PODCAST: The Suicide Squad & Jungle Cruise [Movie RobCast]

Episode 122 of The Movie Robcast casts an eye over James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad and the Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt starring Jungle Cruise.

Rob D’s eye is a little grumpier than the kind-hearted Rob W, so you’ll have to listen and see which team you’re on.…

PODCAST: Birds of Prey [The Movie RobCast]

In episode 82 of The Movie Robcast, Robs Daniel and Wallis review Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn Suicide Squad spin-off.

To do full justice to the movie, its comic origins and add an important female point-of-view on this female-led movie, Rob Daniel also sits down with friend of the podcast Sarah Johnson for her take.

PODCAST: Bombshell, Bad Boys, & A Very Naughty Boy [The Movie RobCast]

The Movie Robcast reaches its 80th episode, so we have a fittingly bumper show in store, opening with a tribute to the late, great Terry Jones, who died on 21st January 2020, aged 77 after a long battle with dementia. The two Robs were raised on Life of Brian so have words of praise for the Python polymath.

PODCAST: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood [Electric Shadows]

Once upon a time in Middlesex, Robs Daniel and Wallis took a good, long look at Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

And what better way to tackle an expansive, rambling tapestry of a movie than by having a rambling, discursive chat of their own (written view available here).…

REVIEW: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

POSSIBLE SPOILERS THROUGH IMPLICATION

Quentin Tarantino has, perhaps, the most iconic voice in all of modern cinema – literally so.

His dialogue is slangy and irreverent, immediately quotable; loaded with pop culture references and yet oddly timeless for it. Part of that is Tarantino’s range of influences: Pulp Fiction, for instance, borrows from both the Golden Age of Hollywood – as with the briefcase inspired by Kiss Me Deadly – and the French New Wave, Mia’s “comfortable silences” bit being directly lifted wholesale from Vivre Sa Vie.…

Suicide Squad is a toxic mess, but at least it’s more palatable than the last DC outing

Let me get the obvious comparison out of the way (at least for the first time): Suicide Squad, the latest addition to the DC Cinematic Universe, is a mess; choppy and lurid counterpart where Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice — God help us — was muggy and self-serious.

The Big Short goes long on edudrama and it pays off – magnificently

You wouldn’t think the recent global financial crisis would be the stuff of comedy, but The Big Short makes it funny – and educational, and genuinely moving.

Directed and co-written by frequent Will Ferrell collaborator Adam McKay (Anchorman, Talladega Nights) and with an all-star cast, including Christian Bale, Steve Carrell, and Ryan Gosling, The Big Short makes for a highly entertaining (and instructive) study of greed, fraud, and three groups of people who sought to profit from the meltdown before it happened.…

Z For Zachariah gets a B+ in the post-apocalypse stakes

 

Craig Zobel’s Z For Zachariah may have the same PG-13 age rating as the bloodless Terminator Genisys1, but there’s more to this adaptation of Robert C. O’Brien’s classic junior sci-fi than just The Road for kiddies.

While Cormac McCarthy’s famously grim work of fiction is structured around, well, the road, Z For Zachariah concerns staying put.…

Focus is on the ball but only knows one trick

 

How invested can you get in a film where you can’t trust anything that’s on screen, let alone any of the characters’ motivations?

From The Sting through to American Hustle, the con-artist thriller is a genre known for its slickness, its unpredictability and slight-of-hand.…

The Wolf of Wall Street: Scorsese howling into the void?

Apart from perhaps Steven Spielberg, the career of Martin Scorsese is unparalleled in the last fifty years of Hollywood.

Not only does his contribution to cinema define an entire genre – name a modern crime film that doesn’t owe some debt to Goodfellas – he consistently seems to take on only the films that he wants to make, only the projects that interest him.…