*spoilers, naturally, follow for those yet to watch Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 4 ‘The Book of the Stranger’* The house words of House Targaryen, ‘Fire and Blood’, seem like the most appropriate way to begin this review, since the world of Ice and Fire is now set on an inexorable path towards suffering the vengeful wrath of two Targaryens. Well, one and a half. Jon Snow doesn’t yet know that he is a Targaryen, but like Daenerys, he is on a path towards a bloody war. And like Dany, he has massive reinforcements coming, although, again, he doesn’t know about his yet.
Most recent comedies we’ve seen have been funny in chops but Berlin-based filmmaker-Maren Ade’s latest work-Toni Erdmann, which she presented at the 69th Cannes Film Festival is nothing like the others—it’s a full blown comedy, straight from the start to the end. And it’s not just for the laughs, the emotionally explosive comedy has a … Read more
It’s a clash between religious fanaticism and science, the former backed by many scriptural quotations and the latter supported by arguments of reason and evidence—but at the end of it all, it’s the beauty and vigorous intelligence from both camps which leaves the viewer thrilled by this Russian film. Kirill Serebrennikov’s film “The Student” successfully and … Read more
*Spoilers, naturally, follow for those yet to watch Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 3 ‘Oathbreaker’* The fallout from Jon Snow’s resurrection at the end of episode 2 proved to be every bit as eerie and ultimately satisfying as one could hope for it to be, as the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch made his return to the land of the living in the most epic way possible. The biggest question about Jon Snow since he was stabbed last season was never really about whether he was coming back, everyone knew that- the real question always was how he would come back and what effect that would have on the honourable Lord Snow.
Seth Rogen and Zac Efron in Bad Neighbours 2 When a film makes 270 million dollars and only 18 million was spent on it, then you are sure a sequel would more likely be seen—so we’ve been served with ‘Bad Neighbours 2’. Though a sequel, one good thing about the comedy is that you do not need to have watched the previous to be able to laugh. It’s humorous in chops but as a whole, you would forget what it’s really all about the moment the credits begin to roll. Perhaps, inspired by Zac Efron’s Magic-Mike-style dancing which grabbed a lot of attention in Dirty Grandpa, we get to see Zac in ‘Bad Neighbours 2’ doing it all over again—but this time with a plot purpose, to divert attention from an on-going thievery. In ‘Bad Neighbour 2,’ Mac ( played by Seth Rogen) and Kelly Radner ( played by Rose Byrne) have a little girl whose ideal playing-toy is their huge vibrator—and the plot of the film sits on the closure of a property sale by the couple. When the couple thought they had successfully sold their property to move into another, it emerged to their surprise that they were in a 30 days Escrow window—a time frame within which the buyers on finding anything unpleasant could pull out of the sale.
*Spoilers, naturally, follow for those who have yet to watch Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 2 ‘Home’* “Jon Snow is deader than dead”, Thrones director David Nutter told the President of the United States, Barack Obama, last year. It illustrates the lengths the showrunners went through to convince anyone listening that the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch was indeed, dead- nobody listened anyway. And for good reason, it turns out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a viewing public be so sure that a certain character was not going to remain dead, so powerful is the character of Jon Snow. But the certainty over his fate was not just a sort of wishful thinking, but the logical endpoint for the carefully laid down clues the showrunners, and George R.R Martin, left for the audience.
Captain America: Civil War The Avengers have become a global redemption force; a small group of super heroes whose activities are borderless. Though a private organisation, they are able to leap into any territory to knockout the bad guys—out of which collateral damages are inevitable. To some, the Avengers are a global vigilante unit, uncontrolled and unsupervised by any prudent external power, and to others, they are plainly the fountainhead of the many wars which erupt on the back of their powers and rescue exercises. It’s always a catastrophic showdown when the Avengers roll out in battle, mostly destroying an entire city. A collateral damage during a necessary combat in Lagos, Nigeria on the back of the Scarlet Witch (played by Elizabeth Olsen) actions got the world paying keen attention—this time; about 117 countries agreed that the Avengers ought to be supervised by the United Nations such that their missions would be determined solely by a UN panel. But some of the Avengers, led by Captain America (played by Chris Evans) are cynical about government controls and laid forward a total rejection to the idea, even in the face of a recollection of the many mayhem caused by their botched operations. It was not a total Avengers’ rejection: Iron-Man (played by Robert Downey Jr) and a pack of others are in favour of the agreement—to them, that’s the way forward, with the plausible alternative being a complete shutdown of their operations by the world governments.
