Writing's a fight and this boy needs a battle
A brooding slightly more complex iteration of the character, revelling in the grittier decaying streets occupied by Todd Phillips’ Joker (2019). At two hours and fifty-six minutes, fifty-four minutes more than Joker, it’s about an hour too long, but there are some startling visuals to give you a reason to stay with it.
This charming “memoir” is an unexpected gem of a movie that’ll make you feel like the world has balance. It doesn’t but you get a glimpse of what it might look like.
I don’t think you could find a more aptly named film. It’s long, rewriting creationist mythology as a kind of new-age video game.
Intense and complicated and worthy of all kinds of awards. Netflix are on a role at the moment with interesting, thought provoking, films.
A fitting, if melancholic, end to Daniel Craig’s time as Bond.
The plot thickens until it’s as thick as the elixir Witchers take to give them strength.
Mortal Engines is what would’ve happened if John Carter (2012) had a love child with Jupiter Ascending (2015), and then the two superstars broke up.
Jupiter would no doubt be left to raise their child alone. She’d do her best until Mortal, looking for the kind of validation and respect you can only find on the the streets, start getting into trouble.
John’s returns to the family home would be met with a mix of hostility and incredulity by Mortal. Only after a protracted period of withering contrition are John and Jupiter able to reconnect with their daughter.
It takes time but eventually they all reconcile, put their differences aside, and live happily ever after.
The longline is probably something like “famous horror writer finds inspiration for her new book when, with her husband, she takes in newlyweds”. For me it’s in love with the idea of the writer as tortured masochist. Elisabeth Moss is unflinching as the grisly wordsmith. Michael Stuhlbarg matches her as the domineering husband. It’s an internal film, making physical the interior psychology inherent in a book. Think a swim in the shallow waters of Darren Aronofsky’s 2017 film Mother!
I’m afraid something gets lost in this translation of Daphne Du Maurier’s novel. It lacks the gothic torment at the heart of the original story. Instead, the whole thing feels like that commercial with a resurrected Audrey Hepburn, the one for Galaxy Chocolate.
This lacks the bleakness of the original Millennium Trilogy. Don’t get me wrong it swims in some pretty dark waters, even if that water is only twelve inches deep. In the end it’s a well made thriller that builds pleasingly enough. More than other incarnations of Lisbeth Salander, this one feels like latter day James Bond.
You must be logged in to post a comment.