Film Review Club

The Final Girls is a parody slasher film directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson. A girl grieving the death of her mother who was a famous scream queen actress in the 1980’s, finds herself pulled into the world of her mums most famous film. The group of friends must find a way to escape this nightmare and defeat the monstrous killer. CAST & THE ACTING  There are actually a few well known names in this film which is what initially drew me in to give it a go. Alexander Ludwig, Nina Dobrev and Adam Devine are arguably the most well known faces despite none of them actually being the main protagonist in the film. That role was given to Taissa Farmiga who played Max. I didn’t expect great acting in this film but I was expecting it to be at least pretty funny, Adam Devine has a good track record with comedies and I think Alexander Ludwig is a great actor so I was curious to see his performance too. Unfortunately across the board it wasn’t great at all, the comedy wasn’t there and I don’t think

The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola follows the Corleone crime family, led by Don Vito Corleone. After war breaks out between the crime families, Michael the youngest son inherits the roles and responsibilities that come with being the head of the family.  CAST & THE ACTING  The cast includes the iconic Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone and Al Pacino as his son Michael. Diane Keaton plays Kay, Michael’s wife and James Caan plays Sonny Corleone. The acting is great in The Godfather, it is what I’d imagine crime families to be like in that time period to a tee. It’s no surprise that Marlon Brando won an academy award for best actor and Al Pacino was nominated for best supporting actor. What I really enjoyed about Al Pacino’s performance was his transition from innocence to head of a crime family, a mind corrupted by violence and killings all around him. This was portrayed really well by Pacino and is one of the big highlights of the film. I think the performances capsula

The Irishman is a crime dram directed by Martin Scorsese, which follows Frank a truck driver who works his way up through the Pennsylvania crime family after meeting Russel Bufalino. From a simple driver to one of the biggest hitmen in the organisation, it follows Franks live right up until retirement. CAST & THE ACTING  The cast is impeccable, with Robert De Niro as Frank, Joe Pesci as Russel, Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa, Harvey Keitel as Angelo Bruno and Stephen Graham as Anthony Provenzano. This will probably be the last time we see the 3 iconic main actors in a film together, which is both beautiful and sad at the same time. Although they have all aged considerably since their prime days in the Godfather, Goodfellas, Taxi Diver etc, they still delivered great performances. The only thing I could probably criticise out of the whole film is a couple of the action sequences, for example there is a scene where De Niro beats up a shop clerk for shoving his daughter, he looked a little

Fight club is directed by David Fincher and follows a male insomniac as he becomes disconnected from his consumer lifestyle and subsequently starts an underground fight club with a soap salesman called Tyler. As the fight club expands things begin to get more dangerous and more sinister. CAST & THE ACTING  Edward Norton plays The Narrator and Brad Pitt is Tyler and both of them deliver great performances. Norton especially because he captures a man broken by a mundane life, a mind that deteriorates further as the film goes on. The chemistry between the two actors is one of the highlights of the film and makes for some great duologues. Helena Bonham Carter plays the love interest Marla and as you can expect, it is a great performance even if she doesn’t occupy as much screen time compared to the two main characters. The acting in these sorts of roles always has to be great because they need to convincingly show a fragile mind and anything less then great can really ruin the whole pl

Guns Akimbo is a quirky comedy/action film directed by Jason Lei Howden and follows Miles a video game developer who is the latest victim of Skizm, a death match streaming site. Given a simple choice, kill the top Killer Nix or die himself, he soon realises that running away isn’t going to save him. CAST & THE ACTING  Daniel Radcliffe leads the film, playing Miles and he delivers a great performance. It’s different to anything we have seen from him before and that has seemed to be the case with most of his films since Harry Potter. Each film since has seemed to showcase the range of skill he has as an actor and this is no different. It’s a chaotic performance with a huge injection of comedy but he pulls it off well. Samara Weaving plays Nix and she also does well at delivering that chaotic energy as a viscous killer and I would say that she is the main source of comedy throughout the film and credit to her because she was hilarious! It’s not a cast full of big names, as you would e

The Vampire Diaries follows the Salvatore brothers, two vampires turned in 1864 who have returned to their native town Mystic Falls. The series explores a number of mythical creatures from Vampires and Werewolves, to Sirens and the Devil but mainly centres around friendship and family above all. CAST & THE ACTING  I think the acting as a whole is pretty good across all 8 seasons, there are so many emotional moments for the audience and that only happens when the acting is of good quality. Otherwise they just wouldn’t be invested in the characters enough to feel their pain with them. Ian Somerhalder plays Damon Salvatore and Paul Wesley plays his brother Stefan. Their mutual love interest Elena is portrayed by Nina Dobrev and other actors in the main cast consist of Kat Graham as Bonnie, Matthew Davis as Alaric, Candice King as Caroline and Zack Roerig as Matt. What I liked about the acting in this series is the range actors had to show, for example the Vampires in this series have

Loki season 1 is directed by Kate Herron and follows the God of Mischief after the events of Endgame which allow him to escape the battle of New York with the tesseract. Captured by the TVA he soon realises how big the universe is and just how small he is in comparison. CAST & THE ACTING  Tom Hiddleston is brilliant as Loki in this series and displays real range, allowing the audience to explore the character on a much deeper level to what we have previously seen in the MCU films. Marvel really have smashed each live action series they have released since Endgame and I believe the reason for that is how much emotional depth they have given to each of the lead characters and similarly to the likes of Elizabeth Olsen and Sebastian Stan, Hiddleston delivers an outstanding performance. Sophia Di Martino also steals the showing portraying such a powerful female variant of Loki called Sylvie. The chemistry between the two actors is what makes this series so special and gets the audience

