Movie Reviews

Photograph

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  • Title: Photograph
  • IMDb: link

Photograph movie reviewWriter/director Ritesh Batra‘s Photograph offers audiences a low-key romance between a tourist photographer (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) struggling to scrape money together to pay off family debts and the daughter (Sanya Malhotra) of a well-to-do family unhappy with both the current state of her life and her parents’ plans for her future. Neither is all that happy with their lives, but until their meeting neither of them has ever thought about attempting to make a change, either.

A chance encounter between the two leaves Rafi (Siddiqui) with Miloni’s (Malhotra) photograph, taken at the Gateway Of India. Hoping to ease the worry of his grandmother (Farrukh Jaffar), Rafi includes the stranger’s photograph in a letter suggesting that he has finally found love. When the grandmother decides to come into town to meet her, Rafi scrambles to find the stranger and convince her to play along for a few days. What could just as easily have been a throwaway plot to a regrettable Hollyood romcom works fairly well here, as the unusual offer comes at just the right time as Miloni feels oppressed by the expectations of by her own family.

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John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum

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  • Title: John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
  • IMDb: link

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum movie reviewJohn Wick was simple revenge story stylized with a flourish of memorable action scenes (and an absurd amount of killshots to the head). John Wick: Chapter 2 brought back Keanu Reeves as the notorious hitman featuring a more convoluted story that was designed to help expand John Wick’s world. John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum returns, at least initially, to the clear focus of the original by offering a set-up of Wick declared excommunicado and on the run from the very organization he has worked for, with an ever-increasing price on his head, numerous assassins looking to cash in, and all the usual help and support once available now denied.

For the first-half of the film, Chapter 3 works quite well as our protagonist runs for his life and calls on the few remaining debts owed to him. However, about halfway through the film the story shifts and, despite several impressive action scenes, never works quite as well as the writers once again over-complicate what should be a relatively straight action tale while instead focusing on more world building and setting up the next inevitable sequel. Parabellum doesn’t so much as come to a close as run out of time with the story left unfinished (and me left unfulfilled).

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Pokémon Detective Pikachu

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  • Title: Pokémon Detective Pikachu –
  • IMDb: link

Pokémon Detective Pikachu movie reviewDespite having no connection to Pokémon, I really wanted to like Pokémon Detective Pikachu which casts Ryan Reynolds as the voice of a talking Pikachu only he can understand. The cute creature, who apparently no one ever thought to name, is the Pokémon partner to missing Police Detective Harry Goodman. Despite its amnesia, the Pokémon convinces the estranged son (Justice Smith) of its partner that the Pokémon can uncover the truth of what happened to Harry.

The world created by director Rob Letterman and his team is visually stimulating which makes it all more confounding that the script is so bland and uninteresting. How can a movie that looks this good be so boring? Even Reynolds, whose toned-down PG wisecracks and adorable furry on-screen visage, can’t save the film from a convoluted murder mystery that never leads anywhere interesting (other than a complete rip-off of the climax of Tim Buron’s Batman). Fans of the franchise happy just to see the character on the big screen may be able to overlook the project’s many flaws, but for the rest of us it’s hard to see Pokémon Detective Pikachu as anything more than an uninspired mess of untapped potential.

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Avengers: Endgame

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  • Title: Avengers: Endgame
  • IMDb: link

Avengers: Endgame movie review

More than the culmination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that began back in 2008 with Iron Man, Avengers: Endgame is the coda to the series that climaxed in the last chapter and now offers an opportunity for one last hurrah, for heroes to take their final bow, and for Marvel to usher out one set of lead characters and set the stage anew.

For my money, the most successful films of the past 11 years have been The Avengers, Avengers: Infinity War, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Excluding Winter Soldier, a great standalone film which cares nothing at all about larger continuity (it basically wrecked Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. after all), both Avengers and Infinity War faced enormous obstacles in pulling together various threads of the MCU into a single story. And both succeeded brilliantly. Avengers: Endgame comes off like their less-successful younger brother. I’m not going to call Endgame the Frank Stallone of the Avengers franchise as it may outshine Avengers: The Age of Ultron, but it’s a messy final chapter that offers plenty of memorable moments while failing to live up to what has come before.

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Teen Spirit

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  • Title: Teen Spirit
  • IMDb: link

Teen Spirit movie posterWith Teen Spirit writer/director Max Minghella offers an indie feel to a well-mined Hollywood tale of burgeoning stardom. Elle Fanning stars as a teenager on the Isle of Wight who, despite her mother’s (Agnieszka Grochowska) disapproval, signs up for open auditions for a reality-TV series offering a record contract to the winner of the singing competition. Needing an adult to act as her guardian, and later manager, Violet taps the the old drunk Russian (Zlatko Buric) who enjoys her karaoke at the local dive bar. And, of course, it doesn’t hurt when the film reveals that Vlad was once a well-respected opera singer.

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