Penrose Film Critiques

People complain that movies are getting too long, but it takes balls to go beyond past the three hour mark and still keep your audience watching. The Irishman feels less like a movie and more like a West End theatre show with how well paced and enjoyable it is to watch, even without an intermission. Clearly Scorsese understands that in order to make your story come across to an everyday audience you need the right energy from your actors, and you don't get more energy and charm than from De Niro, Pacino and Pesci. Seeing Al Pacino and Joe Pesci return to the character studies that made them famous was a rollercoaster ride in of itself. Although I hate to say it but Robert De Niro was the weakest link in the cast along with Stephen Grahams excuse of a New Yorker accent. This wasn't because of De Niro's performance or delivery, but rather his portrayal as young mid thirties De Niro with face capture. Now I understand that getting two actors to play the same character of diff

Ever since the infamous clown prince of crimes first comic book appearance by Bob Kane and fellow writers of DC Comics in 1940, one thing that has always been unanimously agreed to is that we would never know the true origins of the villain known as "The Joker". As time has gone by we have come close to revealing this great comic book mystery with Alan Moore's The Killing Joke with the red hood, or Tim Burtons Joker played by Jack Nicholson who famously falls into a pool of acid. However most die hard fans agree that what truly makes The Joker memorable and frightening is the mystery itself, that we will never know what drives his love of crime and that chaos is an unstoppable force of madness. So we then arrive to Todd Phillips's 2019 interpretation of Joker ( ironically not called "The Joker") which attempts to combine the story of a man who wants the world to love and accept him  and a battle of class of society where chaos is brewing. Arthur Flick is a

10- Hope Gap Alongside Marriage Story in the witty divorce drama genre, we have William Nicholson's Hope Gap . With a charming dysfunctional duo of Bill Nighy and Annette Bening, we see a young web designer played by Josh O'conner returning to his parents home on the coast as he hopes to fix their breaking marriage. Nicholson gets the most out of these actors with a punctuated and scintillating script, as well as taking advantage of the cold bitter British coastal weather for the narrative. Having this in comparison to Marriage Story's claustrophobic cityscapes is intriguing so if you cant get any tickets for that, then Hope Gap is a great second option. 9- The Peanut Butter Falcon And so we witness the return of the Hollywood castaway, now indie film fest darling Shia LaBeouf. Starring in the headlining film of the Love strand, Peanut Butter Falcon is less focused on romantic love, but rather on the brotherly love that breaks the barriers of mental illness. The fi

With the month of October approaching, film lovers from across the UK and the world will flood cinemas all over London for the BFI's London Film Festival. With each year bringing us exclusive screenings of some of the worlds most exciting and innovative works of cinema, it can be quite difficult to choose which films are worth the admission and which aren't. This list will comprise of some of my most anticipated releases this year, from Oscar contenders to independent cinema favourites. This will be my attempt to break down the 20 films that I am the most excited to see this year. Some honourable mentions that didn't make the cut for me were Tom Harpers The Aeronauts, Micheal Winterbottoms Greed and even A beautiful day in the neighbourhood which will probably get more Oscar buzz than most of the films here thanks to Mr Hanks. 20- Miles Davis: Birth of Cool/ My Friend Fela Right of the bat im already technically cheating with two films at the number 20 spot. Both of th

Its so hard these days to find cosmic horror in the unknown. With the world connected by the global zeitgiest and fear being portrayed in social constructs rather than aliens from outer space. It feels like films such as 2001:A Space Odyssey  (1968) and The Thing  (1982)   aren't leaving the same fear of the existential that they once did when they first came out. So in 2019, we have a contemporary addition to the cosmic horror genre in Alex Garlands latest eerie sci fi flic  Annihilation. Based on the trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer, Natalie Portman stars as Lena, a biologist whose husband (Oscar Issac) reappears after being presumed dead now with a strangely different personality. Suddenly his body breaks down as Lena is thrown into an all women expedition lead by Dr Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) into an unknown expanding area called "The Shimmer", which could have the answers that Lena seeks about her estranged husband. Before this movie was even released, there was a

The notable American icon of the independent cinema world Jim Jarmusch, has never been one to conform to the norm of cinema elements in narrative and performance. And it's his latest Cannes opening horror flick that takes the idea of the undead quite literally in the zombie pic  The Dead Don't Die. The story is set in the aptly named 'Centreville', your classic American small town in the middle of nowhere, as we follow the day to day lives of its inhabitance including the local police duo played by indie darlings Bill Murray and Adam Driver. However, due to the earth turning off its axis due to the polar fracking, the dead are now raising from their graves in classic George A. Romero fashion as the town attempt to deal with this phenomenon in their own strange ways. Firstly as cast lists go, Jarmusch certainly won the lottery for his actors list. With a variety of weird and cooky performances by Tilda Swinton, Steve Buscemi, Chloe Sevigny, Tom Waits, Danny Glover and e

