Vanessa Kirby

The Fantastic Four: First Steps

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Fantastic Four: First Steps
  • IMDb: link

The fifth time’s the charm? With the exception of The Incredibles, Hollywood has had a pretty bad record adapting a good Fantastic Four to film. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is easily the best attempt (even if the bar is ridiculously low). The first thing director Matt Shakman, writers Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, and Jeff Kaplan, and producer Kevin Feige get right is capturing the proper setting for a film as we open a world set in the kind of 60s futurism that spawned the original comic book. From its opening moments to its closing credits we believe this is a world where the Fantastic Four could thrive, where a robot like H.E.R.B.I.E. would help babyproof the Baxter Building, where you could see the Fantasticar pass by, and where the fate of the world would rely on a family coming together to save the day. A strong argument could be made that the look of the film is its unsung hero.

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Napoleon

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Napoleon
  • IMDb: link

Napoleon

Napoleon is certainly goofier than expected, especially for a film coming from director Ridley Scott. Screenwriter David Scarpa‘s script paints the French soldier, and later emperor, who dominated Europe for the better part of two decades as an uncouth petulant cuck forever stuck between his grand ambitious destiny and his love for Joséphine (Vanessa Kirby). The unexpected version of Napoleon (Joaquin Phoenix) gives the film its unique feel but also obscures the military strategy of a man who conquered half of Europe by really only delving into the plans for his failed campaigns in Russia and at Waterloo.

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Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
  • IMDb: link

Creating a six-hour action movie and splitting it into two parts is unbelievably self-indulgent. Thankfully, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is worth it (although we’ll have to  reserve full judgement until next year’s release of Part Two). The seventh entry into the franchise once again finds Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team out in the cold on their own on a race to a prize with the safety of the entire world at stake. This time the enemy is both an AI capable of crippling the world with disinformation and its disciple, a spy with a past tied to Hunt’s life before he ever joined the IMF.

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Pieces of a Woman

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Pieces of a Woman
  • IMDb: link

Pieces of a Woman movie reviewPieces of a Woman offers impressive performances by Vanessa Kirby and Shia LaBeouf as a couple who lose their baby during a lengthy home birth that kicks off the movie. The extended sequence, like the rest of the film, is too long while putting the performances of its actors over any narrative or plot.

Adapting their own play, director Kornél Mundruczó and writer Kata Wéber attempt to sell us on the situation rather than the underdeveloped characters with the idea that we should feel for the couple regardless of any of their other actions. While it is interesting to see the actors hit their marks, Pieces of a Woman works more as an acting exercise than a film.

The film viscerally explores how both characters deal with their loss. In so doing, it produces several strong individual scenes which are loosely tied together by a lot downtime as the film meanders absentmindedly to the next big moment. While Kirby’s character shuts down, LaBeouf and Ellen Burstyn look for someone to blame starting with the midwife (Molly Parker) who was unable to keep their child alive while waiting for EMTs to arrive.

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Hobbs & Shaw

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
  • IMDb: link

Hobbs & Shaw movie reviewThe Fast & Furious franchise has produced a series of films over the past two decades that range from fairly okay (Fast Five and Tokyo Drift) to largely forgettable (see everything else). Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw may not have a lot going for it but it does have Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Jason Statham who take their bickering to the next level when forced to work together on a joint CIA and MI6 assignment (despite neither one working for either agency).

The plot steals more than a little from M:I-2 when an agent (Vanessa Kirby) injects a deadly virus into herself rather than let it fall into the hands of terrorists. Hobbs is tapped to find the agent, who our suped-up super-villain (Idris Elba) and his super-secret villainous organization have framed for the theft and deaths of her team. Ryan Reynolds gets a fun, if largely unnecessary, cameo to bring the hero onboard. Shaw‘s motivations are far more personal.

The film offers plenty of chase sequences but far less muscle cars and heists than the usual Fast & Furious flick. In fact, other the the forced family theme shoved down the audience’s throat at every turn, Hobbs & Shaw feels like a rather purposeful departure from the franchise which spawned it.

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