Aerial Shots The below review was submitted by an up-coming film-maker who attended the premiere of ‘Amakye & Dede’ in Accra on 25th March, 2016—and he prefers to remain a ghost writer. ‘Amakye and Dede’ marks the very first time I have seen a Ghanaian movie on its opening night. Like some Silverbird cinema employees, I never thought the movie was going to sell as much as it did. Consequently; I didn’t book my ticket until the screening day- I got there at 8 pm for the 9 pm screen, and the place was disgustingly filled with people. I got to the cashier , and I was told the 9pm was sold out , so I had to wait for 11:30pm. Eight-Nine-Ten-Eleven– that is four hours! There was no way I was going to stay for four hours to watch a movie– well, that was what I thought, until I return to the escalator and found out that the placed was blocked. People had to form a cue to catch an elevator ride as well. It was massive and fascinating , so well , I waited — but was it worth it?
Gerard Butler in London Has Fallen Anthony Fuqua’s action film-London Has Fallen, a sequel to ‘Olympus Has Fallen’ is extremely chaotic, brutal, fast-paced and exceedingly exaggerated—-it falls short of the first which demonstrated to the world low budget movies can also ‘break’ the box office. If you are not quivered by the indiscriminate slaying of world leaders, the plot that everyone and everything would be put in a basket to avert the assassination of the United States president- Benjamin Asher (played by Aaron Eckhart) from many countries, perhaps, to their own disadvantage tickles the mind. In what comes off as a ‘Final Destination’ style of killing, terrorists disguised as police officers succeed in whacking several world leaders in London, attending the funeral of the British Prime Minister. There’s a background to the bedlam; the film opens in remote Pakistan, where a United States wanted terrorist and arms dealer’s humongous mansion is blown into ashes from the sky during the wedding of his daughter. Two years after the ‘family annihilation’, world leaders converge in London for a funeral—and the film seems to suggest this was part of a revenge scheme, well executed by those seeking to make a global death counting statement, yet, with the US president as their ultimate casualty.
Zac Efron and Robert De Niro in Dirty Grandpa Robert De Niro seems to be hitting a late life crisis with his career—if he was bankrupt and was taking every role to make a quick buck, that would have been explicable. But as it stands now, there’s no plausible reason why De Niro continues to fall down the slope of greatness: at this stage of his career, fans expect he will only hit our screens when it’s absolutely worth it. Over the years, it has been a two side conversation as to whether Robert De Niro is good at comedy or not—and if we are to settle that debate solely with the outcome of ‘The Dirty Grandpa’, then the answer is clearly this; he sucks at it. Slightly similar to his recent movie-The Intern, Robert De Niro plays a retired old man-Dick—but this time, a grandpa whose wife’s death set him on a course to wildness, to explore the final women-fun options available to him before his own departure. After all, he had been faithful to his wife since they got married. He doesn’t do this alone as he intended to use his fun adventure to also redeem himself as a bad father, and wake the consciousness of his grandson- Jason Kelly (played by Zac Efron) who was a week away from marrying his boss’s uber-controlling daughter-Meredith—a viable means to secure him a fast track partnership at the law firm where he worked.
Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant Leonardo DiCaprio has missed the Oscars many times but this year, the only way he will not pick the plaque considering his outstandingly superb performance in ‘The Revenant’ is to die from his bear wounds a few days before the grand ceremony. ‘The Revenant’ is beautiful and yet vicious; a story of endurance told in such a way that the unending ferocious adventures of a nineteenth-century fur trapper and frontiersman-Hugh Glass (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) cripple your veins—let loose only when the credit begins to roll. Having joined other civilian privateers engaged in a US military expedition led by Andrew Henry (played by Domhnall Gleeson) somewhere near the Missouri river to establish a lucrative fur-trapping base, Hugh Glass and his men are pulled into a deranged war with arrows flying all over from tribesmen-warriors. The tribesmen are enraged by the kidnap of a Native American-woman, Powaqa (played by Melaw Nakehk’o) After arrows have pierced the throat of more than half the men of Andrew Henry, Glass somewhat becomes the leader, guiding the few to retreat—setting the film in full motion.
