Tag Archives: Ann Dowd

American Animals. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast:  Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner, Jared Abrahamson, Spencer Reinhard, Warren Lipka, Eric Borsuk, Chas Allen, Betty Jean Gooch, Ann Dowd, Laura Grice, Udo Kier, Fedor Steer, Jack Landry, Wayne Duvall, Whitney Goin, Gary Basaraba, Robert C. Treveiler, Jane McNeill, Dorothy Reynolds, Maggie Lacey.

The overall problem with most cinematic experiences is that with some certain emotions, the truth of understanding them, even seeing them portrayed, is as likely as receiving an apologetic face from a pet cat after it has done its business in the wrong place; some reactions, some sentiments are impossible to replicate, even in the hands of a master actor.

Captain Fantastic, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Viggo Mortensen, George Mackay, Samantha Isler, Annalise Basso, Nicholas Hamilton, Shree Crooks, Charlie Shotwell, Trin Miller, Kathryn Hahn, Steve Zahn, Elijah Stevenson, Teddy Van Ee, Erin Moriarty, Missi Pyle, Frank Langella, Ann Dowd, Rex Young, Galen Osier, Thomas Brophy, Mike Miller, Louis Hobson, Hannah Horton.

It is on the face of it a seemingly small moment in cinema but Matt Ross’ intelligent and superbly argued script for Captain Fantastic captures the point of individualism and socialism in a world that only wants you to be a drone, a consumer, a person to whom history means nothing and whose appetite for the material and the edible is verging on obese and dangerously unhealthy. It is with a touch of grace that Captain Fantastic turns that rotten ideology on its head and offers a different view on how to live.

Big Driver, Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *

Cast: Mario Bello, Ann Dowd, Will Harris, Joan Jett, Olympia Dukakis, Jennifer Kydd, Andre Myette, Juanita Peters, Mary-Colin Chisholm, Kim Parkhill, Deborah Allen, Tara Nicodermo, Roland Marko Simmonds, Mike Taylor, Lee J. Campbell, Trina Corkum, Patrick Robert Wong.

The world of suspense, of blood curdling terror and murderous emotion have always been a stocking filler of goodies in which Stephen King, arguably the finest and certainly the most prolific horror writer of the 20th Century has packed away inside the minds of all who have come across his writing yet somehow the man who brought The Stand, Misery and Rose Madder to the imaginations of millions of readers has not had the same good fortune when it comes to seeing his work presented on television; especially when he has been involved in the script of the presented piece.

St. Vincent, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy, Naomi Watts, Chris O’ Dowd, Terrance Howard, Jaeden Lieberher, Kimberly Quinn, Lenny Venito, Nate Corddry, Dario Barosso, Donna Mitchell, Ann Dowd, Scott Adsit, Reg E. Cathey, Deirdre O’Connell.

Vincent is a man whose life seems to be one of which has gone the way of so many in cities and rural areas in America. The dream that once encapsulated that arguably captured all that was good in the land of the free has soured and gone past its sell-by date, all there is to look forward to for many is the daily existence granted by fate in which the daily struggle is just another excuse to be kicked in the face by a country that has forgotten them.