Reviews

Firstly, if you have the opportunity to see the PBS documentary on The Life & Times of Frida Kahlo narrated by Mexican singer, Lila Downs, that was produced in 2005, do so because it is far more superior to this one.

For me, the modern poetic reconstructions of Frida were badly done: removing her gown in a bedroom that has a TV in it? A television set? Really? Mexico City in the 1930s & 40s? Too many shots of modern day Mexico City and too little archival footage and photographs. There is a lot of filler footage in this (70%), much of it doesn't capture the era that she lived in and has little to do with Frida, apart from being film in Mexico. It is more suited to Mexico travelogue. Modern Mexicans dancing to electronica during a carnival in Tehuantepec?

On the plus side, there's an interesting tour of the present day Frida Kahlo museum and the outside of the other Kahlo/Rivera houses. The Mexican interviews, especially the one with the photographer Graciela Iturbide (she deserves a documentary of her own) bemused how Frida has become a feminist icon in the US when she was supported and submissive to her more famous and wealthy husband, Diego Rivera.

I'm really not sure why a very sombre looking Asia Argento, with her thick Italian accent, was asked to narrate this, unless it was made for the Italian market. There are plenty of Mexican actresses who speak English who could have done it: Was Adriana Barraza or Cecilia Suárez not available?

Overall, it feels very disjointed and definitely not the best documentary on Frida.

It starts with an interesting premise but then as it progresses requires you not just to suspend your disbelief but throw it away all together. Rosamund Pike is stereotyped following on from her success in Gone Girl but here she is like a cartoon character. Dianne Wiest is excellent in her part but is painfully underused. Sadly, her character's reaction and change of motivation doesn't ring true. Peter Dinklage's character is another cartoon. As it goes on it becomes more and more ludicrous.

This dragged for me. It was gorgeous to look at, but other than that it seemed vapid and hollow. At times it felt like it was trying to be a Woody Allen urban comedy but severely lacking the punchy pacing and clever witty lines. It's very much Bill Murray's show as the deadpan womanising father, but even he seemed bored with the cliché. Rashida Jones didn't seem quirky enough for me and Marlon Wayans didn't really have much to do at all. I don't know what it is about Sofia Coppola's movies but she has a talent of making a 96 minute movie seem like three hours.

I could listen to Fran Lebowitz all day. A lot of her observations are astute, clever and very funny. She's brilliant at describing New York and New York life, mixed in with a little of her personal biography, I was left wanting to know more about her. She would make a mint if she ever wrote her memoirs.

It starts well then then falls into too much into feminist critique. A good documentary should be factual and objective, but this has been distorted to fit a certain viewpoint. It leaves too many questions unanswered, like most importantly who was behind the letters and tape that put the police completely off track? Instead it blames the police at the time for being misogynistic, despite the fact that they focussed exclusively on false leads, which has nothing to do with the fact that the victims were women. Very little on the Ripper's background, employment, wife, home life or even motivation behind the crimes, apart from that he was insane. This probably could have been condensed into 60 minutes instead of dragged out into a 3hr plus documentary that goes off on a tangent. Disappointing.

Where was the comedy? Meryl Streep acted like she was bored and inconvenienced throughout, Wiest and Bergen were underused and the ending will leave you hugely dissatisfied after almost two hours. Only great thing about this film were the interior shots of the Queen Mary 2.

An adequate Spanish horror movie but nothing special. Effects and jump scares are good. The story follows the usual lines of new family that have bought a new house and are renovating it only to find out that it is haunted. However the outcome differs from the usual and is somewhat unexpected. You will scream at the indulgence of the set designer who felt that the colours turquoise/teal and red/wine had to be present in every scene, but at brisk 97 minutes the horror eventually ends.

I wish they'd changed the period as I found both Armie Hammer and Lily James rather stiff and flat. It would have been interesting if they'd moved it to the 1950s and rewritten the story. This was almost a pointless copy of the original but lacking all the creepy suspense and charm.

This was slow and plodding. It managed to make 95 minutes feel like 3 hours. The main actress playing Agatha lacked charisma and it had a bit of an amateur feel to it, although it was made as a TV movie. On the plus side, the production values were very good, so it was a shame that it wasn't a better script with a bit more drama and played less flat. This is probably the dullest Agatha Christie related movie that I have ever seen. At least the ones made in the 80s were entertaining.

This was too slow. It didn't really have much plot to move it forward and just seemed to go on and on. I hadn't read the book but as a movie it was hugely disappointing.

Unless you are Shakespeare aficionado curious about what his imagined retirement might have been like, then you'll probably find this film as dull as dishwater. It is slow and slightly precious. I sat there thinking IF this film wasn't supposedly about 'Shakespeare' but about a fictional non famous writer and his family soap opera would anyone be interested? It seems to have bypassed the drama and exhilarating pacing found in his plays and settled on a dry dot to dot joining of imagined dreary family episodes based on a few known facts. Dench and McKellen are sublime in some scenes, although Dench is clearly miscast due to the age difference and at times looks like Shakespeare's mother rather than wife. Branagh never really captures the period for me, and I felt at times that he could be acting in some contemporary West London, middle class, family drama about midlife re-evaluation, if you close your eyes so you can't see the elaborate make up and settings. Bland. Which is a shame because Shakespeare, although difficult but worthwhile, was never this boring.

This is quite a slow, considered documentary on the rape of Recy Taylor using old race films, photographs, footage and evocative music to convey the times. It starts well enough, although at times it it completely overshadowed by the music (Dinah Washington' achingly haunting, This Bitter Earth) and the arty reconstructions distract. It's uneven and Recy Taylor's story is devastating enough without the documentary halfway veering into a discourse about black women's activism by some preachy white feminist scholar. Reframing the narrative through a modern perspective is more often that not, unfaithful to history. One of the most powerful images that I took away was Recy Taylor's father having to spend nights in a tree with a shotgun to guard his family after they'd gone public about the rape. It's a harrowing story but it isn't handled very well. I don't recall if they mentioned the similar gang rape of Betty Jean Owens. fifteen years later, and the different outcome, but they should have.

When actor/director Edward Burn's The Brothers McMullan was released back in 1995, the critics likened it to a Woody Allen comedy. Now it seems that Mr Burns has brazenly gone one step further and remade Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives (1992) with slight plot changes and a younger cast of characters and of course an alternate title. Somehow this rewrite fails to capture the zany spark of the original, which is an excellent movie (try watching both movies back to back). Perhaps the only noteworthy thing about this movie are the performances: Rosario Dawson is excellent as the teacher who gets pregnant after a one night stand. As a matter a fact, her performance is the only thing that redeems this movie, since all the other characters are caught up in full Woody Allen film mimicry mode, some perhaps unintentionally. It's a shame that Mr Burns didn't run with the pregnant-after-a-one-night-stand plot thread as he might have turned out a movie of more merit and certainly one of more originality. 4/10 for effort minus 2 for borrowing heavily from another director. Shame on you, Edward Burns!