So it’s Birthday Time Again, Yay!

Howdy people of the internet, how are you? So as you can see from the title of this blog post today is my birthday, I am one year older and as is tradition I feel the need to blog about it haha. 😀

You know what? I’ve been writing these posts for a good few years and I never have a clue how to write these things out, there’s no proper format, I just wing it and hope for the best haha. And so far today has been nice and relaxed. I have received 3 birthday cards all of which have been great especially the one from my bestie from Sheffield 😛 And I have spent most of my day in the cinema so far firstly rewatching Black Panther for the 4th time and finally checking out Isle of Dogs; with the former I still really like the film a lot, for my full thoughts I recommend reading my review, but in short I love the characters, themes, the film score, some of the cool combat scenes and traditions and visual style. As for Isle of Dogs, I have a fair amount to say about the film which I will dish out in an upcoming review, but what I will say it was very unique and different from I expected, but the visual material was incredible and the voice cast was really good. So with my films so far I’ve enjoyed myself.

Right now I’m pretty much chilling listening to some nostalgic sounds of Earth, Wind & Fire and plotting my movements for tonight when I head out for some night time shenanigans with my friends haha. I also have some fun stuff planned for tomorrow and potentially on Sunday too so hopefully this feeling of happiness and good times carry on through til the end of the weekend. 😀

Other than that I’m thinking I really gotta sort my life out, I’m pretty close to 30 and I only have a handful of achievements to my name, and I know there’s no set way to live life, but I do feel like I need to be doing better and I have gotten a few things worked out with my podcast and illustration material in full swing at the moment. So hopefully 2018 will be a year for change and progression, but I guess we’ll see and take things as they come. Anyways I’m gonna go finish some illustration stuff and look forward to my review for Isle of Dogs which will be coming soon, laters! 😀

 

QUICK REVIEW: Fantastic Mr. Fox

Howdy ladies and gents, time for a new film review and today I get to talk about a film I’ve wanted to review on here since I think 2013, and that is Fantastic Mr. Fox! So yeah I know this film is not new, it is from 2009 and I saw it in the cinema and I really liked it at the time and said to myself that I’d rewatch it again at some point. And yet even after buying the DVD around 5 or 6 years ago while at university I never got around to it just because of timing and being in the right mood. That being said, since 2014 I’ve really gotten into Wes Anderson’s films and with Isle of Dogs coming out tomorrow here in the UK I thought I’d rewatch my first Wes Anderson film and see if it still holds up.

The story for the film can be summed up as the following:

“The film is about a fox who steals food each night from three mean and wealthy farmers. They are fed up with Mr. Fox’s theft and try to kill him, so they dig their way into the foxes’ home, but the animals are able to outwit the farmers and live underground.”

I like the story because it has a lot of layers, there is the main narrative that goes on throughout the film, but there are also a number subplots introduced that eventually come to a head as the film progresses and what I like is that all of these plot elements are character-driven, have significance and the payoff feeds back into the main plot. And for a film about animals dealing with dangerous humans, it introduces some interesting themes dealing with breaking habits, doing what you’re good at, living up to expectations, being different and a number of other elements that are easy to relate to. And it is presented in a story that has a strange, quirky and fast-paced nature to it, and it very funny on numerous occasions and comes at just the right point with incredible timing, however, it also has brilliant moments of seriousness, darker moments and slows down just enough to have these special moments between the main characters.

As for the characters they are all very fun, interesting and feel like well-rounded individuals even if they’re secondary characters. George Clooney is fabulous as Mr. Fox, Clooney brings his natural charm to this character who is charismatic, daring yet selfish and not fully aware of his actions. Meryl Streep as Felicity Fox is a strong, smart and caring woman, but is also very stern and doesn’t take any shit from anyone. Jason Schwartzman stands out as Ash Fox, I guessed Schwartzman in this role just because Ash reminded me of Max from Rushmore in the sense that Ash is another young man with personal issues that lead to awkward relationships with others, but here Ash is a lot younger and immature and his journey through the film is quite engaging despite his rude and insensitive nature. Bill Murray was delightful as Clive Badger and had some great moments with Mr. Fox, Willem Dafoe’s role as Rat was unexpected, funny and strange and Wallace Wolodarsky as Kylie was one of the most memorable characters due to his subdued yet hilarious nature. And finally, Michael Gambon as Franklin Bean made for a strong and memorable protagonist, Gambon has such a presence with his voice and puts it to good use in humourous and intimidating scenarios.

