Archive
THE BAD GUYS – Daniel Pemberton
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Bad Guys is a new animated adventure comedy from Dreamworks, directed by Pierre Perifel, based on a popular children’s book series by Aaron Blabey. It is set in a world of anthropomorphic animals and focuses on a criminal gang of traditionally ‘bad’ animals – a wolf, a snake, a spider, a shark, and a piranha. The gang is wildly successful at pulling off elaborate heists, but when their latest scheme goes badly awry, they are finally caught. To avoid a prison sentence, the outlaws must pull off their most challenging con yet – becoming model citizens. Under the tutelage of their mentor, Professor Marmalade, the gang sets out to fool the world that they’re turning good – but things are not what they seem, and soon the gang is involved in a high energy adventure. The film has a really good voice cast including Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, and Awkwafina, and has an original score by the outstanding British composer Daniel Pemberton. Read more…
ENOLA HOLMES – Daniel Pemberton
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
I would wager that most people in the English-speaking world have heard of Sherlock Holmes, the great British detective of classic literature. Many will also be aware of Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft, who appears in several of the stories too. However, it is likely that Sherlock and Mycroft’s younger sister Enola is completely new to most – and for good reason, because she is not a creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, nor does she appear in any of his great adventures. Enola Holmes is a creation of writer Nancy Springer, who first wrote of her adventures in a series of books beginning in 2006. This new film is an adaptation of the first novel, The Case of the Missing Marquess, and stars Millie Bobbie Brown as the 14-year old sister of Sherlock and Mycroft. When their mother disappears, Sherlock and Mycroft conclude that her mother left voluntarily, and decide to send young Enola away to a boarding school. Horrified at the prospect of having to conform to the Victorian sensibilities of how girls must dress and act, the tomboyish Enola runs away to London, determined to prove that there is more to her mother’s disappearance than meets the eye. The film is directed by Harry Bradbeer, co-stars Henry Cavill, Sam Claflin, and Helena Bonham Carter, and has an original score by composer Daniel Pemberton; it was scheduled to be released in cinemas in the summer of 2020 but, due to the COVID-19 pandemic was instead released on Netflix in September. Read more…
MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN – Daniel Pemberton
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Motherless Brooklyn is a period drama-thriller written and directed by Edward Norton, based on the acclaimed novel by Jonathan Lethem. It’s set in New York in the 1950s and stars Norton as Lionel Essrog, a detective who has Tourette’s Syndrome, a mental disorder marked by involuntary physical and vocal tics. Essrog works for Frank Minna (Bruce Willis), the owner of a small-time neighborhood detective agency, who is shot with his own gun by unknown assailants. As Lionel and his fellow detectives start to probe further into Frank’s murder they uncover a complicated conspiracy of power, corruption, and racism that stretches all the way to the top of New York’s political structure. The film co-stars Willem Dafoe, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Bobby Cannavale, and Alec Baldwin, and reminds me very much of films like Chinatown, wherein a relentless underdog detective takes on the wealthy and privileged and finds that the combination of money and influence is a powerful motivator for unscrupulous men – and that they will squash anyone who gets in their way to attain them. Norton optioned the story of Motherless Brooklyn almost 20 years ago, just after the original novel was published, and it has taken this long to be able to transfer his passion project to the silver screen. Read more…
THE DARK CRYSTAL: AGE OF RESISTANCE – Daniel Pemberton and Samuel Sim
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
In 1982 the Jim Henson Company released what was, at the time, the most ambitious puppet-centric movie ever made: The Dark Crystal. Despite being a rich fantasy film of evil monsters and gallant heroes, visually stunning and wondrously creative, it was not an immediate success upon its release, with many people considering it much too scary for its young target audience. However, in the intervening 37 years it has become a beloved cult classic, a cultural touchstone for many 1980s children who were left enchanted and terrified in equal measure. Fans have been clamoring for a sequel for decades, but have been forced to be content with various comic books and novels to quench their thirst for additional tales from this universe – until now. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is a 10-episode series produced by Netflix which acts as a prequel to the original movie, and with its increased budget actually surpasses the original in terms of its larger scope, richer detailing, brilliant storytelling, and visual majesty. Read more…
THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. – Daniel Pemberton
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is director Guy Ritchie’s remake of the classic 1960s TV show of the same name, which starred Robert Vaughn and David McCallum as Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, crack agents for the CIA and KGB, respectively, who are recruited by the British to work for the cross-agency spy organization U.N.C.L.E. (“United Network Command for Law and Enforcement”) at the height of the Cold War, to take down whatever was threatening world peace that week. This reboot of the show features Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer as Solo and Kuryakin, who are teamed together to help an East German defector named Gabi Teller (Alicia Vikander) locate her missing scientist father, who may be helping wealthy shipping magnate Victoria Vinciguerra (Elizabeth Debicki) build a nuclear weapon which could destabilize the world. The film is an absolute delight, featuring a trio of excellent central performances from Cavill, Hammer and Vikander, which spares no expense in playing up their fish-out-of-water mismatched buddy dynamics. The dialogue is witty and sharp, the action is exciting, the 1960s atmosphere is captured perfectly through the costume and set design, and there is a rich vein of clever humor punctuating the entire project. Read more…
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