Sunday, August 30, 2015

Film Review: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

Copyright: Warner Bros. Pictures
It's always great to see artist evolving, even if this process alienates some of their old fans. Guy Ritchie is definitely prone to evolution, but it’s obvious that the same process for him takes place in phases. His first phase started in 1998 with the cult classic Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, after which he developed his contemporary London crime phase. The same had some good films and some average ones, but it nonetheless ended with RocknRolla in 2008. 

After this, Ritchie moved the setting of his new phase backwards one century and developed two Sherlock Holmes films, which were both successful and impressive action flicks, having in mind the serious overuse of the original material in pop culture. Now, with The Man From U.N.C.L.E, the third phase of Guy Ritchie has begun and it brings style and substance on a completely new terrain for its director.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Crowdfunding Push: Thunder Chronicles Epic Fantasy Film

Thunder Chronicles Epic Fantasy Film crowdfunding project is definitely very self-explanatory. As the title suggests, it's aiming to raise money for the production of one of the first (if not the first) epic fantasy films which will be entirely created in the region of Southern Serbia. The project's official Indiegogo page states:

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Film Review: Child 44 (2015)

Copyright: Lionsgate
There are a lot of hard, fake-sounding Russian accents in this film. Imagine as if every male character tried to sound like an actor from the original C&C: Red Alert game – we’re talking weird emphasis on random words and a tendency to overly dramatize everything being said, because, apparently, that’s how people talked back in the dark days of the USSR. 

Its director Daniel Espinosa leaves this to be the strongest impression of the Child 44 film, which meanders through its characters and the soviet state that was organized, according to the film, in a very incoherent manner.

Its case is not helped by the fact that Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman lead a great cast, or the fact that Noomi Rapace once again creates an unusual and engaging character. This story of the film was moved to the big screen from a Tom Rob Smith’s novel by the same name. 

Saturday, August 8, 2015

Film Review: Good Kill (2014)

Copyright: IFC Films
A long time ago (speaking in video game industry terms) Ron Perlman declared in the opening segment of the Fallout franchise - war, war never changes. While the same might be true in a metaphysical sense, in a purely practical one, war definitely changes. 100 years ago, people still expected to charge the opposing forces using cavalry with real horses and real sabers (once such charge even took place in 1939 when the Polish forces carried this out in desperation). Today, however, people in the Western nations, especially the US, exchanged animals for a much more potent combat sidekick – robots.

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Film Review: Final Girl (2015)

Copyright: Cinedigm
Part proxy renege fantasy, part action film, Final Girl is a type of story that tries to produce a smooth visual experience, but offers very low amounts of substance. If follows Veronica, a specially trained killing machine who is planted in the midst of a group of young psychopaths who kidnap girls and hunt them in the forest as their own wrapped form of entertainment.

Veronica enters the pack and begins killing the killers and hunting the hunters. Sadly, this is the entire Final Girl film. As a narrative, it looks more as a draft of a story than the story itself, because it appears to be lacking any divergence from a single line plot. Of course, like Mad Max: Road Fury clearly showed, there is nothing wrong with a one-liner films, but only if they have a strong delivery.