Movie Reviews

A Complete Unknown

  • Title: A Complete Unknown
  • IMDb: link

“You’re kind of an asshole, Bob.”

There’s a scene between Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) and Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) after their first night together that sums up the themes of the movie succinctly. Returning to music over her, while also offering an offhand dismissal of her work, Bob still brings her back to his bed through his songwriting. In a nutshell, just as Ms. Baez so eloquently puts it, Bob is indeed an asshole. However, he’s one hell of a talented asshole.

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Nosferatu: A Symphony of Silly Nonsense

  • Title: Nosferatu
  • IMDb: link

Once a serious horror movie has you giggling at it, it’s almost impossible for it to win you back. A scene at the opening of Nosferatu features a young woman’s bedroom being breached by a creature appearing in shadow (which is captured on the film’s poster). It’s a cool effect, seeing the outline of our vampire only shown in the shadow of the bellowing curtain. For me, it’s the first, and sadly last, creepy moment of the film. And once you can’t take the film that so desperately needs to be taken seriously, Nosferatu devolves quite quickly into silly nonsense.

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Conclave

  • Title: Conclave
  • IMDb: link

Far less silly than Angels & Demons (at least until its final ten minutes), and with less conspiracy and murder, Conclave tackles the election of a new pope by the sequestered College of Cardinals. Our main protagonist throughout events is Cardinal-Dean Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) who despite his recent religious struggles finds himself in charge of the proceedings where he sides with the more modern liberal candidates (Stanley Tucci and Lucian Msamati) for the open position over other candidates (John Lithgow and Sergio Castellitto).

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Flow

  • Title: Flow
  • IMDb: link

Sometimes you search an entire year in vain for the film which will allow you to fall in love with cinema, and what it can be, all over again. Flow is that perfect film. Springing from the mind of writer/director Gints Zilbalodis and co-writer Matiss Kaza, Flow follows a nameless black cat, and the various other animals he will meet along the way, in the mostly abandoned woodland setting where a flood will displace everything. Featuring no humans, nor narration or dialogue of any language, Flow is a survival story told through its use of real animal sounds, and the sounds of the surroundings, helping to bring the characters and their world to life.

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Sonic 3

  • Title: Sonic the Hedgehog 3
  • IMDb: link

Adding a bit of pathos and depth to the franchise with the addition of Shadow (Keanu Reeves), Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is easily the best film of the franchise. A large chunk of the film is dedicated to revealing the tortured origins and motives of the games’ famous antihero consumed with vengeance following his escape from the G.U.N. prison facility where he’s been kept in suspended animation for the last 50 years. Reeves turns out to be a great choice to voice the character whose less murdery side is shown in a series of flashbacks highlighting his friendship with Maria Robotnik (Alyla Browne) which ended in tragedy prior to his incarceration.

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