Tag Archives: Octavia Spencer

Spirited review — Lots of singing in this Christmas Carol

December 5, 2022 flawintheiris

Directed by Sean Anders | Written by Anders and John Morris | 127 min | ▲▲▲△△ | Apple TV+ We open on a deeply troubled woman — named Karen, of course, played by Rose Byrne — getting sucked into a grave, but this picture's not nearly as grim as all that. This creepy opening scene… Read More

Roald Dahl’s The Witches review — Hathaway best thing in creepy kids comedy

February 13, 2021 flawintheiris

Directed by Robert Zemeckis | Written by Zemeckis, Kenya Barris, and Guillermo del Toro, based on the book by Roald Dahl | 106 min | Crave Plus Back in 1990 an adaptation of this Dahl book was made by the legendary Nicolas Roeg, starring Anjelica Huston. I haven't seen it, but I did check out… Read More

Onward review — Pixar adventure finds magic on the way

April 3, 2020 flawintheiris

Directed by Dan Scanlon | Written by Scanlon, Keith Bunin and Jason Headley | 102 min | On Demand You may note a welcome familiarity to the busy plot structure and suburban milieu of this Disney Pixar picture — despite the elves and magical overtones, this could be an '80's Amblin live-action feature, complete with… Read More

Luce review — Enigmatic thriller jabs at big issues

August 22, 2019 flawintheiris

Directed by Julius Onah | Written by Onah and JC Lee | 109 min | Prime Video Bright and well-spoken, Luce Edgar (Kelvin Harrison Jr) shines at his Arlington, Virginia high school. His poise is even more impressive when you consider his childhood—he lived his first seven years in Eritrea, where he might've been a… Read More

Now on Canadian Netflix — February 2019

February 6, 2019 flawintheiris

Velvet Buzzsaw A deliciously trashy art world satire/horror from Dan Gilroy, the filmmaker behind Nightcrawler and Roman J. Israel. , a picture with a lot more of the edge and unease of the former rather than the prestige aspirations of the latter. It tells the story of a shallow, ambitious, group of nasties; the delightfully named Morf Vandewalt (another… Read More

The Shape Of Water review — Romantic monster movie a new high point for Pan’s Labyrinth director

December 23, 2017 flawintheiris

Directed by Guillermo del Toro | Written by del Toro and Vanessa Taylor | 123 min | Disney+ I've heard two jokey descriptors for this picture, that it's a gothic remake of Ron Howard's Splash, and that it's a Hellboy prequel, focussing on the origins of Abe Sapien. Both takes feel a lot more true than… Read More

Hidden Figures review — Cliched drama grounds important story

January 11, 2017 flawintheiris

Directed by Theodore Melfi | Written by Melfi and Allison Schroeder, adapting a book by Margot Lee Shetterly | 127 min A few weeks ago I took in the Jeff Nichols drama Loving, the true story about the fight for civil rights and social justice in the '60s in rural Virginia. It's about an interracial couple… Read More

Black or White review — a fundamentally flawed drama

January 31, 2015 flawintheiris

Written and directed by Mike Binder It's a rare thing when a feature film makes a game attempt to tackle the slippery issues of contemporary racial politics in the United States. More should. For the effort alone, Binder should be applauded. But his based-on-real-events script tries to do too much, and as a result is… Read More

Snowpiercer review

July 22, 2014 flawintheiris

Directed by Joon-ho Bong, written by Bong and Kelly Masterson, based on the graphic novel Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand, and Jean-Marc Rochette In the sea of summer releases—many loud, over-budgeted and over-marketed—it's sometimes easy to miss a gem that only gets shown in a few cinemas in North America before settling into… Read More

The Help and Warrior reviewed

February 24, 2012 flawintheiris

With the Oscars on Sunday, I thought it worthwhile to catch up with a few of the films with nominations that I missed in the cinema. The Help Written and directed by Tate Taylor, from the Kathryn Stockett novel.Well, it's a bit hard coming at this with all the words written about it so far.… Read More