The Favourite (2018) Review

Title: The Favourite
Year: 2018
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Country: US
Language: English

The 2019 Academy Awards are coming up and Yorgos Lanthimos' The Favourite is up for a great amount of Oscars. I predict it will win "Best Picture", "Best Directing", "Best Production Design", "Best Cinematography", "Best Original Screenplay", "Best Costume Design" and Olivia Colman will win "Best Actress"  for her role as Queen Anne. The film really is as good as I will make it out to be. 

In early 18th century England, a frail Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) occupies the throne and her close friend, Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) , governs the country in her stead. When a new servant, Abigail (Emma Stone), arrives, her charm endears her to Anne.

The onscreen mental catfight between two important women, one already in aged in her role and another up and coming,  reminds me of Joseph Mankiewic's All About Eve (1950). Indeed that picture was up for many of the same awards. The Favourite puts three powerful women at the center of its costume drama, unfolding as a political-erotic triangle in which two parties compete for the affections of a third. This darkly comic situation gives way to a tragic and complex portrait of a time period that been left in the past and is usually misrepresented in modern pictures. 

Lanthimos and cinematographer Robbie Ryan shoot in natural light, so England’s overcast skies illuminate massive drawing rooms with gray highlights coming in from the windows, while dark evening scenes burn orange by the fire of candlelight. This use of lighting, combined with the camera's cold distance, create a great atmosphere of dread and detatchement. Ryan's cinematic touch allows the external to reflect the internal

Great cinematography is enriched with great writing and even better acting. Though Supporting Actress may go to a well deserved performance in Roma, Coleman does a tremendous job at portraying the grotesque caricature an ailing queen. Surely, this is one of the best films of 2018. 

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) Review

Title: Age of Ultron
Year: 2015
Director: Joss Whedon
Country: US
Language: English

By the time Avengers: Age of Ultron hit theatres the Marvel Cinematic Universe was in  Phase 3 and had already produced at least three critical hits; Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The First Avenger, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. With Age of Ultron Joss Whedon was tasked with re-creating the success of the first Avengers and, well, I shall review if he succeeded. 

When Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) try to jump-start a dormant peacekeeping program called Ultron, things go horribly wrong and it's up to Earth's mightiest heroes to stop the villainous Ultron (James Spader) from enacting his terrible plan.

Darker in theme and content than its predecessor, Age of Ultron, though not as highly regarded by fan-boys, is the better picture when compared to the first Avengers venture. Not completely full of fight scenes, Whedon uses the film's physical downtime to establich enriching character arcs that will improve each character's overall cinematic story. From here on there isn't a bad Marvel film and that's due to the foundation Ultron lays.

The destructive finale comes with great purpose and passionate backing, The scope of physical devastation is accompanied by an equal force of emotional devastation. With Age of Ultron Joss Whedon introduces us to characters that prove to equal Captain America & Ironman in importance to the story. While Avengers felt like an Ironman movie w/ guests, this film feels like an ensemble of important characters. 

Age of Ultron is all about fleshing out characters and bringing great importance to their wants & needs, Finally Thor (Chris Hemsworth) feels like an actual person rather than a dumb meathead. Now Ultron isn't perfect, the villain's comedy is a bit off-putting and he doesn't feel as scary as Thanos (Josh Brolin) in Infinity War. His goal is also a bit murky, whereas Thanos proudly announced it. Ultron doesn't feel like a real threat to the Avengers. Despite this, I did enjoy Age of Ultron due to its world building. 

Chained Girls (1965) Review

Title: Chained Girls 
Year: 1965
Director:  Jospeh P. Mawra
Country: US
Language: English

Nicholas Winding Refn (Drive) is a strange man with an offbeat taste for eccentric pictures that have long been forgotten. With his website (https://www.bynwr.com) he presents "an unadulterated expressway of the arts", cinematic revivals of lost pictures that, thanks to him and his restoration partners, can be seen with astonishing quality. I've enjoyed House on Bare Mountain, Wild Guitar and now Chained Girls. 

This exploitation classic purports to expose the secrets of the 1960s lesbian underworld.

