In Theatres
New to Rent/Own
In Theatres:
The Post: Movie Review
| Enthralling timeliness about the fight for the freedom of press. |
The timeliness of The Post, set in 1971, is distressing and eye-opening to say the least. The President (Nixon, but not a visible character in the movie) is throwing the 1st Amendment out the window as he’s trying to stop newspapers from publishing the Pentagon papers and banning reporters from covering his daughter’s wedding. Meanwhile the female president of The Washington Post was facing significant gender discrimination where none of the (all male) board members thought she was capable of leading the paper and would say so to her face. | 2017 Directed by: Steven Speilberg Screenplay by: Liz Hannah, Josh Singer Starring: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts and Bradley Whitford | |
See full review of The Post |
Molly's Game: Movie Review
| Fast-talking, smart story of one accomplished woman. |
Molly Bloom was a world-class skier, an academic over-achiever, a woman who built a legal multi-million-dollar poker business on her own wits and intelligence, and now she’s a felon. Molly’s Game is her story - all of her story, or at least the prescient moments from her first 36 years. It’s the highs and the lows and most importantly, how she got there. | 2017 Directed by: Aaron Sorkin Screenplay by: Aaron Sorkin Based on the book by Molly Bloom Starring: Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba | |
See full review of Molly's Game |
Pitch Perfect 3: Movie Review
| Ludicrous plot doesn’t fit the Pitch Perfect tone. |
Given the poor reception that Pitch Perfect 3 has received, it would be tempting to say the series has gone out with a whimper instead of a bang, but no, the movie literally goes out with a bang. The Bellas are performing on a yacht, Fat Amy comes crashing through a glass ceiling, blows up the boat, and Amy and Beca jump into the water together. How do we get there? Well Fat Amy becomes a fighting ninja, the Bellas get kidnapped by an international assassin, while they’re touring with the USO in Europe. | 2017 Directed by: Trish Sie Screenplay by: Kay Cannon and Mike White Starring: Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, Brittany Snow, Anna Camp | |
See full review of Pitch Perfect 3 |
Darkest Hour: Movie Review
| A mini-roller coaster of boorish, comic and political statesman. |
As Joe Wright has done in all of his previous films, particularly the period pieces such as Anna Karenina and Atonement, he perfectly captures the style for the setting. In Darkest Hour, it’s a sepia-toned British Parliament, with a hundred men all wearing black suits shouting about their ineptitude to stop the German advances of World War II. It’s May 1940, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is about to resign and Britain, and the world, need a new leader to help them defeat Hitler. | 2017 Directed by: Joe Wright Screenplay by: Anthony McCarten Starring: Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas | |
See full review of Darkest Hour |
Lady Bird: Movie Review
| Heartfelt, honest and funny. |
Lady Bird is about a lot of smaller ideas, all of which might seem uninteresting to the average viewer, but it so perfectly captures the awkwardness of a teenager coming of age and trying to survive her last year of high school, that there’s a relatable humour and warmth that will echo throughout the generations. Writer and director Greta Gerwig has referred to it as a love letter to her hometown of Sacramento, California, and it’s also about navigating the slightly different social structure of an all-girls catholic school, which Gerwig herself attended. | 2017 Directed by: Greta Gerwig Screenplay by: Greta Gerwig Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges | |
See full review of Lady Bird |
I, Tonya: Movie Review
| Uproariously entertaining with astute insight into Tonya Harding. |
Craig Gillespie, director of I, Tonya, opts for a comedic breaking-the-fourth-wall type biopic where characters in mid-action will either deny or confirm what they’re currently doing. When Tonya has a rifle aimed at ex-husband Jeff’s head, she says she didn’t do it. When Jeff slams Tonya’s fingers in the car door, he says he didn’t do it. But you know they did do most of it. The style works for a too-crazy-to-be-true true story. | 2017 Directed by: Craig Gillespie Screenplay by: Steven Rogers Starring: Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, Paul Walter Hauser | |
See full review of I, Tonya |
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