With the apparent end to the history making marvel cinematic universe, the film public now wonder where the next big blockbuster franchise will take place and if I could possibly compare to the juggernaut of Stan Lees creation. However it seems like Legendary Pictures have already begun an attempt on this success with the latest in their newly titled "Monsterverse" franchise with Godzilla: King of Monsters. The sequel to the well received 2014 film simply titled Godzilla , King of Monsters takes place straight after the final battle of the previous film where the mysterious organisation "Monarch"(because monsters) are trying to uncover and communicate with the remain domant creatures which they have dubbed as "titans". This leads to the awakening of classic Toho giants like the majestic Mothra, the crafty Rodan and the arch rival to Godzilla, King Ghidora. The first thing you realise is that the studio clearly understood that the audience wanted to see

When you first hear the unearthly chimes and eerie calls of Goblins haunting soundtrack, you remember the technicolour nightmare that is Dario Argento's Suspiria ( 1977). While his filmmaking has had its ups and downs from the skin crawling Deep Red (1975) and Phenomena (1986) to the laughable Dracula 3D (2012), there is no doubt that his legacy and honing of the Gialli subgenre has made him one of the greats of horror cinema. So when we heard that a remake of his beloved Suspiria was in the works, you can imagine the scepticism of critics reaching its boiling point before the film had even been released. However this reimagining of the mesmerising tale would prove to be a mixture of new ideas and themes while blending in with the supernatural scenes of gore and beauty. Luca Guadagnino, straight after is heart warming summer romance Call me by your name (2017), made it clear straight away to the press that he would treat the original ' Suspiria ' with care. Showing t

"Everything that can go wrong, goes wrong". The quote from the 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha , really does sum up the journey of unfortunate events surrounding Terry Gilliam and his cursed film project around the classic tale of Don Quixote del La Mancha. So after more than 30 years of deals, casting changes and rewrites, we finally see the finished product of a directors magnum opus. Unfortunately it seems like a story 30 years too late. The man who killed Don Quixote  follows the tale of Tony Grisoni (Adam Driver), a Hollywood director portraying the biblical story of the same name with a crew that cannot understand his creative vision, sound familiar? However he is sent on a nostalgic trip to his amateur film days and reconnects with a crazed Spanish shoemaker (Johnathon Pryce) who believes he is the incarnation of Don Quixote. What follows is a mixture of hallucinogenic spectacle and blundering humour but none of the magic and wonder. Firstly lets look at the cast

Unfortunately, if you're looking for a guide on how to stop your greenhouse from spontaneously combusting, I cannot help you. But the latest film from acclaimed author and director Lee Chang-dong, might make you think twice before you see a flamming glass cornucopia in the distance. Burning is a fresh wild take on the thriller genre with a drawn out pace mixed with brilliantly simplistic visuals to give a new meaning to violence and rage in Korean cinema. The film follows aspiring writer Jong-soo (Yoo Ah-in) as he runs into high school friend Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo) who after an intimate reunion, requests that he look after her cat while she travels to Africa. She returns however with the sinister yet eccentric Ben (Steven Yeun), whose introduction sends Jong-soo down a rabbit hole of mystery, disappearances and ominous greenhouse fires. Firstly you have to give credit to the brilliant triple threat casting of our main characters. Yoo and Jeon would seem out of their leagues c

To me the subtitle for the seemingly final addition to the marvel cinematic universes vast library seemed to fit my opinion of the franchise as a whole. I remember telling my friends before the screening that they could of named it 'Avengers: Extra Time', since if Infinity War was the Super Bowl, then Endgame was the match going into deep overtime. Exciting, yet heavily draining on the eyes. And yet when this film ended I was less relived, but instead content. After a whopping 3 hour run time, Endgame had become the send off to the 11 year saga that I wanted it to be. After the infamous results of Infinity War, we see the Avengers (or whats left of them) in their darkest hour. Now looking to fix the the crimes done by the tyrant Thanos (Josh Brolin), they look to the always popular writing trope in comic book narratives, time travel. The first thing you should know is that if you have little to know knowledge of the marvel films or have not seen the precursor to Endgame, then