Tag: Comedy
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Isle of Dogs Review – Say it three times fast
It seems like through Wes Anderson’s filmography, while his style has moved towards the realm of extreme formalism, the stories he employs it to tell are spacing out into these maximalist folds. His worlds contain seemingly boundless possibilities, unconcerned by form or structure the characters bounce from event to event as strung along by some dream logic. Whatever sense exists in Anderson’s dialogue, and it is easily malleable, buffeted by strange winds and desires, serves to chase the characters to some new episode. Always unexpected, always inventive.
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The Square Review – Boxed in
It’s a mean fucking film. I know it’s supposed to be a satire of the bourgeoisie, the privileged elite, the art set. Those who have made the crucial mistake to be richer than everyone else, but continue to lead their public lives in a way so unrelatable to the rest of us. It comes up to rival Rick Alverson’s work in the level of sheer antipathy that it has for its subjects. That’s when I say in a small voice that sure, I sorta agree with it but I do actually like a lot of postmodern contemporary art.
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Game Night Review – Everyone wins
So this is what happened to all the tightly constructed thrillers that we used to have twenty years ago. They just became the Funny Movies. Like, since the original Hangover they’ve both been cribbing from the same playbook, except instead of waking up with a cadaver and whatever local mob boss gunning for you, it’s just replaced with a series of spiralling comic hijinks. Game Night even draws up its own convoluted web of organised crime, shadowy masterminds who ain’t all that they seem, hard pressed paranoia. The only thing that makes it a comedy is that it’s about the Funny People.
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Lady Bird Review: Everything I couldn’t be
There’s mess in the life of Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson. Nothing quite adds up for her in the way it’s supposed to, or maybe she’s just getting the sums wrong. It’s telling in a way that the character is bad at maths and you ever really find out what she’s good at. Aside from making a scene, or trying to be about as alive as she can be in any given moment. Her impulses rarely serve her well but they’re hers.
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I, Tonya Review – Female pain
There’s something awful fucky about the people who would make a decision to make an uptempo comic drama caper flick about domestic abuse. I ain’t sure if these people even realised the film they were making, but when you’re constructing a montage of a husband beating his wife set some cliché dad-rock needledrop it’s not like you’re missing the forest for the trees. It’s right there in front of you.
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Early Man Review – Tribal attitude
See, I have friends who didn’t like Early Man because it’s all about football. I get it, the early ad campaigns sorta downplayed that aspect, but coming up on release the signs were definitely there.
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Downsizing Review – Small blunders
I have no idea who could have read the screenplay to Downsizing and thought it would be okay.
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Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Review – Cards Against Cinema
So much of the time Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri feels great. Then one of its black characters enters a scene. It’s rough seeing an able movie so deftly shoot itself in the foot, cos as elegant and taut as Martin McDonagh’s plotting and dialogue feels he is totally unable to write people of colour at all.
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Coco Review – New life for Pixar
I’m not sure if I were feeling particularly weak in the theatre yesterday. There was not a single point throughout Coco that I was not either laughing or crying. Lee Unkrich & Adrian Molina’s film flies straight towards the top of the Pixar canon.
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Pitch Perfect 3 Review – Trip on the victory lap
This might properly hit harder for me if I had seen the other two movies. I don’t even know if acapella was even in in 2011. It must have been probably, these movies made bank.
A Grand Quiet 