A Celebration of Cinema

Mia Wasikowska stars in this Cannes selection from Jessica Hausner, as a conscious eating teacher who wants to introduce her students to the mysterious Club Zero. The Australian actress, who broke through internationally with the titular role in Alice in Wonderland (2010), plays Ms. Novak, who comes to work at an elite boarding school, led by Ms. Dorset (Sidse Babett Knudsen, Borgen).  Having a conscious eating teacher on board, is seen as an added value element to the curriculum. The children can only benefit, as individuals, but also as members of a rapidly changing world, heading into a future in which sustainability is key. Little do the parents know, however, that Ms. Novak, who has no children of her own, brings her own highly peculiar agenda to the (dinner) table. She seems to form a special relationship with her pupils, including Ragna (Florence Baker), Elsa (Ksenia Devriendt), Fred (Luke Barker), Ben (Samuel D. Anderson) and Helen (Gwen Currant), whose individual personali...

Alex Garland’s ‘near fiction’ action epic Civil War  ventures deep into the heart of American darkness. It tells the story of a group of semi-embedded journalists from New York to Washington D.C. to capture one last interview with the President of the United States before he himself may be captured by the Western Forces of Texas and California whose revolution is gaining momentum. That’s basically all you need to know about the plot. And besides, Garland doesn’t tell us much more. Civil War takes place in a future America where words like ‘Democrats’ or ‘Republicans’ seem to have lost all meaning. Or as one soldier puts it halfway through the movie: ‘There are some guys out there trying to kill us. And we are trying to kill them.’ Even though the movie is full of violent war scenes, Garland mainly focuses on our little group of four protagonists: Kirsten Dunst plays Lee Smith, a very experienced war photographer, who has seen it all and is nearing the end of her tether. She works f...

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is the mostly fine fifth entry in the long running franchise, that is slowly but surely running out of commercial steam. Directed by Gil Kenan, from a script by Kenan and legacy curator Jason Reitman, it sees the main characters moving back to NYC, after their previous adventures in Summerville, Oklahoma in Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021).  That movie was a perfectly fine way of reigniting a frozen franchise, after the blowout success of the first two movies, from 1984 and 1989, and the false re-start that was Answer The Call (2016). Even though that movie was pretty enjoyable, it showed that the hardcore fans were not ready for an all female Ghostbusters quartet and the studio subsequently caved.  The more readily embraced Afterlife was basically ‘Ghostbusters meets a more lighthearted version of Stranger Things’, with Mckenna Grace (as Phoebe Spengler) in the Millie Bobby Brown role and Finn Wolfhard (as Phoebe’s older brother Trevor) as ‘that guy ...

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, now available on (HBO) Max, isn’t the perfect ending of the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) that we all wished for.  But as a relatively straight forward  Superhero Movie of the Week I think it’s still mostly fine.  Jason Momoa is still immensely appealing as Arthur Curry aka Aquaman, but in this sequel to the (frankly superior) first movie he’s gotten bored with his role as King of Atlantis and the ruler of all he seas. Arthur spends his days playing house with his wife Mera (Amber Heard) and his infant son, but it’s a far cry from the action-filled life he was once used to. Fortunately, for him and also the viewer, he’s called back into action by the return  of presumed dead bad guy David Kane  (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) aka Black Manta, who is now in possession of demonic powers that (among other things) accelerate climate change. Oh, and he also blames Aquaman for killing his father in the first movie. However, to defeat Black Manta an...

Godzilla x Kong - The New Empire is a colorful spectacle, but it is so ape-centric that they might as well have called it ‘Kong Plus One, Or Two, Or Frankly Loads Of Other Apes’ and be done with it. That’s not a criticism per se. Before Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) the Monsterverse was made up of two Godzilla movies - Godzilla (2014) and King Of The Monsters (2019) - while Kong had only Kong: Skull Island (2017) to show for. So a kind of reciprocity was definitely in order. So if it’s apes you want, it’s apes you get. There’s Kong of course, who gets a new tooth early and a new arm later on.  There is a fabulous looking mini-Kong and I kept waiting for the moment that Kong would say ‘Mini-Kong, you complete me.’ But alack and alas… There is the fearsome Skar King, who is the villain of this particular story. And there are lots of other apes to make up the numbers. So kudos to Warner Bros for getting this movie out to the public before Disney’s Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes in early...

Ronja, The Robber’s Daughter is a new fantasy series based on Astrid Lindgren’s classic children’s book about the beautiful friendship between the daughter and son of two rivaling bands of Swedish robbers. I grew up with Lindgren’s work. One of my earliest cinematic memories is seeing the Pippi Longstocking movies with my family in one of our local theaters.  Pippi was, of course, the original free spirited feminist pirate girl, living an independent life filled with weird and wonderful adventures, together with her sometimes a little more reluctant friends Tommy and Annika. Ronja The Robber’s Daughter was a somewhat more grown up teenage version of that same girl, but set in a medieval, fantasy world. Lindgren herself adapted the book into a screenplay, which turned into an award winning movie, released in 1984, and generally regarded as a classic children’s movie. I watched a bit on YouTube and the story still holds up, even if it is clear as day that with today’s resources you c...

