Greta Garbo the tormented leading woman. Big enough actresses could diversify from time to time, such Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Crawford, but it took some work. It wasn’t until The Thin Man  that Myrna Loy could finally unshackle herself from the femme fatale and evil oriental parts she’d been playing since the late 1920s, and of course the recently deceased Olivia de Havilland actually fought the studios for the opportunity to play a wider range of characters. However into the 1950s, male stars remained relatively stuck in the same kinds of roles, as much as some like Grant, James Stewart, and Henry Fonda managed to find new avenues within those constraints. But one big male sta...

“Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding it.” -Lloyd Alexander There’s a prevailing notion that genre fiction has to be escapist in nature, that it’s primary goal is to distract from the real world and provide comfort from it in turbulent times. And that to not comply with this is to betray the function of the work. How often is it heard to “keep politics out of movies” for example. This of course, is bullshit. Genre fiction like all other fiction is meant to be a mirror designed to help us better understand ourselves and our world. Escapism has its place of course, but the best superhero films and space operas and fantasy epics are the ones that are unabashed in reflecting and commenting on the world and culture in which they were made. Yes, even the stories set in a different world with magic and elves. Sometimes we don’t want to see that, don’t want to be confronted with the less tasteful realities of our world or human nature -but that’s w...

It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten to talk about a Canadian movie. It’s also been a long time since I’ve been able to review a new movie I saw in cinemas, as with theatres reopening across the country and practicing safe distancing, I was able to return for it and a few other older movies that are being played in place of the usual new releases out of the U.S. If you’re in a region with relatively few COVID cases, take the proper precautions, and are healthy, I’d urge you to go to the cinemas now when they need audiences most. Plenty of your favourites are playing at reduced rates. Also, there are occasional outliers of recently released films in select cinemas, including Target Number One , a true story crime film from Quebecois director Daniel Roby. It’s a dramatization of a scandal in 1989 when a young drug addict was set up by the CSIS to take the fall for an incompetent international drug bust, winding up unjustly imprisoned in Thailand; and of the investigative journa...

Watching Relic , a new Australian horror film directed by Natalie Erika James, I was often reminded of   Hereditary . It’s certainly not as good as Ari Aster’s creepy family thriller, but it does touch on a number of the same themes and with some similar aesthetic choices. The foreboding house is a major element of both as is the idea of a family’s dysfunction being much more akin to a curse. Relic  though seems to have a little bit more sympathy for its family, and especially the matriarch who is the source of most of the terror experienced by her daughter and granddaughter. She’s played by Robyn Nevin, an actress before now best known for a minor role in the Matrix sequels. And Nevin is very good, both menacing and pitiful as she accentuates the all-round confusion of this dementia-ridden woman living alone out in the country, estranged at least physically from any family. That isolation is the key to what’s actually going on when her daughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) and...

Greyhound  is Tom Hanks’ first screenwriting credit in nine years, and his first that he hasn’t also directed. It’s based on C.S. Forester’s The Good Shepherd  about a naval commander in charge of a convoy of merchant ships who must defend them from U-Boat attacks during an Atlantic skirmish in 1942. It’s territory very familiar to Hanks, who of course co-created and wrote and directed episodes of HBO’s Band of Brothers . Like many sixty year old white men, he’s very interested in World War II. It’s a wonder then that he didn’t direct the movie himself. Perhaps he didn’t feel capable with the action-driven nature of the narrative -his two other feature directing efforts didn’t require a lot of technique. Instead Sony brought on Aaron Schneider, director of 2009’s Get Low to steer the ship as it were. Greyhound is in some ways a bit of a difficult film to discuss because there isn’t a lot to it. It is a movie that is exactly what you’d expect going in, no more no less....

Jonathan Raymond and Kelly Reichardt must have a strong working relationship. With the exception of her first film River of Grass , and 2016’s Certain Women , they have collaborated on every one of her feature films. Beginning with her 2006 adaptation of his short story Old Joy , he co-wrote Wendy and Lucy  with her, based on another one of his stories, then went on to write Meek’s Cutoff  and Night Moves . First Cow , which they again wrote together is an adaptation of his 2004 debut novel The Half Life , and fits in perfectly in their combined oeuvre. Like Meek’s Cutoff  it is a period film, set in the fur trade era Oregon Territory (a region she seems consistently compelled by), and like Old Joy is about a close male friendship in the wilderness. But it is by no means a retread of either of those films. First Cow  is the story of a nineteenth century trapper and cook, “Cookie” Figowitz (John Magaro) who teams up with a Chinese immigrant he saved called King...

Palm Springs  opens with Andy Samberg’s dispassionate slacker Nyles awakening on the morning of a wedding that he and his unfaithful girlfriend (Meredith Hagner) are guests at. He meanders through most of the day in a Hawaiian shirt and with a slovenly attitude quite inappropriate to the proceedings. At the reception, he gives an impromptu speech that the maid of honour and sister of the bride Sarah, played by Cristin Milioti, was unprepared to deliver -and the two subsequently hook up. But while on the beach together, they’re interrupted by an apparent madman shooting Nyles with a crossbow. Nyles crawls towards a mysterious red light in a cave and though he warns Sarah not to follow, she does; and the next thing she knows she’s awakened at the beginning of that same day. It would be too easy and a tad lazy to call Palm Springs  a mere rip-off of Groundhog Day . Though it is a time loop story and consequently uses the function of that plot device as a way to bring about...

If one woman can be said to have reinvented the female-driven action film of the last several  years, it’s unquestionably Charlize Theron. Since her breathtaking turn in Mad Max: Fury Road  five years ago, that stoic determined unbreakable authority has become her signature, showing up in movies like The Fate of the Furious and Kubo and the Two Strings , as well as those more consciously chasing Furiosa’s coattails like Atomic Blonde  and most recently The Old Guard . Setting aside the fact that the state of the industry currently leaves her about the only female action movie star, it is a role that has served her quite well and in which she continues to hone a captivating  screen presence. This paired with an incredibly interesting premise is what often keeps The Old Guard  from sinking into the doldrums of mediocrity -which it teeters on the edge of at multiple points. Though it really has no excuse for coming close. It’s based on a comic book by G...