Category: Movies
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Movie Review: A Quiet Place
Civilisation has fallen. Blind monsters roam the wildlands and haunt the cities, hunting for prey with their ultra-sensitive sense of hearing. Holed up in an isolated farmhouse and surrounded by monsters, a family of farmers must use their wits to eke out a living. Things come to a head when the mother becomes pregnant, forcing…
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12 Strong and the Choice Between Drama and Realism
12 Strong is everything you expect from a Hollywood movie about the American military machine. Featuring tough-talking soldiers, rugged wind-swept valleys and mountains, and enough explosions and gunfire for a small war, 12 Strong accomplishes what it set out to do: honour the first American Special Forces troops in Afghanistan. Just don’t treat it as a ‘true story’.…
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Thor: Ragnarok and the Rejection of Myth
The rot of Marvel Comics has finally crept into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not just the rot of Social Justice — the rot of mediocrity. On paper the movie sounds awesome. Thor, the God of Thunder, must defend Asgard and the Nine Realms from Hela, the all-powerful Goddess of Death. However, he is stranded on…
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The Dark Tower Movie Won’t Come Close to the Dark Tower Novels
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjwfqXTebIY&w=560&h=315] Watching the Dark Tower movie trailer, I understood immediately that Hollywood had once again taken a beloved franchise and warped it into something barely recognisable. Part of these changes are necessary. Adapting a novel into a movie requires requires the filmmakers to make massive changes to fit the new medium. It is a…
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Retrospective: Ghost in the Shell (1995)
When I first watched Ghost in the Shell, I was impressed by the fluid animations, the detailed visuals, the melancholic atmosphere and the slick action scenes. A dozen years later, after watching it again, I picked up the finer points my teenage self didn’t: the post-cyberpunk ethos, the characterisation, the tight storytelling, and most of…
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Movie Review: A Silent Voice
A Silent Voice is an excellent movie marred by flawed execution.