PODCAST: Dune [Movie Robcast]

Episode 128 of The Movie Robcast whisks you away to the faraway world of Arrakis for our review of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune.

Can Villeneuve succeed where David Lynch failed back in 1984, and land Frank Herbert’s epic novel, the Great White Whale of sci-fi literature?…

REVIEW: Wind River & mother!

Wind River

After penning the Sicario, set in the sun-bleached badland of Juarez, Mexico, and Hell or High Water, which plays out in scrubby, unforgiving West Texas, Taylor Sheridan heads north with Wind River.

His directorial follow-up to 2011’s Saw-alike VileWind River takes place amidst the seemingly endless snowy plains and forested peaks of the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming; a frozen waste that never seems to get the memo about arrival of summer.…

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge – a franchise barely staying afloat

For a big summer blockbuster, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge is surprisingly nimble vessel.

Even given its comparatively svelte run-time, whether the film is a voyage worth the taking is another question altogether.

Directed by Norwegian duo Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, the film is more akin to the original installment than its first two sequels – lumbering galleons weighed down with double-crosses – or the leaky lifeboat that was Stranger Tides, the film speeds through its first act like it’s afraid of taking on water.…

The Counselor is a film in desperate need of help

 

The Counselor is an unusual beast.

In its opening moments, cheetahs stalk wild hares on the Savannah, not of Africa but Mexico; a flamboyant, eccentrically rich couple picnic nearby in the company of some luxury motors.

Sometime soon Michael Fassbender’s nameless eponym will be buying a diamond from Bruno Ganz’s merchant, who pontificates on the beauty of the stone lying in its flaws.…

Skyfall takes the Bond franchise deeper than ever before

 

Well, that took a while, but after four years of languishing in MGM’s cash-strapped development rooms, James Bond is finally back on the big screen, just in time for the franchise’s 50th anniversary.

The question is whether Skyfall, directed by the esteemed Sam Mendes, is a worthy showcase for half a century of martini-swilling, Aston-driving, megalomaniac-stopping, not-returning-gadgets-even-though-specifically-asked-to-by-Q-Branch-ing “spy craft”.…