"Only through understanding the facts, can we keep Lesbianism from becoming a serious social problem." Mocking public service movies like Reefer Madness (1936), Chained Girls can be seen as a mockumentary that keeps us laughing with ridiculous "facts" like 33% of single female college graduates are lesbians!  and Marriages are not uncommon among lesbians. How were they "not uncommon" decades before lesbian marriage was even legal?

One of the ways pre-hippy 60's  authors and filmmakers  avoided obscenity charges when dealing with homosexual subject matter was to smear their exploration of sexual deviance in "scientific" terms. Chained Girls writer-director Joseph Mawra uses this tactic, and thus gets away with making a picture that serves as part pornography. The film-maker was able to get away with gratuitous shots of topless women rolling around on top of each other, because the censors were truely fooled into thinking this really was "educational". 

Chained Girls is a trashy film that tells us a lot about society at the time. Some Americans were really this paranoid about gay culture and thought, regardless of nudity, the "truth" had to be told. Some of America were perverts desperate to see half-naked women onscreen & some Americans wanted a laugh at the theatre. This film appeals to everyone! 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) Review

Title: The Winter Soldier
Year: 2014
Director(s): Russo Brothers
Country: US
Language: English

Aside from Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) Phase One of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was terrible. Phase Two started off slow with bad sequels to Thor and Ironman, but picked up speed with great velocity due to The Winter Soldier. This is the turning point of the Marvel movies; where they stopped being bland and started being bold. 

As Steve Rogers struggles to embrace his role in the modern world, he teams up with a fellow Avenger and S.H.I.E.L.D agent, Black Widow, to battle a new threat from history: an assassin known as the Winter Soldier.

THANK GOD The Winter Soldier didn't go the Thor route of the idiotic "fish out of water" lead character. "What is this? and this!? What!?" Steve Rogers adapts to waking up 60 years in the future, but it's more of a sombre feeling, due to having lost so many friends due to time, rather than "A smartphone!? You mean I can take a picture AND make a call?" It avoids ALL the "character wakes up in a different time" cliches and I love the screenwriters, directors, everyone involved for it. Any comedic moment is small and overshadowed by the more gradiose dramatic moments.

This time The Winter Soldier is not a nostalgic war yarn, but an action spy thriller. Rogers is a “freedom” preaching patriot in a cynical world where—in the age of information, digital footprints, and satellite tracking—freedoms are sacrificed in the name of security. The idealistic "right thing to do" hero is conflicted in a world so full of grey areas. It's nice to see that the central conflict - albeit there are a lot of baddies and action scenes- is an inner conflic regarding ideaology and ethics. 

Though it isn't as entertaining as The First Avenger (2011) and I'll admit I don't like it as much, The Winter Soldier is a step forward in the action spy thriller genre. The audience is far more invensted on an emotional level in this sequel and maybe more than any other Marvel movie before or since. I highly recommend it! 

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) Review

Title: Captain America
Year: 2011
Director: Joe Johnston
Country: US
Language: English

To be blunt, I hated Phase One of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Incredible Hulk (2008) was a bore, Ironman I & II were forgetful, Thor's "fish out of water" theme was cringeworthy and The Avengers was a let-down even with my incredibly low expectations. I pushed off the Captain America movies until, well, until I watched everything else. I was prepared for the worst, but was pleasantly surprised. 

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a rejected military soldier transforms into Captain America after taking a dose of a "Super-Soldier serum". But being Captain America comes at a price as he attempts to take down a war monger and a terrorist organization.

Director Joe Johnston and production designer Rick Heinrichs give us a wonderful throwback to WWII yarns with nazi occultists. It's Raiders of the Lost Ark for a new generation. Johnston’s eye for the era’s romantic wartime iconography steal the show in early scenes and the filmmakers have great fun rewriting history with futuristic gadgets and highly stylized vehicles, all with past-meets-future touches, 

Almost entirely a period piece, Captain America is a superior superhero movie because it leans on its strong character and mesmerizing setting, rather than purely being entrenched in action for the sake of action. This is the first phase one MCU film that feels like its own entity rather than a build-up for the eventual (dissapointing) Avengers flick. 

I was never a huge fan of Captain America, but I was enchanted by this picture as I imagine most who saw this were. Its got a nostalgic charm that is rarely seen in action movies like this. I couldn't wait to see the sequel The Winter Soldier.