Tag Archives: streaming

Crimson Peak review — More Gothic, Less Horror

October 20, 2015 flawintheiris

Directed by Guillermo Del Toro, Written by Del Toro and Matthew Robbins | 119 min | On Demand This week I noted that Bridge of Spies had some misleading advertising with a somewhat misleading title: It's more a historical drama than a spy movie. For Crimson Peak's promotional assault, the actors and director have been… Read More

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation review — Spy thriller franchise hits a high point

July 31, 2015 flawintheiris

Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, from a story by McQuarrie and Drew Pearce, based on the TV series created by Bruce Gellar | Prime Video We get 19 years, and the fifth entry is the best so far? How is that even possible?!! But it is. I give it a slight edge over the… Read More

Clouds of Sils Maria review — A strange and beautiful journey in the Alps

June 17, 2015 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Oliver Assayas | 124 min | The Criterion Channel Remember the gifted storytellers in the wordy, if somewhat static, My Dinner With Andre? Or story-within-story pictures like The French Lieutenant's Woman or Vanya on 42nd Street, where the overlay of a fiction in the central narrative both enlivens and informs what's going on? If you do,… Read More

Mad Max: Fury Road review — A masterpiece in speed and metal

May 14, 2015 flawintheiris

Directed by George Miller, Written by Miller, Brendan McCarthy, and Nick Lathouris | Netflix Badass. As the end credits rolled, that's the word that kept bouncing around my rattling and enervated cranium. Mad Max: Fury Road is totally badass. When was the last time I was totally floored like this? The last time I saw… Read More

Furious 7 review — More is more, more or less

April 4, 2015 flawintheiris

Directed by James Wan, written by Chris Morgan, from characters by Gary Scott Thompson | Netflix Hot Car: Lykan Hypersport, the $3.4 million supercar. If the successive entries in this increasingly popular franchise have shown us anything it's that more is more. More cars, more stunts, more characters, more arm butter, more slo-mo, more macho attitude,… Read More

It Follows review — A creepfest of the highest order

March 26, 2015 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by David Robert Mitchell | 101 min | Amazon Prime The last time I was so pleasantly perplexed by a genre picture it was Jonathan Glazer's Under The Skin, which came out last May. This is another puzzler with powerful undercurrents of sex and death, both an indie teen movie and a horror, often… Read More

After The Ball review — A fashionable modern fairytale

February 27, 2015 flawintheiris

Directed by Sean Garrity, written by Kate Melville and Jason Sherman | Crave, Hoopla Having experienced the heavy-handed full-Disney-press of the new live-action Cinderella trailer lately, it was a real pleasure to discover this Montreal-shot picture that, with a delightfully light touch, uses the overly familiar story as a springboard to tell the tale of… Read More

50 Shades of Grey review — Gives soft porn a bad name

February 19, 2015 flawintheiris

Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, written by Kelly Marcel from the novel by EL James | 125 min | Netflix, Amazon Prime, Crave I knew this picture was in trouble when early on the heroine of the piece, college student Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson), dressed in her unpretentious print blouse, arrives at a phallic glass and… Read More

Blackhat review — Sometimes clicks, often just spins

January 17, 2015 flawintheiris

Directed by Michael Mann, written by Morgan David Foehl | 134 min | Netflix I like Michael Mann as much as the next guy, unless the next guy is Christopher Nolan, who owes much of his aesthetic to Mann's high-tech, violent, largely nocturnal urban thrillers—including Thief, Manhunter, Heat, Collateral, and Miami Vice—set on gorgeously shot neon- and automatic… Read More

Interstellar review — A grand (and sometimes head-scratching) space adventure

November 8, 2014 flawintheiris

Directed by Christopher Nolan, written by Christopher and Jonathan Nolan | Netflix Steven Spielberg reportedly once said if he could go back he'd change the ending of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Once Spielberg had kids, he realized the Richard Dreyfuss character, Roy Neary, would never have left his family behind to go into space… Read More