How do we categorize ambition in a film?
It has to mean more than scope or scale — Avengers: Age of Ultron is big and bold but what new does it attempt in terms of storytelling, apart from maybe giving Hawkeye something to do?…
Author: robertmwallis
Graduate of Royal Holloway and the London Film School. Founder of Of All The Film Sites; formerly Of All The Film Blogs. Formerly Film & TV Editor of The Metropolist and Official Sidekick at A Place to Hang Your Cape. Co-host of The Movie RobCast podcast (formerly Electric Shadows) and member of the Online Film Critics Society.
Escobar: Paradise Lost thrives in the shadow of The Godfather
A feared and beloved crime family patriarch relaxes on a compound surrounded by loved ones, there to celebrate a special occasion. There’s music, and one of the clan has brought along their significant other.
So far so The Godfather, though the setting of Esobar: Paradise Lost is more akin to the film’s 1974 sequel, the isolated townships, dirt roads, and tropical forests of Colombia.…
Blackhat might bowl you over with disappointment
If you’re a fan of Heat, you’d be forgiven for thinking that a Michael Mann techno thriller sounds like just the ticket.
Mann’s first foray into film since 2009’s Public Enemies, Blackhat promised the glossy neon visuals of Miami Vice, the race-against-the-clock forensics of Manhunter – in short, a combination of all the traits (with the exception, perhaps, of Last of the Mohicans) that had made his earlier work so stimulating.…
Les combattants (Love at First Fight) is a romcom at war with itself
All’s fair in love and war, as the saying goes, and in Les combattants (AKA Love at First Fight) those two things aren’t so far apart.
The directorial debut of Thomas Cailley — he also shares writing duties with Claude Le Pape — this French-language film is a romcom but only in the most superficial of terms.…
Timbuktu is a journey into the heart of everyday extremism
As issues go there are few more topical or red-button than Islamic fundamentalism.
Therefore it makes it all the more impressive that Abderrahmane Sissako’s new film, Timbuktu, manages to tackle it with such integrity and even humour.
A gazelle dashes through the stunted desert undergrowth.…
Usually a one-star rating feels punitive, but in the case of Fantastic 4 its cautionary, even a little sad.
If Bryan Singer’s X-Men uses being a mutant as a metaphor for being gay then Josh Trank’s gritty Fantastic Four reboot would seem analogous to being a moody teen.
Its central quarter is certainly a moody bunch: dweeby genius Reed Richards (Miles Teller), whose parents don’t understand him; Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), a would-be hard-case from a bad home; Johnny Storm (Michael B.…
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation doesn’t miss a beat
Another Mission: Impossible film, another meaningless subtitle.
As the season of the super-spy commences – Man from UNCLE promises slick self-referential silliness, SPECTRE seems likely to continue the trend of Bond as dark, ambitious psychological thriller – Tom Cruise returns to the role of IMF agent Ethan Hunt, by now probably the most disavowed person in cinema history.…
Pete Docter proves just the tonic for Pixar with Inside Out
Say what you want about the superhero genre, over the past twenty years Pixar has turned our childhoods into a cottage history.
From the animated playthings of Toy Story to the night terrors of Monsters, Inc., with the occasional sequel and prequel thrown in, no studio has displayed such consistent inventiveness and insight into the processes of growing up.…
Maggie shows the Austrian Oak is still putting down roots
As his involvement in Terminator Genisys shows, Arnold Schwarzenegger is not a man who’s afraid to return to the same watering hole.
Over the course of forty years — and almost sixty films — he’s taken on iconic villains like the Predator, the T-1000, and Charles Dance (because screw it, I liked The Last Action Hero), but has so far steered clear of the Universal lineup vis-a-vis Dracula, Mummy, and The Wolfman.…
True Story is a pallid case study that seems likely to fade away before too long
The truth is a funny thing. While facts may be unyielding — a child’s body submerged in a suitcase with a teddy bear; a flood of brackish water — our relationship to them is often more elastic.
Case in point: reporter Michael Finkel (Jonah Hill), dismissed from his job at the New York Times for fabrication, and Christian Longo (James Franco), a man accused of murdering his wife and children.…