From a presentation point of view, the film’s incredible. Visually the film’s use of stop motion animation is fluid, stylish and unique. While stop motion has a certain type of movement due to the way it is created, this film goes a step further by presenting movement in a number of ways that looks like frames are missing, but the movement is dynamic, exaggerated and elastic giving them a great sense of charisma and realism at the same time. The choice of camera angles and the general cinematography looks like a mixture of a stage play, a normal film and old film techniques used during driving sequences. I also want to talk about the character models and set design, the models have such an intricate level of detail for the fur and clothing and the sets vary from being large or very small, but they are all well-crafted with a lot of attention to detail from the foreground to background material looking realistic but also stylised. It is elaborate, grand in scale and has such incredible scene transitions. The film score by Alexandre Desplat is wonderful and works very well in each scene it’s used in and the soundtrack is filled with a great variety of songs that really enhance the scenes they’re used in the way that only Anderson can pull off.

In conclusion, Fantastic Mr. Fox is still a wonderful film and perhaps foolishly I was surprised how well it held up after so many years. I may be biased as I really LOVE Wes Anderson’s approach to filmmaking, but even if I was to take that element out of the equation, the film is not a conventional animated kids film, but that’s why I love it. The film, it is fun, exciting, engaging, quirky and hilarious, and yet it also has an engaging story, with fully formed characters that you can understand and relate to. If you haven’t seen this film I highly recommend it especially if you like Wes Anderson films.

So have you seen Fantastic Mr. Fox and if so what did you think of it? Drop me your thoughts in the comment section below and I’ll see you in the next review, so until the next time, laters! 😀

 

Marvel’s Jessica Jones Season 2 Review

Howdy people of the internet, time for my first TV review in ages and today I get to talk about the second season of Marvel’s Jessica Jones. I’m not gonna lie, my interest in this season hasn’t been nearly as high as the Netflix Marvel shows that came out beforehand even though I really enjoyed season 1, but after watching the first new trailer and rewatching season 1, I got really hyped to revisit these characters and see how they develop. 😛 So after seeing the second season, I’m ready to pass judgement in this spoiler-free review.

“New York City private investigator Jessica Jones is beginning to put her life back together after murdering her tormentor, Kilgrave. Now known throughout the city as a super-powered killer, a new case makes her reluctantly confront who she really is while digging deeper into her past to explore the reasons why.”

The second season of Jessica Jones presents a lot of new an interesting scenarios for Jessica in dealing with. Seeing Jessica trying to live in a world after the events of the last season was interesting because of the way it affected her, the people around her and the people of New York City. Like Daredevil season 2, this season of JJ also features flashbacks that help flesh out Jessica’s backstory and it features some of the strongest material of the season with the character development of Jessica and Trish and the emotional history they’ve had individually and together. Unfortunately, the show doesn’t have a central focus until I think around episode 3 or 4 there are a good few things happening here and there, but nothing to tie it all together. And once the story and characters finally start to come into focus, my level of engagement and interest fluctuated a lot. There were plenty of points where I loved what I was watching, where the drama and emotion were on-point and I was captivated in Jessica and some of the other main characters’ stories… However, there are several points where certain storylines felt unnecessary or random and took away screen time from more important ones, also I feel like a great deal of the conflicts, danger and general issues felt fabricated rather than progressing in a natural manner. And this leads to scenarios that were a little silly, unrealistic or frustrating, and sometimes because of the way there are picked up and dropped from time to time. By the end of the season, I felt like a lot had happened, but I was in two minds about how I liked it, I feel like the ideas were there, but the execution could have been better.

