Tag Archives: movie review

Silent Nights (2016) Short Film Review

February 22, 2017 Alex Brannan

A Salvation Army volunteer (Malene Beltoft Olsen) struggling with an alcoholic mother (Vibeke Hastrup) and a homeless refugee (Prince Appiah) dealing with racism and an impoverished family in Ghana come together in Silent Nights, a short film whose title is a play on the somewhat irrelevant time of year in which the film takes place.

The film is a bitter examination of the underbelly with a sliver of a silver lining of heartfelt humanism. The doomed romance of the film is introduced as Continue reading Silent Nights (2016) Short Film Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

A Cure for Wellness (2017) Movie Review

February 19, 2017 Alex Brannan

The first note I wrote down about A Cure for Wellness, which I wrote after the film’s opening scene, was as follows:

“Is A Cure For Wellness a masterfully shot slog?”

This notion came out of how the trailer clips and first scene of the film is shot and that I knew how long the film was going to be (this was, I should mention, my second film of the day). So my assumption going in was that this film was going to be a struggle between patience and style.

Is the film a well-shot slog? Well…yeah.

Rising white collar man (Dane DeHaan), referred to throughout the film only by his surname of Lockhart, takes hold of that next rung of the corporate ladder, and as a result is thrown into a legally questionable Continue reading A Cure for Wellness (2017) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Leave it, Quickie Reviews (<400 Words), Sci-Fi/Fantasy

The Great Wall (2017) Movie Review

February 19, 2017 Alex Brannan

A pack of mercenaries on horseback take refuge in a cave and are attacked by a mysterious creature. Taking the creature’s severed claw, the two survivors of the attack (Matt Damon and Pedro Pascal) travel to a nearby kingdom on the Great Wall, where they are captured and pulled into a war.

In terms of effects work, the inaugural action set piece that establishes the film’s war of monster versus man is Continue reading The Great Wall (2017) Movie Review →

A Movies, All Movie Reviews, Documentary, Love It

I Am Not Your Negro (2017) Movie Review

February 18, 2017 Alex Brannan

In archive footage, we see at the beginning of I Am Not Your Negro an interview with the subject of the documentary: writer James Baldwin. The interviewer, when addressing with Baldwin the plight of the black man in American during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, he says “Is it at once getting better and still hopeless?” To which Baldwin responds, quite simply, that there is no hope to it.

I Am Not Your Negro is a literary chronicle set to motion through photographs, film clips, and sweeping landscape shots. The raw power of Baldwin’s words is something Continue reading I Am Not Your Negro (2017) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Leave it

Girlfriend’s Day (2017) Movie Review

February 18, 2017 Alex Brannan

Ray Wentworth (Bob Odenkrik) is a greeting card writer. The best, if you ask him. We first see him looking down the barrel of the camera in closeup, waxing poetic about the poetics of card writing. Writing novels are for hacks who cannot edit themselves. Cards are the real challenge.

Following this, Ray is Continue reading Girlfriend’s Day (2017) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, F Movies, Loath It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Romance

Fifty Shades Darker (2017) Movie Review

February 10, 2017 Alex Brannan

Let me get the positives of Fifty Shades Darker out of the way so we can start making jokes. 1) Star lighting showcases our “steamy” talent quite adequately. 2) As with its predecessor, the production design is well-conceived. 3) Academy Award-winner Kim Basinger appears, and should be in a better movie than this.

BDSM is still viewed in this film as a Continue reading Fifty Shades Darker (2017) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Love It

John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) Movie Review

February 9, 2017 Alex Brannan

John Wick (Keanu Reeves), essentially the omnipotent god of this film universe whose nickname is appropriately “The Boogeyman,” just wants his car back. That’s all. Is it really so hard to give John Wick his car back? He’s really been through a lot. Cut him some slack.

Once he gets his car back, a movie happens.

John Wick 2 might be one of the Continue reading John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Love It

Dark Night (2017) Movie Review

February 3, 2017 Alex Brannan

The opening shot of Tim Sutton’s Dark Night, coming after almost a minute of music playing over a black screen, is a beautiful yet unceremoniously conventional shot. It is the reflexive kino eye shot, showing the awareness of artifice and mediation within a filmic representation.

Gorgeous red and blue neon washes over the eye of an onlooker. We can see the approaching police car in her pupil. It is tragedy in a snapshot; fundamentally artistic even if the eyeball shot has appeared everywhere from Un Chien Andalou to LOST.

Dark Night chronicles the lives of those affected by the 2012 Aurora shooting that took place in a Colorado screening of the film The Dark Knight Rises. The film is proposed as a Continue reading Dark Night (2017) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Rings (2017) Movie Review

February 2, 2017 Alex Brannan

The premise of The Ring has always seemed silly. “You ever hear about the videotape that kills people in seven days?” This is one of the first lines of Rings, this third English-language installment of the franchise, itself a remake of the J-Horror sensation Ringu.

On a plane, two people who watched the tape are killed by Samara, the pallid, greasy black-haired monster of the film, as she climbs out of a monitor in the cockpit. This essentially unrelated cold open is the shoddiest scene in the entire film; a strange way to Continue reading Rings (2017) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Drama, Love It

The Handmaiden (2016) Movie Review

January 29, 2017 Alex Brannan

Director Chan-wook Park is not afraid to push buttons. He’s not afraid to be different. Not afraid to indulge.

The Handmaiden may be Chan-wook Park’s most button-pushing, different, indulgent film to date.

In 1930s Korea, a woman named Sook-hee (Tae-ri Kim) is hired to be the handmaiden of a wealthy Japanese heiress Lady Hideko (Min-hee Kim). But nothing is what meets the eye. Nothing. Sook-hee is Continue reading The Handmaiden (2016) Movie Review →

CineFiles Movie Reviews