  Yorghos Lanthimos is one of the most interesting directors working today. His latest movie, the widely acclaimed Poor Things, is a steampunk science fiction fantasy, spearheaded by a fearless performance by Emma Stone. Nominated for eleven Oscars, Poor Things is a critical darling that by the end of its theatrical run will probably have a worldwide gross of over 100 million dollars, showing sceptics that its possible for artistic risk takers to have it all. The movie, adapted by Tim McNamara, from the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray, starts out in an alternative version of Victorian London. Emma Stone plays Bella Baxter, a suicidal young woman, who is brought back to life by her own Dr. Frankenstein. He is called Godwin Baxter (the great Willem Dafoe), so Bella appropriately refers to him as God.  As Bella grows up from a mental infant to a somewhat more mature young woman, she is befriended first by Godwin’s assistant Max ( Ramy Youssef), who wants to marry her, then by Godwin’...

  Directed by Renny Harlin, The Bricklayer is an entertaining action-thriller, that is helped along by the chemistry between leads Aaron Eckhart and Nina Dobrev. The Bricklayer is based on novel by Noah Boyd, which was the pseudonym of the late Paul Lindsay, who used to be an FBI agent before he became a thriller writer. It tells the age-old story of a former CIA-agent Steve Vail (Eckhart) who has taken up his former occupation (as a bricklayer, no less) but is called back into action for the legendary One Last Job, with the assistance of the analyst (Dobrev) in her first job in the field, to track down a presumed dead rogue agent, while also investigating a potential mole within the agency. If you yawn because you’ve seen this movie before, I can’t blame you, but if at times you need your nineties styled Bond-lite action fix (like I obviously do) then you could do a lot worse than see this either in cinemas or on demand. Harlin keeps the pedal to the medal, the story has enough tw...

  Millie Bobby Brown can hardly put a foot wrong. But what does this tell you about her new movie Damsel, which is now on Netflix? In this action adventure fantasy movie the Stranger Things star plays a Damsel in distress, who can’t rely on a handsome prince to come and rescue her, but basically, well, she has to save her own skin. And by the time the movie is finished, she has the scars and bruises to show for it!  Damsel is directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, whose short film Esposados scored an Oscar nomination and then made the well received movies Intacto and  28 Weeks Later, It is written by Dan Mazeau, who also has some big credits to his name like Fast X and Wrath of the Titans. Damsel tells the story of Elodie (Brown) a young princess who likes to go hunting and fishing, but is suddenly married off by her father the king cause he needs the money to help his people to survive the winter. Even though Elodie doesn’t like this proposition one bit, she at least think...

Underwhelming but not unlovable,  Bob Marley: One Love is a pleasant enough experience, buoyed by strong performances by Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch as Bob and Rita Marley. It’s also probably the most undemanding watch this year has produced, at least so far. The movie basically coasts by on its admittedly killer soundtrack, so much so that it almost forgets to tell a story with any lasting dramatic impact. Which is pretty odd, when you consider the dramatic potential of Bob Marley’s life story. Abandoned as a child by his father and raised by his mother Cedella, over the course of the movie an awful lot of good and bad stuff happens to the reggae superstar. The film is bookended by two legendary performances, starting out with the Smile Jamaica concert in 1976, which was meant to unite the poverty stricken island, but which led to a lot of shenanigans between the two most powerful political parties on the island, the People’s National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Par...

Even though Unfrosted has its moments,  this cereal comedy from Jerry Seinfeld lacks one necessary ingredient: substance. Jerry Seinfeld has reached the point in his career he can do whatever he likes. I remember the time i spent whole weekends watching Seinfeld reruns and loving every moment of it. After that there was the succesfull animated Bee Movie (2007) and I seem to remember that (between 2016 and 2019) Jerry also drank a lot of coffee in cars with other comedians.  A great way to spend your time, I’m sure, but making movies in this day and age - after a pandemic and the rise of the streamers - is something else entirely. Unfrosted is the kind of comedy that wouldn’t stand a chance in theaters these days, so it's probably a good thing it's on Netflix. It tells the (more or less) true tale of the War between Kellogg’s and Post for the dominance in breakfast foods in the first half of the 1960's and the invention of the Pop-tarts.  Pop-tarts were never that big a de...

  Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers is both a thrilling romantic comedy and a highly appealing sports drama, anchored by a star turn by Zendaya, that confirms her status as a bonafide modern day movie star. The two-time Emmy winner (both times for Euphoria), who also starred in various Spider-man and Dune movies, plays a tennis prodigy called Tashi Donaldson, whose career is dramatically cut short by a cruel knee injury.  Because, as she admits herself, her only talent is hitting a ball, she becomes the coach of her husband Art (Mike Faust), who goes on to win six grand slam titles, and who only needs to win the US Open to complete his career slam. Unfortunately, his form deserts him and Tashi advises him to compete in the lowly New Rochelle challenger tournament to get his confidence back. It’s there however, that he has to face, both on and off court, his former best friend Patrick (Josh O’Connor), a former Junior Open winner but now a down on his luck tennis pro, who also share...