The Man in the Iron Mask is a well made adventure film featuring solid performances, namely Gabriel Byrne and Jeremy Irons and fairly impressive for being screenwriter Randall Wallace’s directorial debut, following up with his Academy Award winning screenplay for Braveheart.
Shutter Island is an effective psychological-thriller featuring some good performances from an impressive cast, but what stood out to me was Scorsese’s precision direction.
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood may not be Tarantino’s strongest film though I did enjoy this experience more than The Hateful Eight thanks to his attention to detail for the era along with some fun performances by both DiCaprio and Pitt.
This Critters Collection is another nicely done work from Shout through their Scream Factory line featuring two solid movies and two… not so good ones. The transfers are all relatively well done and the features packaged together were fantastic.
Critters 3 is a step down from the previous installments but still fun, albeit more seeing Leonardo DiCaprio before he made it internationally huge some years later with Titanic. The rest of the cast were fine and the Critter designs were still impressive.
The Man in the Iron Mask is a well made adventure film featuring solid performances, namely Gabriel Byrne and Jeremy Irons and fairly impressive for being screenwriter Randall Wallace’s directorial debut.
Inception might be my favorite Christopher Nolan film, or at least right there with The Dark Knight and Interstellar. The film features some well done performances and groundbreaking visual effects and storytelling that despite the eight years since its release, still holds up incredibly well.
The Great Gatsby has a lot going for it: a charismatic lead actor, a solid supporting cast, some good adaptation work by screenwriters Luhrmann and Craig Pearce, lavish award-worthy set and costume designs and wonderful cinematography, but otherwise it’s empty on any emotional level.
I never was fully engaged with Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant but it is hard to deny both the technical and performance greatness behind the movie, most notably Leonardo DiCaprio’s impressive physicality that he brought to the role and almost equally impressive was the on-location filming.
The Great Gatsby has a lot going for it: a charismatic lead actor, a solid supporting cast, some good adaptation work by screenwriters Luhrmann and Craig Pearce, lavish award-worthy set and costume designs and wonderful cinematography, but otherwise it’s empty on any emotional level mainly because Luhrmann smashes over the head what the movie’s message is rather than let it unfold in a more natural way.
Catch Me If You Can is a cool and energetic crime-drama featuring great performances, a fascinating main character, an amazing score and excellent direction that holds up quite well today.
J. Edgar is one of those films that you can see the passion be it from the costume design, production design and the cast. It’s unfortunate that the screenplay never quite gives the viewer a reason to care either way. Worst still, the movie plods along at a slow and arduous pace and although I appreciate the non-linear storytelling (it worked for Scorsese in The Aviator after all), it doesn’t do any justice for the character in the long run.