Favourite episodes:

• AKA Start at the Beginning
• AKA Freak Accident
• AKA Sole Survivor
• AKA God Help the Hobo
• AKA I Want Your Cray Cray (personal favourite)
• AKA Three Lives and Counting

The cast was really good with the returning cast being pretty good and some of the newcomers settling in with the old ones pretty well, however, it is the way that some of these characters were handled which lead to a mixed bag of people you may like or dislike. Firstly Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones was great, she carried the show with her tough, sassy and witty persona, she has a lot of stuff to deal with and at times I just wanted to shake her and tell her to get her shit together, but even when she annoyed me, she ends still works as a damaged character who had to confront the issues of her past and present. Rachael Taylor as Trish Walker was good, Trish was one of my favourite characters from last season despite her bad decision-making and in this season we learn more about her his backstory, insecurities and weaknesses and interesting relationships with Jessica, her mother and some other people. At certain points I really liked her, but then she made some absolutely terrible choices which made her insufferable. Eka Darville was really good as Malcolm, his character had a good sense of progression from season 1 and I liked how active he was in the plot helping Jessica and doing things for himself, and while he ends up doing certain things I didn’t like, he was still really engaging. And of the returning cast I ended up really liking Carrie-Anne Moss as Jeri Hogarth more than I expected, in the last season she was very cold, calculated and self-serving and that was still the case for this season, however, they took her character in an interesting direction that made me feel for her in ways I didn’t think possible and maybe that was purely due to Moss as an actress, but I found Hogarth’s story to be quite compelling.

I’m only going to talk about a few of the new cast members. Firstly J.R. Ramirez as Oscar Arocho was fine, as soon as I saw him I knew exactly what his purpose would be and sure enough things played out as I expected, that being said he did have a lot more going on in his personal life that made me like him more. Terry Chen as Pryce Cheng was someone who had my interest at first but then became irrelevant and annoying as the season progressed, and the same sort of applied to Leah Gibson as Inez Green, she had an interesting part to play and while she wasn’t all that likeable, she had a more significant role to play than Cheng. And finally Janet McTeer as Alisa was an interesting character, I can’t say how she ties into the main story but she does play a pivotal role which at times was very intriguing and scary and on other occasions quite frustrating too. When it came to the presentation it is pretty good. Visually the show is shot well, and the fight scenes and visual effects look better than before and the use of colour was still pretty good. Also, the soundtrack by Sean Callery was still pretty good with some of the themes being and general sound being carried over from last season in a wonderful way, and season two has some nice new material, but it is not nearly as great as what’s come before.

In conclusion, Jessica Jones season 2 was a decent season to watch, that being said after finishing the show I felt disappointed. There were some compelling story elements, great character development and wonderfully deep and emotional material throughout the season. However, the lack of Kilgrave, the different storylines that had varying levels of interest and frustrating character arcs and choices left this season feeling far less captivating.

So have you seen Jessica Jones season 2 and if so so what do you think of it? And how do you think it compares to season 1 and the other Netflix shows? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below and I’ll see ya in the next review, laters. 🙂

 

PODCAST: Film Focus Episode 50 – Tomb Raider Review

Howdy ladies and gents of the internet, as some of you may have seen, in 2016 I started a film podcast entitled Film Focus and on this podcast, I talk about various topics in film and reviews as well on a biweekly basis. And the latest episode is a review of the latest video game film, Tomb Raider.

Anyway here’s the episode 50:

I’ve done already done my written review for Tomb Raider, however, as usual, there’s always more for me to say beyond my written material. I basically expand upon my thoughts in terms of what I like and what I don’t, and more specifically how the film relates to the game and what it gets right and what it doesn’t. It was also a fun episode to do because it was my 50th episode so I do get a little crazy at points, but hopefully, that won’t make you want to turn the episode off haha. 😛

As I mentioned before I’ll cover a different topic or review in each episode and since I don’t have much in the way of listeners or promotion, I’m here to spread the word about my podcast. 🙂

You can find my main site on Soundcloud here: https://soundcloud.com/film_focus

Or if you’re on iTunes subscribe and rate me on there: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/film-focus/id1114233892?mt=2

So if you have some spare time on your hands and would like to listen to the ramblings of a passionate/strange man then please check it out, and share it with your friends if they are fans of film discussion. Also, you have any feedback or if you’d be interested in joining in future episodes be sure to let me know, until next time, laters! 😀

 

QUICK REVIEW: Tomb Raider

Howdy ladies and gents, time for a new film review and today I’m going to talk about the latest video game film, Tomb Raider. Now I could say a lot about this film but I will attempt to keep things brief this time around. So Tomb Raider, where to start? Well firstly let’s just get some background info out of the way:

1. I never watched the Angelina Jolie films because I didn’t have the interest at the time.
2. I also never really played any of the Tomb Raider games until last year when I played the 2013 reboot game.
3. The marketing didn’t do much to convince me that the film would be worth watching. However, I wanted to remain optimistic because the film was based on strong source material.

