Reviews of the Bosch

It’s unbelievable that this happened. A film shot over forty years ago only now being completed and released is one thing, but a film by Orson Welles is another. I’d have never believed it possible that I would have the chance to review a new movie from the man who made Citizen Kane . I’d have thought it even less likely that should something like this happen, it would be through Netflix that it finally reaches an audience. But ending Welles’ legacy on a former mail-order video service does seem to fit the strangeness of his career in its later life. Of course, it’s very intimidating to review and discuss this film, not only because The Other Side of the Wind  is now the last Orson Welles movie, the last John Huston movie, and the clout around it in cinephile circles is immense, but also because, like his former last brilliant movie F For Fake  (and no I’m not counting the butchered Don Quixote ), The Other Side of the Wind  is very unusual, experimental, and incre...

The Nutcracker is the only ballet I’ve ever seen performed live. It was around Christmas 2002 by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and I still haven’t forgotten what a unique experience it was. From the dazzling on-stage effects, to the effortless dancing communicating what I’d never thought could be communicated in a non-verbal form, to Tchaikovsky’s glorious music overwhelming the whole concert hall. It really is amazing, one of the best-known ballets for a reason, and its brilliance is nowhere to be found in Disney’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms . It’s just bizarre Disney would even make this movie. The Nutcracker  is a public domain property, both the original E.T.A. Hoffman short story and the ballet, meaning anyone can make a movie of it, and anyone can reproduce its music, as has been done numerous times by schlocky film studios, cheap animation companies, and inexperienced filmmakers with access to a camera and basic editing software. With Disney so inordinately, frigh...

The Girl in the Spider ’s Web  was published in 2015, written by David Lagercrantz, eight years after the late Stieg Larsson’s final completed novel in his Millennium series, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest , came out. Similarly, its American film adaptation, which released this past weekend, comes seven years after David Fincher’s interpretation of the original novel, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo . Both are a continuation of a series spearheaded by new authors trying to recapture what made the earlier instalments compelling and thrilling. I can’t speak to the book as I haven’t read it, but this new movie directed by Fede Alvarez has the bones of the grimness, violence, corruption, and luridness that characterized its preceding story, but little of the substance. Computer hacker and vigilante Lisbeth Salander (Claire Foy) steals a highly dangerous computer program called Firefall back from the NSA for its creator (Stephen Merchant) to destroy. However a mysterious c...

Of all popular music biopics that could possibly be, none should be more epic than the story of Freddie Mercury. Bohemian Rhapsody  was almost that movie. The troubled production history on this film about the turbulent life and career of the frontman of Queen has given the finished product a certain degree of notoriety and infamy. Initially conceived with Sacha Baron Cohen in the lead role, the alleged dissatisfaction of the former band members led to it changing hands in director, writer, and star a few times. Once they approved a script by Anthony McCarten, Rami Malek was cast and the controversial Bryan Singer hired as director. And then Singer was fired midway through production for bad behaviour to be replaced by Sunshine on Leith  and Eddie the Eagle  director Dexter Fletcher. But DGA rules prevented Fletcher from getting the credit he deserves. With all this behind the scenes trouble you’d expect some of that to be reflected on screen. And Bohemian Rhapsody...

Doctor Who  has never been to the Indian subcontinent; a region with some of the richest culture and most fascinating history on Earth, and the Doctor’s never set foot there. So “Demons of the Punjab” is overdue in that respect, and so far I’m liking the show’s prerogative to explore history foreign to typical Doctor Who . Not every time period the TARDIS visits has to be the Victorian Age. There’s plenty of stories to tell around the world. And a story set against the Partition of India is an excellent idea. It’s something that not a lot of people, especially in the west, know of or understand, and so I applaud Doctor Who  and specifically, writer Vinay Patel for bringing it to a wider audience. What’s also neat is that the episode functions as a quasi-Remembrance Day special, as war plays a big part in the subtext of the story and one thread heavily concerns the importance of remembering the dead. If only it didn’t seem constrained by the sci-fi format. On Yaz’s req...

        Catch Me If You Can is exactly the kind of movie you think it would be based on its story. It’s far from great but perfectly harmless; funny at times but knows when it can afford to be a little serious; very well acted and competently directed. There’s not a lot more you really need to know about this chronicle of the exploits of Frank Abagnale Jr., who conned millions of dollars and committed fraud on an extraordinary scale at a young age, all while evading the FBI throughout the 1960s -but I’m going to try.        Raised by a tax dodging father (Christopher Walken), Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio) performs a series of successful cons as a teenager before his parents’ divorce provokes him to run away from home. Managing to get by on his cleverness, he soon impersonates a Pan Am pilot and begins forging cheques. An FBI operation led by Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks) investigates these frauds and tries to catch him in a cat and mo...

Thirty years ago, Isao Takahata and Studio Ghibli released one of the greatest war films ever made. Even within a genre known for films tugging on your emotions and asking tough questions on the nature and morality of war, Grave of the Fireflies  has touched and moved me more than just about any other. As heartbreaking as it is beautiful, as brutal and unyielding as it is sweet, it’s a movie that doesn’t fail to powerfully remind viewers of the children caught in the economic crossfire of wars, and the little tragedies that occur regularly as a result of their waging. There’s no shortage of things to praise about Grave of the Fireflies . I could expound on its stellar animation, its contrast of richly detailed warmth with broad, dim plainness; its technical choices like its gradual pace, moments of silence, and pauses that Roger Ebert favourably compared to Ozu; I could touch on its themes of arrogance and the failure of isolation; or the implications of its story and ch...

A lot of actors have been making the leap to director lately. Bo Burnham and Bradley Cooper have made their quite impressive directorial debuts already this year, and now Jonah Hill joins the throng with his reflective interpretation of a certain kind of childhood experience in Los Angeles in the mid ‘90s. Mid90s  is the name of this film in fact, and Hill clearly put a lot of effort into its look and feel, though I wish he put more into making it an enjoyable experience. Stevie (Sunny Suljic) is a kid growing up in Los Angeles with his single mother (Katherine Waterston) and bullying older brother Ian (Lucas Hedges). When he discovers a skateboarding shop seemingly run by a quartet of teenage troublemakers, he slowly works his way into joining their gang, idolizing their carefree daredevilry and anti-authoritarian attitudes. Hill really commits to his aesthetic for this movie. If the film wasn’t actually shot on an old video camera, he goes the extra mile to make it look ...