Masterminds is a comedy/crime film directed by Jared Hess. It’s based on the true story of David Ghanatt, an employee for loomis who carried out one of the largest armoured vehicle heists in America history. Convinced by an old loomis colleague, David is duped by love and soon finds himself on the run from police and hired hitmen. CAST & THE ACTING  This film is heavily focused on the comedy, coming across as more of a gimmick then factual storytelling. Zack Galifianakis is David which indicates at the sort of comedy Masterminds is, he does brilliantly at injecting that silly humour from the start of the film all the way until the end. He has a great supporting cast with Kristen Wiig playing the role of Kelly Campbell and Owen Wilson playing her accomplice Steve. Kate McKinnon, Steve Sudeikis and Leslie Jones also appear in the film which makes up a pretty impressive comedic line up. The film isn’t going to win any awards of contributions to acting but it does fulfil its purpose of

Black Widow is the solo film for Natasha Romanoff, set after the events of Captain America: Civil War where the American government are hunting her for breaking the Sokovia Accords. Natasha is forced to confront her dark past and mend relationships that she hadn’t thought about since before becoming an Avenger.  CAST & THE ACTING  Scarlett Johansson reprises her role as Black Widow for the final time and is joined by a stellar cast. Florence Pugh takes on the role of Yelena Belova, David Harbour is the Red Guardian and Rachel Weisz is Melina Vostokoff, which rounds off their complicated family. Ray Winstone is Dreykov the main villain in the film and Olga Kurylenka takes up the role of Taskmaster. Overall I think the acting was pretty decent, they went for a more comical approach in my opinion which tends to be the way for most Marvel Films these days. There was a nice dynamic between Florence and Scarlett which created good chemistry between the two sisters on screen. Although the

X-Men: Dark Phoenix is the final instalment from 20th Century Fox, before they were purchased by Disney. Directed by Simon Kinberg, it explores the Dark Phoenix energy which takes over Jean Gray. Unable to control this power, she begins hurting those closest to her which drives her into the arms of an alien race attempting to take that power for themselves.  CAST & THE ACTING  The same cast returns for this instalment, which includes James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Sophie Turner, Nicholas Hoult, Evan Peters and Tye Sheridan, with Jessica Chastain as the main villain. The acting as a whole was okay, there wasn’t any outstanding performances but there wasn’t any notable bad performances either really. Sophie Turner did play a conflicted Jean Gray quite well, struggling to deal with this new power but also with the memory of killing her mother, which is restored after the Dark Phoenix undone all of Charles Xaviers work in Jeans Mind. I touched upon this in the Apo

X-Men Apocalypse was directed by Bryan Singer and introduced the original mutant who was known as a god thousands of years ago. Now he has returned to cause mass extinction on earth and the new band of X-Men must team up to stop him. CAST & THE ACTING  There are a number of new castings for the younger generation of mutants; Tye Sheridan takes up the mantle as Cyclops, Sophie Turner is Jean Gray, Evan Peters returns as Quicksilver, Ben Hardy is Angel, Olivia Munn is Psyclocke and of course James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender also return. Although I feel Sophie Turner was a great Jean Gray I do think that they didn’t quite get the casting right for Cyclops. I do like Sheridan as an actor but I just don’t think he is a match for the character which is a shame because Cyclops has never really portrayed well on screen. Oscar Issac was the villain Apocalypse and again I don’t think it was a great performance, for such a powerful character he almost come across a little boring, so I felt

X-Men days of future past is a film released in 2014 and directed by Bryan Singer. Wolverine travels back to 1973 to stop Mystique from assassinating an experimental scientist, whose death ultimately leads to the creation of the Sentinels that will wipe out all mutants in the future timeline.  CAST & THE ACTING  What I loved about Days of Future Past is the fact that it blends the cast from the original X-Men films with the new younger castings! So we see both James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier, Michael Fassbender and Ian McKellen as Magneto, Hugh Jackman returns as Wolverine and we even see Halle Berry return as Storm, Anna Paquin returning as Rogue and Shawn Ashmore as Iceman. This film is filled with acting talent which not only makes for a great film but also delivers a huge sense of nostalgia. I enjoyed McAvoy’s portrayal as a more troubled Charles Xavier which was a complete contrast to the usual calm and collected character we had seen in previous X-Men films

X-Men: First Class is a film directed by Matthew Vaughn based on the X-Men marvel comics. Set in the Cold War Charles Xavier is approached by the CIA to help stop Sebastian Shaw, a fellow mutant trying to cause world war three. Meanwhile Erik Lensherr (AKA Magneto) is also hunting Shaw for killing his mother during the Second World War. CAST & THE ACTING  It was always going to be hard to cast a new Charles Xavier and Magneto considering how iconic Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen we’re in the original X-Men films in the early 2000’s. However James McAvoy as Xavier and Michael Fassbender as Magneto, in my opinion was the perfect casting. Both actors delivered brilliant performances as younger versions of their characters. Especially Fassbender who portrayed a man really conflicted between good and evil which was ultimately driven by the tragedy he had been through in his life. Jennifer Lawrence was cast as Mystique which was a complete U-turn on the mystique we saw in the original