Tag Archives: Alessandro Nivola

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale review — A fond farewell

September 28, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Simon Curtis | Written by Julian Fellowes | 123 min | ▲▲▲ | Amazon Prime Just when you might have thought Downton Abbey departed the cinematic stage, it's back for one last hurrah. This is after the better-than-it-needed to be Downton Abbey: A New Era and the just OK Downton Abbey, the first two… Read More

The Brutalist review — Visionary, flawed immigrant epic

January 25, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Brady Corbet | Written by Corbet and Mona Fastvold | 214 min | ▲▲▲1/2 Brady Corbet's work as an actor is familiar to me, it goes back a way, but as a writer-director the only picture of his I've watched was the Natalie Portman pop-star drama Vox Lux. This couldn't be more different.… Read More

Kraven The Hunter review — Dumb, but not dull

December 18, 2024 flawintheiris

Directed by J.C. Chandor | Written by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway, Kraven The Hunter created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko | 127 min | ▲▲▲△△ | Crave The Sony/Marvel project to make movies around the villains of Spider-Man (but not featuring Spider-Man, except in their animated offerings) has been a bit… Read More

Amsterdam review — An interesting mess, but a mess nonetheless

October 17, 2022 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by David O Russell | 134 min | ▲▲▲△△ This is the return of the deeply problematic, reportedly toxic filmmaker David O Russell to the Prestige Alley — that time between October and the end of the year when most of Hollywood's Oscar-bait features arrive in cinemas and jostle for garlands and… Read More

Now On Canadian Netflix: January 2020

January 18, 2020 flawintheiris

The Two Popes On the face of it, this strikes me as strange material for Fernando Meirelles to approach. The Brazilian filmmaker responsible for City Of God and The Constant Gardener is a visionary of colour and kinetics, of movement. Why would he choose to tell the story of two senior citizens having a conversation, his… Read More

The Art Of Self-Defence review — The message of modern masculinity

October 9, 2019 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Riley Stearns | 104 mins | Crave Plus "Never hold back. Not ever. It'll only make you weak, and you can't be weak anymore. Not in the night classes." This is the lesson Casey (Jesse Eisenberg) learns explicitly from the only woman in his karate dojo, Anna (Imogen Poots), and implicitly… 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

Disobedience review — The heartbreak of choice

May 31, 2018 flawintheiris

Directed by Sebastian Lelio | Written by Lelio and Rebecca Lenkiewicz, based on the novel by Naomi Alderman | 114 min | Hoopla, On Demand Smoking in movies has changed so much. Where once it was sexy and dangerous, now it signifies something else. Still danger, but also anxiety. Weakness. An addictive personality. Unhealth. Ronit… Read More

A Most Violent Year review — A gripping New York thriller of yesteryear today

January 27, 2015 flawintheiris

Written and directed by JC Chandor It's arriving late here in Halifax and appallingly under-loved by the Academy, but I'm here to tell you A Most Violent Year is one of the best movies of 2014. The scale and ambitions of this picture are sky high for what is essentially an indie drama, which is why… Read More

Selma review — History is alive, history is today

January 11, 2015 flawintheiris

Directed by Ava DuVernay, written by Paul Webb In the past few years one of the issues American Democrats and Republican parties have been disagreeing on is voter registration. Republican lawmakers in several states have been tightening up the rules around voting—requiring two picture IDs, reducing the days in the early voting period, denying same-day registration—to… Read More