Category Archives: Film

Thor: Ragnorak. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Hopkins, Benedict Cumberbatch, Taika Waititi, Rachel House, Clancy Brown, Tadanobu Asano, Ray Stevenson, Zachary Levi, Luke Hemsworth, Sam Neill.

Norse mythology is such that it gets overlooked in the modern world in favour of a more fashionable awareness of modern possibilities, political issues and our place in the world. It is not only Norse that suffers, even now looking say at British history in the history of the Roman occupation can lead to sneers of derision in some quarters, people, perhaps understandably, forgetting that the way we are now is because of the stories passed down in myth and legend, Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Native American, Inuit or even Norse, they play a part in the way we view heroes and evil in the world.

Thor: Ragnorak. Film Review. full post

(500 words, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

Murder On The Orient Express (2017). Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Penelope Cruz, Willem Defoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Josh Gad, Derek Jacobi, Leslie Odem, Michelle Pfeiffer, Daisy Ridley, Marwan Kenzari, Olivia Colman, Lucy Boynton, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Sergei Polunin, Tom Bateman, Miranda Raison, Paapa Essiedu, Michael Rouse, Joseph Long, Elliot Levey, David Annen, Kathryn Wilder, Phil Dunster.

It is a story that evokes images that many of us will never see, never experience and one that captures the raw cold hate of many emotions, as well as the beauty of the scenery that is on offer as one of the most famous pieces of engineering takes its passengers through Europe.

Murder On The Orient Express (2017). Film Review. full post

(492 words, estimated 1:58 mins reading time)

Geostorm. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating *

Cast: Gerard Butler, Jim Sturgess, Abbie Cornish, Alexandra Maria Lara, Eugenio Debez, Andy Garcia, Ed Harris, Amr Waked, Adepero Oduye, Robert Sheehan, Richard Schiff, Mare Winningham, Zazie Beetz, Talitha Eliana Bateman, Daniella Gracia, Richie Montgomery, David S. lee, Billy Slaughter, Gregory Alan Williams, Derek Roberts, Randall Newsome.

You can throw all the visual effects at a film production you want but if you cannot supply a script which feels as if it is being delivered by the monotone and the indifferent then the odds are stacked against you from the start. Throw in the almost regurgitated cliche after formulaic chestnuts and you have a film which may sound interesting when being offered to an audience but instead comes out as a huge contender for worst cinema offering of the year.

Geostorm. Film Review. full post

(430 words, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)

Death Of Stalin. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Jason Isaacs, Andrea Riseborough, Olga Kurlenko, Steve Buscemi, Rupert Friend, Jeffrey Tambor, Paddy Considine, Richard Brake, Michael Palin, Simon Russell Beale, Paul Whitehouse, Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Jonathan Aris, Adrian McLoughlin, Gerard Lepkowski, Dermot Crowley, Cara Horgan.

Politics is a game of wills, the necessity of horse trading played out on a global scale and one in which the sides change so quickly that any gains made one individual are soon scattered to the dusty footnotes of history. It is a game that when played well deserves its own satire, the weak and ineffective politicians get forgotten, the ones who scramble to the top have no other choice but to face the fact that even in death they will be satirised and parodied by the best of writers.

Death Of Stalin. Film Review. full post

(494 words, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

The Mountain Between Us. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Idris Elba, Kate Winslet, Dermot Mulroney, Beau Bridges, Linda Sorensen, Vincent Gale, Marci T. House.

The Mountain Between Us is such that at times what we perceive is heroic and noble in ourselves can be considered as weak and ineffective by others. Our stance in the wake of calamity is not defined by what we were but who we are shown to be when the ordeal is over. It is a reminder that what stands between the mountains is not space or the yawning chasm but the chance to grow beyond what is real at the time.

The Mountain Between Us. Film Review. full post

(454 words, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

The Ritual, Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Rafe Spall, Robert James- Collier, Arshar Ali, Sam Troughton, Maria Erwolter, Kerri McLean, Paul Reid, Jacob James Beswick, Francesca Mula.

A walk through the woods was perhaps not an issue for travel writer Bill Bryson as he made his way through the Appalachian mountain range, but for the unwary, for the party who go in search of the intrepid when they are not suited to the conditions or the sense of loneliness that comes with such a journey, the woods, the forest, can hold quite a mystical barrier over their well being.

The Ritual, Film Review. full post

(419 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

The Snowman. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision * *

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Chloe Sevigny, Val Kilmer, J.K. Simmons, Charlotte Gainbourg, Jamie Clayton, James D’Arcy, David Dencik, Toby Jones, Sofia Helin, Jacob Oftebro, Anna Reid, Jonas Karlsson.

It could be deemed our own fault, the height of expectation drawn from the Nordic Noir television and film dramas has been of such good quality, that as an audience we perhaps think that any drama set in the north of Europe is going to reap the same beneficial advantages of story-telling, that the quality bench mark cannot falter. An expectation sadly not realised when it comes to The Snowman.

The Snowman. Film Review. full post

(410 words, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

Blade Runner 2049. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Robin Wright, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Dave Bautista, David Dastmalchian, Edward James Olmos, Jared Leto, Mackenzie Davis, Lennie James, Barkhad Abdi, Sean Young, Loren Peta.

The dystopian feel of our lives is always there, humming in the back ground, playing that sad song of regret whilst understanding it is our own folly that has bought us to such junctures in time. It is a genre of writing that has existed perfectly well and in many ways is arguably more suited to our own thoughts of humanity’s future than the clean, sanitised and off kilter imagination of many science-fiction films; for even they soon revert to the realisation that not all is good where humanity treads, even in space.

Blade Runner 2049. Film Review. full post

(482 words, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)

Kingsman: The Golden Circle. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Taron Egerton, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Channing Tatum, Halle Berry, Jeff Bridges, Elton John, Edward Holcroft, Hanna Alstrom, Calvin Demba, Thomas Turgoose, Tobi Bakare, Keith Allen, Tom Benedict Knight, Michael Gambon, Sophie Cookson, Lene Endre, Pedro Pascal, Poppy Delevingne, Bruce Greenwood, Emily Watson, Samantha Womack.

 

A long line of sequels is always possible when a film comes along with the possibility of an open ended cast and is good enough to carry the weight of excitement, action and sometimes outlandish plot; if it is respectable enough for the makers of James Bond, then it more than good enough for those responsible for The Kingsman.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle. Film Review. full post

(454 words, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

Home Again. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *

Cast: Reece Witherspoon, Michael Sheen, Nat Woolf, Lake Bell, Pico Alexander, Candice Bergen, Lola Flanery, Jon Rudnitsky, Reid Scott, Josh Stamberg.

It is a struggle at times to show sympathy to someone who is intent on hurting themselves artistically, to whom the relationship between film lover and the offering on the screen is far below par and mainly due to the insistence of saccharine in the diet, leaves you feeling sluggish, desperate for something, anything to add a punch to overload placed before you. It is a struggle but one that seems to be forever on the menu, just slightly dished up in a different casing, in numerous sweet deserts, it is the feeling that you are Home Again and nothing has truly changed.

Home Again. Film Review. full post

(407 words, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)