Posts Tagged Film Review
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January 9, 2020 by Simon Sweetman
Dolly Parton – Here I Am: Film
Dolly Parton: Here I Am Director: Francis Whately Man Alive Productions / BBC / Netflix Dolly Parton is hosting a victory lap for herself. She’s always been a great and tireless self-promoter that understood the power of your personality as your brand long before ‘storytelling’ became a buzzword – but right now she’s leading a […]Archive
January 5, 2020 by Simon Sweetman
Yesterday: DVD
Yesterday Director: Danny Boyle Perfect World Pictures/Working Title Pictures/Decibel Films / Universal Pictures So, here’s the set-up – an earnest young singer/songwriter named Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is struggling to get anywhere and the only one that believes in him still is his friend and manager Ellie (Lily James). She’s been a fan since she […]Archive
January 4, 2020 by Simon Sweetman
Marriage Story: Film
Marriage Story Director: Noah Baumbach Heyday Films / Netflix Marriage Story is, to date, Noah Baumbach’s masterpiece. It’s a fairly immaculate filmography so far, but where sometimes the privilege of the characters has maybe alienated members of the audience, (whether The Squid and The Whale’s intellectual superiority or the world of wealth in The Meyerowitz […]Archive
December 15, 2019 by Simon Sweetman
The Irishman: Film
The Irishman Director: Martin Scorsese Tribeca Productions, Sikella Productions, Winkler Films / Netflix A standing ovation for the victory lap. That seems to be the decision. Scorsese’s The Irishman, a bloated, mostly boring mini-series of a movie is the final full-stop (actually it’s a meandering dot-dot-dot) on his 50-year fascination with gangster stories.Archive
November 12, 2019 by Simon Sweetman
The Kindergarten Teacher: DVD
The Kindergarten Teacher Director: Sara Colanelo Madman Sara Colanelo’s remake of the 2014 Israeli film of the same name seemed to generate nothing but positive praise for Maggie Gyllenhaal in the lead as a 40-ish kindergarten teacher stuck in a unsatisfying marriage, with grown children and searching for something. She finds it in one of […]Archive
October 18, 2019 by Simon Sweetman
Joker: Film
Joker Director: Todd Phillips Warner Bros. Pictures/DC Films/Join Effort/Bron Creative/Village Roadshow Pictures There’s very little to unpack about Joker – unless you’re fascinated by the idea that a potentially compelling mental-health/system’s broken/America’s burning riff had to be hidden inside a comic book anti-hero/super-villain origin story. Anyone thinking that it’s a piece of Trojan Horse brilliance […]Archive
September 19, 2019 by Simon Sweetman
Rambo – Last Blood: Film
Rambo: Last Blood Director: Adrian Grunberg Millennium Media / Balboa Productions / Templeton Media Sylvester Stallone successfully resurrected the Rocky franchise – twice – so here he is with a second crack at bringing back Rambo. And just as the Rocky Balboa and now Creed movies succeeded on many levels [John] Rambo and now Rambo: […]Archive
July 18, 2019 by Simon Sweetman
The Lion King: Film
The Lion King Director: Jon Favreau Walt Disney Pictures/Fairview Entertainment This version of The Lion King is so technically dazzling, so bereft of heart, so wide-missing of any emotional mark, so utterly digital and soulless that even though I knew Jon Favreau was the director going in I was still stunned to not see Peter Jackson’s […]Archive
July 17, 2019 by Simon Sweetman
Poem: Film Review – ‘A Star Is Born’
I watched that new version of A Star Is Born – it features Bradley Cooper as a nose fetishist and Lady Gaga as a nose. He was the bad side of Kris Kristofferson, none of the wisdom or insight in the lyrics, none of the heft or deft or breadth – fucking plod-happy nothing-songs that apparently get a crowd. (He fingers the nose to an Allman Brothers song. And 12 first cousins […]Archive
July 2, 2019 by Simon Sweetman
Vox Lux: DVD
Vox Lux Director: Brady Corbet Madman Vox Lux comes from actor/director Brady Corbet. It’s the 30-year-old’s second full-length feature and it’s something of a Sunset Blvd. for the me/#metoo generation; a 21st century masterpiece. Spanning 1999-2017 and narrated – brilliantly, exacerbating the fable-like quality of it – by Willem Dafoe, the film tells the coming of age and then comeback of Celeste Montgomery. Played […]Archive
June 25, 2019 by Simon Sweetman