Guillermo del Toro’s first foray into the realm of film noir, 2021's Nightmare Alley brings all of the Golden Age classic charm of the Studio System along with a classic pulpy story (based off of the novel of the same name by William Lindsay Gresham... as well as the 1947 movie adaptation), which is then fused with his own unique visual style. Following Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a drifter, or is it grifter (after all, this is a neo-noir), with a dark past, he aimlessly stumbles upon a traveling carnival... taking a day’s work, he soon after accepts an offer from owner Clem Hoatley (Willem Dafoe) to join the team – seeing it as the perfect way to disappear from his secret history.
Whiplash, the story of a talented drummer who is pushed to the edge by a more than intense, militarist-style instructor, took the world by storm in 2014-2015 and has continuously gained steam ever since. The simple yet effective tale that consists of a battle of the wills helped the film earn three Academy Awards: including Best Supporting Actor for J.K. Simmons as well as Best Achievement in Film Editing and Sound Mixing. Whiplash has also landed at number 45 on IMDb’s top 250 films list.
Firing on all cylinders once again, writer/director James Gunn brings another entertaining, comedic, dramatic and all around fun feature with his 2017 Marvel sequel Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Though it doesn’t capture the pure lightening in a bottle/giddy exuberance that the first one brought fans (though it is rare to find a sequel that can be as original, unique and exciting), this more than serviceable sequel has plenty to offer. Bringing the same entertaining mix of soulful characters, sharp dialogue, quirky humour, and surprising emotional heft, it also adds some new personas, small twists and important revelations that fill in many teasers put out there three years ago with the first volume. Many terms and words immediately come to mind after watching this second feature: dissension amongst the ranks, internalizing pain, sacrifice, family, dancing and. . . David Hasselhoff???
After a multitude of lackluster features, M. Night Shyamalan has returned to form with his most recent, more independent style foray, 2016's Split – a horror/thriller with an unexpected. . . or should I say, an expected twist (could it be that there is no real twist?). Featuring a tour de force performance from James McAvoy, the talented actor takes on the role of a plethora of very different personas, as his character has more than twenty split personalities. Ranging from a lisping young boy and grand British dame, to a fashion designer and Christopher Walken-like New Yorker, one of his splits, Dennis, kidnaps three teenaged girls, Claire (Haley Lu Richardson), Marcia (Jessica Sula), and Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) from a public parking lot. Claire and Marcia are, for all intents and purposes, the popular girls in school – the type of gals that most cling to and the rest hate, while Casey is a lone wolf and outsider, her unusual ways forcing her to the periphery of the mainstream.
A perfect case of ‘just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in’, John Wick: Chapter 2 starts off soon after the original feature. Starting with a video of Buster Keaton projected onto a New York City wall, Wick (Keanu Reeves) is like one of those silent film stars of the 1920s – though much more violent. A man of few words, he bumps, crashes and bangs his way through foes, a wandering ‘tramp’ with no true home, albeit, wealthier, better dressed and much more connected. Keaton, nicknamed "The Great Stone Face" has the same stoic demeanor as our protagonist – who, for the most part, plays things close to the vest.
We like to think of things in our lives as fitting into a nice square box. Everything has an order, with the structured days of the week to our routines fitting into this comforting perspective. We do not want to think of life as being random, chaotic and lacking a straightforward linear form – as it reminds us that things are not truly in our control. It is this linear way of thinking that is questioned in the 2016 cerebral science fiction film Arrival. Eric Heisserer adapts the text "The Story of Your Life" (written by Ted Chiang), placing it in the hands of talented French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve. Having a twofold narrative, the main portion follows the landing of twelve spacecrafts in random places around the world. With people beginning to panic and riot (as no indication has been made, either peaceful or otherwise), the government attempts to make some sense out of the unorthodox and exceptional arrival. Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) reaches out to linguist Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams), a woman with immense knowledge of numerous dialects and written languages (and military clearance to boot). She leads a team along with physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), the Colonel, and several other military men who will record the data after they enter the hull of the dark, kidney-shaped foreign craft located in Montana.
The title of Hidden Figures, one of 2017's Academy Award Best Picture nominees, has a double meaning. Speaking to the mathematics that is at the heart of the space travel film, it more subtly references the story of its three African American female leads, who, despite playing a big part in Space Race history, have been lost to time. . . until now. Depicting the combative duality of the Cold War, writer/director Theodore Melfi (who adapts Margot Lee Shetterly’s book of the same name, along with Allison Schroeder) captures the essence of this complicated time. On the surface, it is America versus Soviet Union – funnelled through the propaganda-filled battle that centres around who will win the Space Race; though, more specifically, it portrays the civil rights battle, a world where, in 1961 Virginia, everything is still segregated. Written with deft precision, dialogue like "Civil Rights ain’t always civil", which is uttered by Levi Jackson (Aldis Hodge), succinctly represents this era; while a scene that appears towards the end, where mathematician Katherine G. Goble (Taraji P. Henson) hurriedly delivers some updated calculations for John Glenn’s (Glen Powell) all important mission – only to have the door slammed in her face after all of the white personnel have been ushered into the room, highlights the atrocities and unfairness of the era, while also showing how far we have come and how much farther we still have to go.