Reviews of the Bosch

I don’t make it a habit to see Christian movies, though they certainly get play around where I am. More often than not they tend to preach to the choir their moral dogma or conservative political values without any real interest in going beyond and making a good movie on its own merits that can be received amicably by anyone. They used to before the evangelicals took control, but that was a long time ago and a company like Angel Studios in particular, which has seemingly cornered that market since the dubious success of their QAnon-associated Sound of Freedom , has only ever received the side-eye from me. But I had a morbid curiosity in seeing The King of Kings  due to the bonkers nature of its premise intersecting with one great interest of mine. In the late 1840s, Charles Dickens wrote his own adaptation of the story of Jesus called The Life of Our Lord for his children. This was a private project for his family that he never intended on publishing, but after his death was, like ...

There is a politic to Warfare  that goes underwritten. It cannot be avoided entirely -it is after all set in the middle of the Iraq War, the first highly contentious geopolitical conflict of the twenty-first century, and its baggage is apparent even if not intended to be by the filmmakers -an assumption of that is easy to make given the film is co-written and co-directed by Ray Mendoza, an Iraq veteran who is in fact also one of the characters. But as much as his movie contains the consequences of its context, the ruins of a neighbourhood in Ramadi, the underlying machismo of platoon culture, and the general stupidity of that particular war effort at the hands of its warmongers, the film endeavours to broadly disregard all that in simply illustrating with precise accuracy the chaos, violence, and trauma experienced by soldiers in the heat of uncertain battle. The movie’s script is adapted directly from the testimonies of members of Navy SEAL Time Alpha One that was stationed in Ram...

For a single-location thriller setting, a movie could do worse than a high-rise restaurant. It is claustrophobic, both in its sense of space and the subtle suggestion of danger and isolation at such an altitude. There’s an air of exclusivity and mystery as well to the character of such a staff and clientele. But without the right kind of eye-popping design or immediate drama, it could be a fairly dry place as well; and Christopher Landon’s Drop  skirts in and out of effectively achieving these. It is a film structured around a first date in the elite Palate restaurant and a bulk of the movie takes place in real-time. Meghann Fahy plays Violet, a widow and single-mother still traumatized by her ex-husband’s abusiveness and the circumstances around his death; and while meeting Henry (Brandon Sklenar) for the first time finds herself tormented by a series of ‘drops’ in her phone -frightening messages from an unknown figure watching her every move and dictating her actions whilst threa...

Having never watched Mr. Robot , the show that launched the career of Rami Malek, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the actor fully in his aesthetic comfort zone; rather I’ve seen his sullen, disconnected performance style applied to a variety of contexts -sometimes to modest effect, sometimes to bad. But The Amateur  is almost perfectly tailor-made for him, which is why it surprised me to learn it is actually based on a book from the 1980s that was made into a Canadian movie at that time as well. But writers Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli, and director James Hawes ensure that their translation of it is adapted well to his sensibilities, so that he can anchor a film that might otherwise have no propulsion. Because on its face, The Amateur  is an incredibly generic premise, about a CIA programmer who enters the field covertly as an agent to take out the band of terrorists who killed his wife. About as boilerplate an espionage plot as you’re likely to get. And in a broad sense, the movi...

Russell T. Davies has certain trademarks as a writer on Doctor Who . I was probably too young to really recognize them during his earlier tenure on the show (and it has been a while since I’ve gone back and watched it), but they are very apparent this time around. And I mean that in as neutral a way as I can. I don’t think his patterns are necessarily a bad thing, and they have produced great moments and great Doctor Who  drama -especially when paired with a certain degree of innovative storytelling, which I think is apparent in “The Robot Revolution”. But they are there regardless, and from even just an opening that introduces a new companion via flashback to their past, which will almost certainly have some consequence for a series-long arc centring on that companion, I had a good idea of what to expect of the episode overall. It is perhaps a little tough for Davies to stray from his formulas, in part because they have worked out so well for him for so long, but also because I th...

The experience of watching A Minecraft Movie  with an audience full of deeply invested, unruly teenagers was far more entertaining than the movie itself. I don’t know that I have ever felt more out-of-step with the current generation than in this context, witnessing a full audience of young people enthralled with this cinematic translation of arguably the biggest specifically Gen-Z pop culture phenomenon, which I had virtually no knowledge of or even a reference point for (I just assumed Minecraft  was a digital version of Lego). This must have been what it was like for our own elders when the Harry Potter  movies came out -confused themselves but in awe of how passionate the kids are for it. Remembering and empathizing with that passion is probably why it pains me a bit more than expected to say that A Minecraft Movie  is pretty bad. From what I can gather (and the movie makes few real efforts to acquiesce to non-fans in the audience), there is a lot of room for inv...

Open your eyes people! There is a version of Alejandro Amenábar's second feature that becomes the most obnoxious conspiracy tripe you'd ever see -if the title is anything to go by. In the way that The Matrix  cultivated a following of nut-jobs misunderstanding the underlying thesis to its open radical concept. Open Your Eyes  is a little like The Matrix , if it ended at the point that Neo took the red pill and did a whole lot more to mess with his sense of reality up to that point. And perhaps if it had gotten in bed with The Substance . The movie might be better known as the original version of Vanilla Sky , Cameron Crowe and Tom Cruise's strange collaborative follow-up to Jerry Maguire , with Penélope Cruz actually reprising her role from this version, one of the movies that first broke her out as a star in Spain. She is Sofía, the beautiful, enigmatic love interest of César, played by Eduardo Noriega, a twenty-something Madridian who strongly values both his looks...