art
Artistic, musical, creative, and entertaining topics of art about all things geek.
Film review: Booksmart
Booksmart is actress Olivia Wilde’s first film as director, and it’s no surprise that she gets vibrant performances from her cast. Plenty of actors-turned-film-makers do that. Unlike most of them, she does a lot more, breathing hilarious new life into two tired genres. A female buddy film in the guise of a high-school partying movie, Booksmart is endlessly funny and outrageous, yet always grounded by its realistic central relationship.
By Mao Jiao Li3 years ago in Geeks
Film review: Toy Story 4
There are those of us (myself included) who would argue that the first three Toy Story episodes stand as the finest trilogy in Hollywood history, and for us Toy Story 4 was a nerve-wracking prospect. Nine years ago, Toy Story 3 seemed to be the perfect farewell to a perfect series, so another instalment was about as welcome as a moustache and sunglasses painted on the Mona Lisa. We needn’t have worried. It’s clear within minutes that the new cartoon, directed by Josh Cooley, will be as gorgeously animated and as generously sprinkled with jokes as Pixar’s best work, and any lingering misgivings melt away in the warm glow of seeing Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and the rest of the loveable, misfit gang back together.
By Many A-Sun3 years ago in Geeks
Film review: Yesterday
Richard Curtis writes romantic comedies – Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually are the best – so enticing that we wish they were real. His films are believable enough emotionally to be both joyful and heartbreaking, while their characters and situations are more colourful and exciting than everyday life. And they flow with the effortless charm of, say, early Hugh Grant.
By Alessandro Algardi3 years ago in Geeks
Film review: The Lion King
With its mythic story of life and death, not to mention a cast of lions and hyenas, The Lion King was an unlikely candidate for a photo-realistic treatment. But the new film leaps into naturalism, with dazzling authenticity as computer-generated herds of zebras, elephants and antelope stride across the screen against a wide African vista, toward Pride Rock, where King Mufasa stands waiting to hold up his cub, Simba. With The Circle of Life soaring in the background, this majestic scene draws us into the film’s enthralling world before a word is spoken. It may all be CGI, but The Lion King feels more life-like than Disney’s many recent live-action remakes of its animated classics.
By Mao Jiao Li3 years ago in Geeks
Why Inglourious Basterds is Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece
A young woman’s face appears on a movie screen, gigantic in close-up and starkly black and white, interrupting a Nazi propaganda movie. In a Paris theatre, where Hitler and other Nazi officials are attending the German film’s premiere, the haunting screen image of Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) tells them, “You are all going to die.” She has set a fire that will kill them, unaware that her plot overlaps with a US-and-British military operation to blow up the theatre. The entire exhilarating sequence – from the film within the film, to Shosanna’s fire, the soldiers’ bloody shootout, and the wish-fulfillment of Hitler’s death – unites the strands of Quentin Tarantino’s underrated masterpiece, Inglourious Basterds, released 10 years ago this month.
By Many A-Sun3 years ago in Geeks
Venice Film Festival review: The Truth
Hirokazu Kore-Eda has been writing and directing supremely humane, insightful dramas for 20 years, to greater and greater acclaim: last year’s Shoplifters won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and was nominated for the best foreign language film Oscar. Now, he’s made his first film outside of Japan, The Truth (or La Verité), which opens this year’s Venice Film Festival. Not much has been lost in translation. It’s certainly lighter and breezier than usual: more likely to make you laugh, but less likely to make you cry. In his Japanese work, the characters tend to be one wrong move away from destitution and/or death, whereas in his new laidback farce they don’t seem to risk anything worse than a hangover brought on by too much expensive brandy. But Kore-Eda’s understanding of the complexities of familial love and the disappointments of middle age is as wise as ever.
By Alessandro Algardi3 years ago in Geeks
Two stars for Soderbergh’s disappointing The Laundromat
The award for this year’s best opening scene should go to The Laundromat, Steven Soderbergh’s star-studded, non-fiction comedy about the Panama Papers. Shot in what appears to be one long, unbroken take, it’s a walk-and-talk lecture on the history of money delivered by Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca, two notorious lawyers played with irresistible swagger by Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas respectively. Oldman, especially, revels in his role as the self-righteous, preening Mossack, pushing his German accent to Herzog-ian extremes, and emphasising his hissing s-es like a villainous snake in a Disney cartoon.
By Mao Jiao Li3 years ago in Geeks
Toronto International Film Festival review: The Goldfinch
“I don’t have to tell you about loss,” Nicole Kidman says softly to Ansel Elgort, whose character’s mother died years before, when a bomb exploded at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. We are well into The Goldfinch by then, but Kidman’s controlled, elegiac manner captures the tone that dominates throughout. John Crowley’s adaptation of Donna Tartt’s novel is beautifully photographed and eloquently told, but too emotionally muted for its own good.
By Many A-Sun3 years ago in Geeks
Film review: Downton Abbey
If you’re going to elevate the social world of Downton Abbey’s aristocratic Crawley family, you really have nowhere to go but up to the king and queen. As this cheerful movie picks up from the hugely popular television series, King George V and Queen Mary visit Downton. It is 1927, soon after the show’s story ended. There is no mention of the royal guests’ then-baby granddaughter, who would grow up to be Elizabeth II.
By Alessandro Algardi3 years ago in Geeks
