I remember being blown away by the original Matrix. I was an impressionable teenager and it absolutely melted my mind. The story was recycled from a hundred different sci-fi tropes that I was already familiar with - but the direction and effects were outstanding. Nowadays, of course, CGI is par for the course. Literally any film-maker with a laptop can churn out effects a hundred times better than the original movie. So directors have to rely on story if they want to make an impact. I…
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What a dull and plodding movie. It is utterly devoid of joy, wonder, and excitement. Instead, we get obviously bored actors reciting tediously incomprehensible exposition for two hours. It's Captain Planet for the modern age. Only with their powers combined can our calculatedly-diverse cast defeat the baddies! So just like every other MCU story. The eponymous Eternals are aliens masquerading as gods - so far, so Erich von Däniken. But, somehow Palpatine returned their old enemies have come …
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I wish I was clever enough to get all the symbolism of this movie! Dev Patel is consistently one of the best British actors of the modern age. He doesn't just carry this film - he elevates it. Usually I'd tire of an actor being in every single shot, but he has this gift of remaining interesting and allowing the focus to flow to the other characters. It feels like the sort of movie that Terry Gilliam would make - if he could be persuaded to reign in the excess. Or Quentin Tarintino if he could …
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If you enjoyed this, I would thoroughly recommend that you watch シン・ゴジラ (Shin Godzilla) - a brilliant Japanese film about the bureaucracy involved in the Japanese state's reaction to a Godzilla attack. It's a biting satire - expertly showcasing the number of photocopiers it would take to organise the response. Brilliant film! Don't Look Up is a lot less subtle. But, it does have the A-List of comedy giving it their all. I keep forgetting that Leonardo DiCaprio is such a great actor. The whole c…
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What a treat of a movie! Kate Winslet shows, once again, how great acting isn't about who can shout the loudest, but who can convey the most meaning through a single glance. It is a movie of delightful contrasts - the sound design is overpoweringly loud, until it suddenly disappears. The silence is rarely punctuated with anything so crude as dialogue. In a way, the sex scenes feel not gratuitous, but superfluous. This isn't me being a prude - this is a movie about furtive glances and…
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I'm not a big fan of superhero movies - and the Marvel ones are particularly bad - but this is… pretty good! It's nice to see a modern / westernised "Kung Fu" movie. All the budget of a blockbuster, all the cheese of cheap Wuxia. It's refreshing that so much of it is subtitled - and surprisingly brave for a Hollywood studio. There's no daft love-story wedged in, and no obsessive call-backs to previous movies. If you didn't catch the cameos or background detail, there's no way you'd know this …
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I like my comedies dark but… Fucking hell! I don't think I've ever seen anything so bitter, twisted, and hilarious. What if your dead girlfriend was haunting you and your one-night stand? It is an idea which has been done a few times. Think "So Haunt Me!" but with a lot more blood and sex. No, much more than you're thinking. I spent the entire film like 😲. I'm not great with blood and pain - but there was only one moment of physical violence that I found uncomfortable. The rest was just shee…
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James Bond Will Return! OK, but why though? Action movies these days are little more than non-interactive video games. You're not watching an actor perform feats of daring-do, subtly enhanced with cinema trickery; you're watching stunt doubles and cartoony CGI. So you're left to enjoy "witty" dialogue (patchy), nifty gadgets (lacking), and plot tension (mostly absent until the end). Bond hits his targets every time while his enemies spray machine-gun fire which never leaves a scratch. You're …
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I don't understand British movies from the 1960s. They often seem to be completely devoid of coherent plot. Things just happen with little regard for whether they make narrative sense. Much like The Magic Christian, this is a loose series of anarchic sketches strung together on a flimsy pretence. The audience, I think, is either supposed to be bewildered or stoned out of their minds. It quite often descends into shouting and chaos. With little chance for the audience to catch their breath…
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It's hard to know what to make of Dune. It is visually and sonically impressive. It's a great ride from start to finish. But - and it's a big but - you've seen it all before. Partly that's because Dune was published in 1965 and every sci-fi film made after that date used it as a template. Star Wars' Tatooine is the obvious example. But you've seen the sword-training montage in Game of Thrones, the corridor battle in Daredevil, the wily natives in Avatar, the chosen-one in The Matrix, the epic …
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Cruella is a soundtrack with a movie attached. Every time the film thinks you might be getting a little bored, or feels like you might be glancing at your phone, the DJ thumps on another banger to make you say "CHOOOOON"! That works brilliantly in old movies where you're nostalgic for feeling like you did as a kid. But here it is a cheap way to inject a sort of faux-nostalgia. You liked The Zombies - so you'll like this movie. It works in something like Good Morning Vietnam, because the…
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This is an offensively bad movie. It starts with a hilarious premise - what if your boyfriend broke up with you during a sky dive? The first few minutes are genuinely funny. And then it sort of descends into a TV movie about finding love. Which would be fine, I guess, if it were a poundshop DVD - but this stars Jeremy Irons and Diane Keaton! Two titans of the movie industry appearing in something that looks like it was shot on a budget of about a fiver. The script is conspicuous by its…
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