Love & Friendship movie review

dir. by Whit Stillman

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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.

Finding Dory movie review

dir. by Andrew Stanton

After a long period of declining critical reception, Pixar made a massive comeback last year with the excellent Inside Out. Their latest effort, Finding Dory, is one of a few planned sequels to their most popular films. The film is too fun and charming to break their recent winning streak, but it's far from one of the studio's most inspired efforts, and especially after Inside Out, it seems especially lightweight and formulaic, delightful in the moment but not likely to be remembered in a week's time.

The Nice Guys movie review

dir. by Shane Black
Shane Black's third directorial effort, following cult hit Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and blockbuster Iron Man 3, and his first not starring Robert Downey Jr., built up a wave of anticipation off the backs of a few very promising trailers. The duo of Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling, alongside an irreverent tone, immediately sold The Nice Guys as a delightful action-comedy for the summer season. While the film certainly has its fair share of humour and charm, and while it gets more entertaining as it goes on, its jokes are disappointingly uneven, and a frustratingly high number of elements in the film aren't fully realised, up to and including its lead characters.

Captain America: Civil War movie revew

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dir. by Joe and Anthony Russo
In 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron, the sheer scale of property damage was upped to unprecedented levels for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). At the time, it seemed like a shift away from the relative damage control that the original Avengers was retroactively praised for upon the release of 2013's Man of Steel, and worse, a dip into generic, pandering action movie tropes. Captain America: Civil War, the beginning of the third "phase" of the MCU, had not only the tough job of improving upon the widely-beloved Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but also the duty of restoring faith in this franchise after Age of Ultron proved so polarizing. While Civil War is unfortunately not as tight as The Winter Soldier, it provides a sprawling, introspective look at the Avengers and their place in the world that not only deepens the Marvel universe, but makes Age of Ultron better by extension, all while remaining gripping throughout.

Keanu movie review

dir. by Peter Atencio
In the wake of the cancellation of Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key's brilliant sketch-comedy series Key & Peele, the comedy duo became primarily attached to their big-screen project Keanu, an action-comedy selling itself primarily on a very adorable cat which was at the centre of its thin but oddball premise. Considering the duo's talents, their initial feature film held a lot of promise, and the cat-based advertisements were a success. However, the 90-minute length of Keanu is a much larger endeavour than Key & Peele's five-minute maximum sketches, and as it turns out, the greater running time only results in the duo's latest comedic idea long outstaying its welcome.

Everybody Wants Some!! movie review

dir. by Richard Linklater
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In 1993, director Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused was released, a coming-of-age film which would later become one of the director's few entries in the Criterion Collection. Following the success of his 2014 opus Boyhood, he began work on a "spiritual sequel," which finally materialized as Everybody Wants Some!!, a film which features an entirely different cast but has been widely praised for capturing the same spirit. I haven't seen Dazed and Confused, but even with my relative lack of experience with Linklater's more modest films, Everybody Wants Some!! is nothing short of delightful.

Zootopia movie review

dir. by Bryon Howard and Rich Moore
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Due to the delay of Pixar's The Good Dinosaur, the latest Walt Disney Animation Studios picture was delayed to 2016. Much like Wreck-It Ralph and Big Hero 6, Zootopia set itself apart with a unique premise, and attracted much anticipation as all Disney animated films do. Thankfully, while it's arguably still not up to Pixar's impeccably high standard, Zootopia is quite possibly the best Walt Disney Animation Studios picture in recent memory.