So with all that out of the way what did I think of the film? It was fine, but it won’t break the video game film curse.

The story in the film involves a young woman by the name of Lara Croft who goes on a trek to discover what happened to her father who went missing years ago and uncover the mysteries surrounding his research. What follows is a journey of action, danger, self-discovery and interesting revelations. What I applaud the people behind the film for is taking so much of the 2013 game and incorporating into this film. The basic elements of the story, key locations and action set pieces were lifted from the game, and while a great deal was changed and streamlined, some of it was effective and I appreciated how much of that content was put into the film… That being said, the film features so many of the basic and cliché elements that made these big budget action-adventure films so average to watch. The story plays out almost exactly as you’d expect with certain twists and reveals you could see coming a mile away, the dialogue can be so cheesy and dull at times, and while some of the humour works, some of it really cringeworthy and there was one scene in the first trailer I prayed wouldn’t make it into the final film and just near the end it showed up and I was very sad haha. 😛 I’m only harsh on the story because the game had such a great foundation to jump off from and while there was only so much time available, certain story and character elements were needlessly omitted or changed resulting in a story that had less of dramatic and emotional resonance.

As for the cast they did their jobs well enough but none of the characters was all that unique or memorable beyond the main character. Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft was fine, she played the stubborn, smart and physically capable girl with issues relating to her past, she’s a fine enough hero with a great body and can handle herself in tough situations, but she doesn’t have that “je ne sais quoi” that makes a protagonist endearing. Dominic West as Lord Richard Croft was decent, though I wasn’t keen on how his character was handled in the story. Daniel Wu as Lu Ren was fine, I wasn’t sure how he’d fit into the overall narrative but it was revealed in a logical manner and I liked his character, but I thought Wu was underutilized considering his good work on Into the Badlands. Kristin Scott Thomas as Ana Miller was fine, and Walton Goggins as Mathias Vogel was okay as the bad guy, he did what he could with the material he was given, but it wasn’t a captivating or memorable villain, unfortunately. From a presentation point of view, the film has pros and cons. Visually, for the most part, the film looks good, most the visual effects are solid (safe for some questionable CGI and green screen), some of the action sequences were cool especially with the chase scenes, and like I said before, seeing several of the set pieces from the game implemented into this film did make me grin. And the film score by Tom Holkenborg was a little lacking in presence and didn’t do much to elevate the action on-screen.

So to conclude, I think most people reading this may think I hate the film but that is not the case. Tomb Raider a is a fine yet unremarkable film. I think there will be varying opinions about this film from fans of the games and those who are not. It does some things well and Alicia Vikander did a pretty good job in the main role, but alas the film’s story, action and characters are very plain and generic, and I think that there was so much material from the game that could have been adapted much better. Anyway, if you’re curious about this film give it a watch, it wasn’t as inconsistent as Warcraft and nowhere near as boring as Assassin’s Creed, but this isn’t the film to usher in the new era of video game films, nuff said.

So have you seen Tomb Raider and if so what did you think of it? Drop me your thoughts in the comment section below and I’ll see you in the next review, so until the next time, laters! 😀

 

Oscars 2018 Recap (Audio Edition)

Howdy ladies and gents, how’s it going? So today is the day after the 90th Academy Awards and we have our winners of the awards being talked about online and now I’m going to throw my opinion into the mix with a quick recap of the Oscars… In audio form! Yeah rather than write a whole load of questionable words out, I thought it’d be more interesting to record an episode for the podcast to fully illustrate my positive and negative thoughts on those who won and those who didn’t.

Anyway here’s the episode:

So if you have any thoughts on the Oscars, the winners, losers, speeches, Kimmel’s hosting skills or anything else sure to drop them in the comment section below an I’ll see ya in the next post, laters! 😀