Unfortunately, a lot has changed in 3 years.
2013’s Olympus Has Fallen opens with a friendly boxing match followed by a tragic car accident that explains why Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) and President Asher (Aaron Eckhart) aren’t boxing buddies anymore. It’s neither the most interesting or most original opening but at least we know what we’re in for. Olympus Has Fallen was harmless and predictable fun,just not especially interesting or original.
Three years later, London Has Fallen opens with a montage of news footage covering recent terrorist attacks, making it clear that the Olympus sequel takes place in a more dangerous world. Where the first thing we hear about every seemingly random shooting is whether it’s being investigated as “an act of terrorism”. Now that Islamophobia has such an influential and dangerous spokesman as Donald Trump, some have even questioned whether we really need a movie like London Has Fallen right now.
I could have overlooked London Has Fallen’s social and political irresponsibility if the film itself had been more gripping. Well, yes and no. Banning telling a terrorist to go back to “Fucheadistan or wherever the hell you come from” might have been taking it a little far. Same for Morgan Freeman (who should really retire) and his final speech which shamelessly defended America’s foreign policy. Other than that, London’s worst offence is not being any good.
As in Olympus, Banning doesn’t have any great kills or great stunts. And even if he did, director Babak Najafi doesn’t understand the genre enough to showcase them properly if he did. Way too many fights and chases are obstructed by sloppy editing.
And way too many questions are left unanswered. How did terrorists manage to attack “the most protected event in the world”? Why does Banning leave POTUS alone so often when he knows the bad guys are after him? WHERE IS EVERYBODY? Would the streets of London really be that bare, even after such a devastating attack? And, most importantly, how does Gerard Butler still get work?
a thing for sharp and feisty young women, and the two are a love match and plan to be at Oxford at the same time (unchaperoned, even). But every great love story needs an obstacle and feminism wasn’t enough, so along came The Great War to shake things up.
hool to become a nurse.
epic, called Birdsong (based on the Faulks of the same name). He plays a young man who goes off to war remembering the affair he had with his French (married) sweetheart. Clemence Poesy is beautiful as ever, but this one may leave you feeling faintly unsatisfied.
wife’s) bring him low, low, low, low.
Scottish liked bloody everyone else. But in this adaptation, she’s got this slight sense of foreignness and we begin to think what it might be like if she was just a little outside the community to begin with. Where exactly does her allegiance lie?
while I’d say Kurzel stays 90-95% faithful to the source, 5% is still cheating, isn’t it? The world hardly needed yet another Macbeth adaptation, so if you’re going to the trouble, you’d better have something new to say. But who is brave enough to believe they can best the bard? Justin Kurzel, evidently, a young director of just one prior movie, which I’d never heard of before. And there are three writer’s names in the credits, 3 brazen takers of liberty. Are they right? Can you take liberties with Shakespeare? Will the audience accept it? Forgive it?
thing for bad boys, and he’s trying very hard to live up to her fetish. But it’s clear he isn’t as strong as she is. She is the driving force. Lady Macbeth has always been the one to watch, and Cotillard has always been eminently watchable. But then, having relished playing Dr. Frankenstein, she suddenly feels guilty for having created the monster. They’re a couple of complex characters, perhaps the best ever written, and if there are indeed actors worthy of them, these two come close.
Taylor Schilling), who move their young family to L.A. and find it a challenge for making new friends. A fortuitous meeting in a park leads them to the swanky home of mysterious hipster Kurt (Jason Schwartzman) and his French wife, Charlotte (Judith Godreche).
unraveling. Can it be saved by drugs?
debauchery. You start to get the sense that writer-director Patrick Brice is just trying to shock us, and is relying on an onslaught of unpredictability to do so rather than any true wit or edginess. I guess I’m supposed to think it was cool and naughty but the next day I’m just feeling like I’ve got a bad comedy hangover. Like – did that really just happen? For me this was a great big no thank you, with a side of please, sir, put your pants back on.
I’m fascinated by this immigrant story, an allegory in the vein of Animal Farm, but geared toward children. It was personal for producer Steven Spielberg; some scenes were taken directly from stories of his own grandfather, not coincidentally named Fievel.
for radio by Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram at the behest of Spielberg, who knows a good pop tune when he hears one. It went on to win Song of the Year at the Grammy as was nominated for an Oscar (but lost to Take My Breath Away, from Top Gun). We remembered this song in particular when 
gave it two thumbs down, calling it “gloomy”, “downbeat”, and “way too depressing for young audiences.” The numbers proved them wrong, and never had children so gleefully sang about Cossacks and oppression before. The film’s success inspired Steven Spielberg to pursue this cartoon making, eventually developing DreamWorks Animation, the studio behind Shrek, Madagascar, and How To Train Your Dragon. An American Tail has held up pretty well over time, in part because of its deliberate old-fashioned animation style, hearkening the glory days of 1940s Disney, a huge nostalgia factor for baby boomers. Finally this 
was a film they could not only share with their children, but enjoy it as well.
incidentally, is also where his leading ladies are selling their bodies to get by. The girl in question Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) has just been released from a month-long stint in jail and her best friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor) reveals that her boyfriend\pimp, Chester (James Ransone) has spent it philandering. Sin-Dee goes on a rage-filled road trip to find the other woman and get even while dodging her best customer, cab driver Ashken (Alla Tumanian).
or so. It’s raw, both emotionally and in reality: Baker shot it on a budget of 100k and filmed it with an iPhone. This makes for a stylistically arresting movie that doesn’t look nearly as bad as you might think, and in any case you forget about it within the first 10 minutes anyway, because at its heart it’s a snappy girlfriend movie that you can’t help but be charmed by.
nomination but cemented their legitimacy). Baker had a standing offer from Mark Duplass to make a micro-budget movie, and he’s always wanted to do something where a couple of characters meet up at Donut Time, and this is the movie that resulted. Jaded audiences have seen L.A. on the big screen a million times, but Baker shows it like we’ve never seen it before. He also gives us a behind-the-curtains peek at the sex-trade workers who populate the area. As co-writer, he immersed himself in the culture and found Taylor hanging out at a nearby LGBT centre, and the story started unfolding from there. It was a fascinating look and I felt privileged to be taken along for the ride.
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 