Film, Box Office, and Stuff

This was alright. It is basically a film about nothing, though.  Much like Tangerine , Baker goes cinéma vérité again as we basically just drop in to the life of a few trashy characters as they go about their business.  In The Florida Project , we follow a mother and her daughter while they do nothing for a few weeks over summer break.  The mother (in the thinnest sense of the word) is a complete leech, a thief, and a prostitute, trying to accumulate money to pay each week's rent.  This isn't an empowering single mum story.  Basically a girl herself, she has no morals or good judgement, and any money she does get she wastes on fast food.  Bobby (Willem Dafoe), the motel manager, is a great character -- the only one in the film!  The rest are the lowest of the low.  The kids aren't much better either, but I gave them a pass because they're just kids.  But still, Moonee is a little bitch.  But I can't say I was bored watching these people for a 110 minutes. This

A riveting and captivating drama.  Spielberg is showing off his talent with this one.  For such a plain plot (at least on paper), he films the hell out of it, and meanders through it with a careful eye of the turning points and keeps the audience engaged in the story like only a master technician can.  From the very start it is just a joy to watch great actors act.  Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks are both superb.  Actually everyone is on top-form, but the first scene with Hanks and Streep is very enjoyable. A-

The best word to describe this film is mediocre.  It resets all the good work that Marvel have done in the last few years with Thor: Ragnarok, Civil War, Homecoming , and both Guardians of the Galaxy films because of just how average it is.  It was quite uneven and I couldn't get into the film at all until T'Challa is defeated and thrown into the waterfall.  It was very unexciting for an action movie, and the fighting sequences were badly choreographed or badly shot, or both.  Michael B. Jordan is good, but Andy Serkis is a better villain (and he nails the accent).  Chadwick Boseman is just grating.  His voice is annoying, and his character is just boring.  He is essentially invincible as long as he has his suit on, which makes everything he does lose all risk, and therefore lose my interest.  T'Challa's sister was a nice inclusion.  Just a shame they couldn't make any of her jokes actually work. I did like the occasional use of authentic African sounds in the

It's not bad.  Very much a progressive, hipster flick.  Made for those morons that believe there are more than two genders.  But again, it's not a bad film - it is just trying too hard.  It's well paced.  It is also well written.  The dialogue feels grounded, and less "movie-ish", which is actually quite refreshing.  Well, mostly everything.  The "I .. respect you" line is cringe-worthy, forced, socially-pandering, idealistic writing.  Ok, so acting: Ronan is average.  She's playing the oddball.  Not something I feel is a stretch for her.  Anyway, she is outclassed by Metcalfe.  Chalamet, also, to a degree.  He does a good early noughties 'I'm-in-a-band' free-thinking douche.  He was actually the highlight of the film for me.  What the film does do well is to recover enough of the feeling and panic and potential and worry of that leap to higher education, so that makes me happier adding a plus to my grade. C+

Following a back room flower power activist as he is promoted to the main stage of procedural criminal defence courts, Roman J. Israel, Esq. chronicles the last three weeks in the life of the titular character.  Competently performed by Denzel Washington, this legal drama is engaging on some level but unfortunately does not reach the heights that it intends.  If there was an idea that this film wanted to communicate, it got lost among legal jargon, uneven pacing, and plot shifts.  Washington plays Israel with simmering peculiarities, but this should have been heightened to isolate the character as a true eccentric.  Wasted potential right there!  Colin Farrell plays the owner of law firm, Gary Pierce, but he is so miscast.  The role deserves a conventional career high-flyer type who later overturns his capitalist principles to share in some of Israel's progressive ideas.  Instead, Farrell comes across more as some local mafia boss with his short stature, soft voice, and tailore

This was fairly decent. It is nothing revolutionary. Your standard spaceship invasion/who-can-you-trust? thriller, but it is linked to the Cloverfield story which makes it a tad more interesting. Though not as well executed as Life. I was surprised by the cast. Zhang Ziyi, who only speaks Mandarin (and all crew can understand her!), has the best death scene, and Chris O'Dowd has the funniest lines (obviously, he's Irish!), and Simon Pegg is one of the radio voices! I feel the film could have shown much more of the monster earlier in the film. Couldn't J.J. just use deleted scenes from Cloverfield ? All it needed was a few glimpses. Showing it just at the end feels more like title validation than narrative demand. It feels cheap, but I guess it is fun enough. I try not to take this "franchise" too seriously. It is a marvel what they have done by plastering over other previously unrelated films. B-