Tag Archives: James McAvoy

His Dark Materials. Series Three. Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Dafne Keen, Ruth Wilson, James McAvoy, Amir Wilson, Will Keen, Lewin Lloyd, Jade Anouka, Simone Kirby, Chipo Chung, Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje, Jonathan Aris, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Jamie Ward, Sian Clifford, Alex Hassell, Lia Williams, Simon Harrison, Amber Fitzgerald-Woolfe, Nina Sosanya, Andrew Scott, Lin Manuel Miranda, Victoria Hamilton, Kit Connor, Joe Tandberg, Sope Dirisu, Lindsay Duncan, Kate Ashfield, Emma Tate, Patricia Allison, Tuppence Middleton, Sorcha Groundsell, Wade Briggs, Peter Wright.

It: Chapter 2. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Bill Skarsgard, Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan, James Ransome, Andy Bean, Jaeden Martell, Wyatt Oleff, Jack Dylan Grazer, Finn Wolfhard, Sopia Lillis, Chosen Jacobs, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Teach Grant, Nicholas Hamilton, Javier Botet, Xavier Dolan, Taylor Frey, Molly Atkinson, Joan Gregson, Stephen Bogaert, Luke Roessler,  Stephen King, Peter Bogdanovich, Will Beinbrink, Jess Weixler, Martha Girvin, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Jackson Robert Scott, Jake Weary, Katie Lunman, Kelly Van der Burg, Jason Fuchs, Joe Bostick, Megan Charpentier, Juno Rinaldi, Neil Crone, Ry Prior, Owen Teague.

X Men: Dark Phoenix. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *

Cast: Sophie Turner, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Jessica Chastain, Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult, Evan Peters, Alexandra Shipp, Tye Sheridan, Jodi Smit-McPhee, Kota Eberhardt, Andrew Stehlin, Scott Shepherd.

A final offering, one that should have the audience gripped, almost putty like in the hands of the producers, the directors and actors alike, after all an audience will have been waiting for this moment for a period of years, their hopes always on the verge of bursting – then the realisation sets in, the climax that you want is not what the franchise could have been, in that moment the highs and excitement that you once felt, the love and care that you showed, is gone, has departed quicker than an express train hurtling through your local station as you casually ignore the warning about standing close to the yellow line.

Glass. Film Review.

 Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, James McAvoy, Sarah Poulson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Spencer Treat Clark, Luke Kirby, Marissa Brown, Charlayne Woodard, Adam David Thompson, M Night Shyamalan.

The art of the film maker comes with the unexpected sense of the sleight of hand, the appearance out of nowhere which justifies the movie as one that was always ready to be defined by what follows it, a story which the audience has no idea is part of a greater tale, one in which the director and writer might not have realised they themselves had no idea they were be guided by outside forces to make.

Watership Down (2018). Television Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: James McAvoy, Nicholas Hoult, John Boyega, Ben Kingsley, Gemma Arterton, Peter Capaldi, Mackenzie Crook, Anne-Marie Duff, Taron Egerton, Freddie Fox, Lee Ingleby, Miles Jupp, Daniel Kaluuya, Craig Parkinson, Daniel Rigby, Jason Watkins, Gemma Chan, James Alexander, Rosamund Pike, Andrew Walton, Olivia Colman, Lorraine Bruce, Rosie Day, Henry Goodman, Murray McArthur, Tom Wilkinson, James Faulkner, Lizzie Clarke, Rory Kinnear, Charlotte Spencer, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Peter Guinness, Sam Redford, Luke Neal.

Deadpool 2. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Josh Brolin, Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Zazie Beetz, Brianna Hildebrand, Brad Pitt, Bill Skarsgård, Matt Damon, T.J.Miller, Terry Crews, Rob Delaney, Alan Tudyk, Julian Dennison, Lewis Tan, Jack Kesy, Eddie Marsan, Shioli Kutsuna, Hayley Sales, Stefan Kapicic, Karan Soni, Sala Baker, Nicholas Hoult, James McAvoy, Evan Peters, Tye Sheridan.

In the land of the sequel, the audience is normally attuned to the fact that by and large the film will be below par, sometimes disastrously with a plot that was based on profit potential, sometimes just out of plain high expectation, but the result will be the same, that like most films, the sequel is never in the same class as the original.

Atomic Blonde, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, Eddie Marsan, John Goodman, Toby Jones, James Faulkner, Roland Møller , Sofia Boutella, Bill Skarsgård , Sam Hargrave, Johannes, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson , Til Scheiger, Barbara Sokowa.

It could be construed as Spy versus Spy but without the humour or anarchic level of higher learning and yet Atomic Blonde takes on the genre with surprisingly good value and with a storyline that is surrounded by one of the great moments in European history; the Berlin had stood as a symbol of the Cold War for 28 years but as the heat exchanged between Charlize Theron and all who stood in her built up, Atomic Blonde is nothing but explosive from start to the inevitable fall out.

X-Men: Apocalypse, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Oscar Isaac, Rose Byrne, Evan Peters, Josh Helman, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Lucas Till, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Ben Hardy, Alexandra Shipp, Lana Condor, Olivia Munn, Ally Sheedy, Tómas Lemarquis, Hugh Jackman, Stan Lee.

Uncanny as it seems but The X-Men are a franchise that keeps giving, not only in their graphic novel form but in the outline and grizzled affair that is cinema. This is certainly true as the first class trilogy comes to its conclusion in the exciting and worthy X-Men: Apocalypse.

Victor Frankenstein, Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, James McAvoy, Jessica Brown Findlay, Andrew Scott, Freddie Fox, Daniel Mays, Spencer Wilding, Callum Turner, Louise Brealey, Charles Dance, Alistair Petrie, Mark Gatiss, Guillaume Delaunay.

All stories have a beginning, some are forged in the deep recesses of the imagination and some are taken to added upon, made more user friendly for a modern audience who might conceive that the birth of a famous monster should have more to it than meets the initial eye. A succession of films have alluded to the question, one successfully so, but it falls to the screen play writer Max Landis to ask the question outright, just who really was the monster in the marvellous Mary Shelley novel Frankenstein?

X-Men: Days of Future Past, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T. Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender,  Nicholas Hoult, Peter Dinklage, Shawn Ashmore, Omar Sy, Daniel Cudmore, Evan Peters, Fan Bingbing, Josh Helman, Ellen Page,  Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Kelsey Grammer, Adan Canto, Booboo Stewart, Lucas Till, Evan Jonigkeit, Gregg Lowe, Mark Camacho, James Marsden, Famke Janssen.