film

Adaptation of Donna Tartt’s award-winning novel The Goldfinch is  bland, slow  and horribly bloated, says film reviewer CAMERON BLACKSHAW DONNA Tartt’s 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Goldfinch spent more than 30 weeks on both the New York Times bestseller list in the US and The Sunday Times hardcover fiction bestseller list in the UK. The book seemed destined to receive an adaptation for the screen, but that should never have come to pass. Having never read the novel, I went into the film with no knowledge of the plot, but high expectations, given its success. The Goldfinch follows the character of Theo Decker (played by Ansel Elgort and Oakes Fegley) throughout various stages of his life, following the death of his mother in a terrorist bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Theo’s only solace from the life-altering tragedy is the eponymous 1654 Dutch masterpiece that he steals from the rubble after surviving the attack. We see Theo hide the … [Read more...] about Bestseller fails to fly on screen

Now that legendary director Martin Scorsese is out as having likened Marvel movies to being nothing more than cinematic "theme parks," former FRIENDS star Jennifer Aniston has chosen to join Hollywood's latest and decidedly dreadful dogpile.  Recently while speaking with Variety about her upcoming series for Apple Plus, THE MORNING SHOW, Aniston was asked about why she's chosen to return to television after being removed from the medium for more than a decade. It was then that Aniston revealed her frustration with Marvel movies, suggesting that the green screen spectacles are to blame for diminishing roles in Hollywood, overall. "It wasn’t until the last couple of years when these streaming services were just sort of exploding with this amount of quality that I actually started to think, “Wow, that’s better than what I just did.” And then you’re seeing what’s available out there and it’s just diminishing and diminishing … [Read more...] about Jennifer Aniston says Hollywood needs less Marvel movies

Ad Astra (12A) FROM trailers and pre-release buzz, writer/director James Gray’s Ad Astra looked poised to join other modern space films such as Gravity, Interstellar and Moon in the pantheon of science fiction greatness. Ad Astra certainly hits this target, but in a less bombastic and more reserved manner than most intergalactic epics. The story revolves around Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), an astronaut who is sent on a mission to contact his father (Tommy Lee Jones), one of US Space Command’s (SpaceCom’s) most celebrated heroes, who is believed to be causing electrical surges that threaten all life in the solar system. McBride’s father Clifford disappeared after all contact had been lost with the Lima Project, a mission to discover extra- terrestrial life that he had led, 16 years prior. McBride’s mission takes him to the Moon, to Mars and finally on to Neptune, at the far end of the solar system. What is apparent throughout all this space travel is how … [Read more...] about Brad puts in stellar performance