Sunday 24 July 2016

Hunt for the Wilderpeople movie review

BEST NEW FEATURE
dir. by Taika Waititi
Fresh off of his acclaimed 2015 feature What We Do in the Shadows, New Zealand director Taika Waititi premiered his latest film, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Boasting a well-deserved 8.4 on IMDb, this latest film is equal parts hilarious, adventurous, and deceptively deep, its delightful characters and fantastic script building up to one of the best films of the year.

Sunday 17 July 2016

Ghostbusters (2016) movie review

dir. by Paul Feig
BEST NEW FEATURE
Paul Feig's reboot of Ghostbusters was destined to be controversial from its very inception, not only because of Feig's already divisive style but also because of the expectations brought about by such a popular brand name, not to mention a smorgasbord of other factors, the worst of which being Sony's subpar trailers for the film. Thankfully, although it's not without its flaws, this new Ghostbusters, subtitled in some media as Answer the Call, is highly entertaining on its own merits, even if it doesn't quite meet the bar set by the franchise's legacy.

Sunday 3 July 2016

Love & Friendship movie review

dir. by Whit Stillman
BEST NEW FEATURE
Jane Austen's popular bibliography has long been a staple of cinema, with Pride & Prejudice in particular receiving no fewer than 10 screen adaptations. As such, it seems inevitable that filmmakers would eventually reach to the darkest corners of her catalogue, pulling out the early novella Lady Susan, a minor Austen work by all accounts, and expanding it to a full hour-and-a-half feature film. This adaptation, Whit Stillman's Love & Friendship, has received universal critical acclaim, boasting an impressive 99% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the best-reviewed film of the summer so far excluding a handful of smaller releases. It's a testament to how weak this summer has been that Love & Friendship doesn't even come close to earlier title holders such as Boyhood and Mad Max: Fury Road, but at the same time, Stillman's film is an absolute delight from start to finish.