Jennifer Lawrence in Joy Despite ‘Joy’ being less comical to me when compared to ‘Spy’ and Jennifer Lawrence being no where close to Melissa McCarthy in the department of comedy in these two films, Lawrence, amazingly scooped the Golden Globes’ 2016 Best Actress for comedy with her performance in ‘Joy‘. And she is even tipped for an Oscar nomination; that’s how confusing things get these days with films— but then, “it’s universally acknowledged that the Oscars hardly ever awards true comedy performances.” Nevertheless, Jennifer Lawrence perfectly plays a strong lead in ‘Joy’, a half truth biopic of Joy Mangano, a revolutionary self-wringing mop inventor who enjoyed unimaginable success in the 90s—selling on the then popular QVC shopping channel. ‘Joy’ tells a story of a rise from grass to grace in the world of commerce but that was just for the outside world—the film takes us deep into the family setting of Joy, where chaos was the order of the day. Joy Mangano (played by Jennifer Lawrence) was a single mother who had to forgo college to stay behind in a small town with her divorced mother- Carrie (played by Virginia Madsen) and father- Rudy (played Robert De Niro); helping both in different ways as one struggled to put his life back on the track and the other locks herself in bed, watching daytime Soap Opera. The life of Joy was hectic at the family level, more like the drama her bedbound mother was glued to: she had her divorced fruitless husband- Tony (played Edgar Ramirez) living in the basement of what had only become the family house because her father kept supporting with the mortgage payments.
Rebecca Shirley Frimpong-Manso has decided to dare her audience with an unexpected radical shift in her style of story-telling—seemingly temporal but the fact remains; ‘Rebecca’ is nothing like any of the movies we’ve seen from the multiple award-winning filmmaker. Considering Shirley Frimpong-Manso’s scenery and costume strength, it surely must have been a film-making escapade to forgo her strong holds and forge forward to tell a story this way; which she brilliantly delivers but would require a certain level of broad attentiveness to fully appreciate the film. ‘Rebecca’ opens with a scene of two people sitting at the back of a Range Rover in a middle of no where, and for the entire duration of the film, that’s the location—it’s one of those odd two actors’ movies with mostly everything taking place at one location.
Nana Obiri Yeboah’s second feature film-The Cursed Ones which has received 15 Ghana Movie Awards nominations starts on a woolly slow path—yet it manages to piece together a remarkable picture by taking the viewer on an uncomfortable poignant journey as it attacks and exposes some of the entrenched societal prejudices developed on the back of our … Read more
Bond; James Bond is back—and if anyone thought Daniel Craig was the worst ever James Bond, “Spectre” will definitely change that notion.
It’s everything a typical James Bond film is known for—-with a bonus comedy well served by Q, (played by Ben Whishaw ), the slow and yet smart tech supremo at the Mi6 headquarters.
At the World Premiere held at the Royal Albert Hall in London, Daniel Craig stated among other things that though he loves playing James Bond, he hates to watch himself on screen—but I am sure, for once, he would love to see himself on the big screen for the excellent role play as the quintessential British spy.
“Spectre” kicked off in Mexico City: Mr. Bond is introduced with a woman by his side, strolling through a crowd at the Day of the Dead—and as usual, it was not a coincidence that Bond showed up there.
Soon, the somewhat skeleton festival is turned into a magnificent air display—Bond was at work, punching a tough Assassin and the Helicopter’s pilot which beautifully pushed the aircraft into an unending loop.
At this stage, you wouldn’t really know who to be scared for—is Bond about the crash into the crowd of people running helter-scatter? Of course not, it’s 007 at his best. And that was just the introduction: superbly executed to get your full attention.
