Tag Archives: Helen Mirren

Shazam! Fury Of The Gods review — The Big Red Cheese fights gods and monsters

June 13, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by David F. Sandberg | Written by Henry Gayden and Chris Morgan | 130 min | ▲▲△△△ | Crave Here's a tough movie to review. Like the first Shazam! movie this is entirely aimed at the pre-teen set, a four-colour superhero movie actually for kids. That's not a bad thing, right? I won't deny… Read More

Fast X review — 10 x dumb, mostly fun

May 19, 2023 flawintheiris

Directed by Louis Leterrier | Written by Dan Mazeau and Justin Lin | 141 min | ▲▲▲△△ | Amazon Prime So, what is my Fast & Furious ranking — I hear nobody ask. I'll get to that, but if you'd like a fuller picture — I did a franchise review on this well-oiled machine about… Read More

F9: The Fast Saga review — Going nowhere fast, sans fury

July 3, 2021 flawintheiris

Directed by Justin Lin | Written by Lin, Daniel Casey, and Alfredo Botello | 143 min | Netflix There was every sign this would be a revvin' good time at the movies. The return of Justin Lin to the drivers' seat, the man who helmed many of the series' best entries: Fast Five, Fast &… Read More

The Good Liar review — Bog-standard-to-bilge mystery

November 20, 2019 flawintheiris

Directed by Bill Condon | Written by Jeffrey Hatcher, based on the novel by Nicholas Searle | 109 min | Crave Plus Roy (Ian McKellan) is an 80-year-old con artist, a man for whom lying is as common as breathing, looking to swindle recent widow Betty McLeish (Helen Mirren) of her life's savings. He's an… Read More

Reviews from the Vault Vol. 10 — A few more very good movies

October 7, 2019 flawintheiris

From 2005 to 2009 I was a programmer on CKDU 88.1 FM in Halifax, every Sunday morning hosting The Love & Hate Movie Show. I talked about what I was seeing and revisited some of my favourite films of old, pretty much what I do now here on FITI. I still have a lot of… Read More

The Fate Of The Furious review — Pistons pop and fizzle

April 16, 2017 flawintheiris

Directed by F. Gary Gray | Written by Chris Morgan, based on characters by Gary Scott Thompson | 136 min We've been promised a final trilogy of movies to take us across this franchise's finish line—and that we even got this far is kind of amazing. This whole shooting match started as a low-budget exploitation picture,… Read More

Eye In The Sky review — Death from Above 2016

April 19, 2016 flawintheiris

Directed by Gavin Hood | Written by Guy Hibbert | 102 min | ▲▲▲△△ What is one little girl's life worth weighed against the imminent death of dozens? That's the morality play at the centre of Eye In The Sky, a clever, well-structured drama stretched taut around a single event. Col. Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren, typically sterling)… Read More

Trumbo review — Blacklist blues

December 23, 2015 flawintheiris

Directed by Jay Roach | Written by John McNamara, adapting a book by Bruce Cook | 124 min | ▲▲▲△△ One thing you can count on: Hollywood's interest in itself never flags. In this case, the interest is reasonably warranted: 25 years in the life of Dalton Trumbo, an esteemed screenwriter who had the poor fortune… Read More

The Debt review

September 4, 2011 flawintheiris

Directed by John MaddenWritten by Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman and Peter Straughan,based on the film Ha-Hov by Assaf Bernstein and Ido RosenblumRachel Singer (Helen Mirren), ex-husband Stephan Gold (Tom Wilkinson) and ex-pat David Peretz (Ciaran Hinds) are national heroes in their homeland of Israel. In the mid-1960s they were Mossad agents, assigned to East Berlin… Read More