The Brown Note Movie Review

Dare I say this critically trashed box office poison is my favorite Arnie starring film since Terminator 2. For fans of both the grimiest, most violent Southern-pot-boiler/corrupt cop films, this should be pure cat-nip. The film is brutal and has a remarkably unsentimental and unlikable cast, topped by a horrifying turn from Mireille Enos. The Agatha Christie style story is way above what this kin...

Director David Mackenzie may have floundered slightly with his last film, the seemingly little seen Outlaw King, but he sure followed up on the promise of this superb British prison drama with Hell or High Water. The excellent firebrand actor Jack O'Connell has yet to crossover like less talented UK peers (looking at you Tom Holland) but is on fire here and backed by the always welcome Ben Mendles...

Out of a superb, uncommonly thoughtful and intelligent Sci-Fi trilogy, arguably the least great entry. Smaller in scope than the opening and closing films but still with a lot to recommend, especially the king-of-CGI, Andy Serkis, again shining as Caesar.

A uniformly strong follow-up to the unexpectedly great reboot of the X-Men franchise, with the superb work from McAvoy and Fassbender but a messy, indistinct and repetitive denouement points to a terrible future.

Director Jonathan Glazer has one of the most elliptical careers in filmmaking and this uniquely challenging proposition ended up one of the decade's most memorable films, one I liked even more than here on subsequent viewings. Scarlett Johansson shines unforgettably and Mica Levi creates arguably ground zero for a movie decade dominated by stunning avant-electronic soundtracks.

Director James Gray continues to fascinate me but more often than not fail to completely deliver. This worthy, well acted, beautifully shot, classy period pic is great in so many areas of craft but not great as an actual film.

Another plank in the fabulously uneven and disparate filmography of Go, Swingers and The Bourne Identity, director, Doug Liman. Tom Cruise yet again proves how valuable an asset he is when he, rarely these days, steps away from the Mission Impossible franchise and Emily Blunt is given an early chance to shine and she does. For a mega-budget, original concept, Sci-Fi, its an unqualified success.

I failed to get on the now Oscar precedent breaking Korean director, Bong Joon-ho, bandwagon with the overrated The Host but was blown away but this modern Sci-Fi marvel, exhibiting his trademark originality and social commentary. Ironically this and his followups, Okja and Parasite would all by my second favorite films of their respective years.

This superb David Gordon directed Southern pot-boiler (a genre for which I am uniquely predisposed) show that not only is Nicholas Cage a brilliant actor with the right material, it's everything the monumental let-down, Mud, should have been.

Probably as close as I'll get to participating in movie history as I bizarrely sat behind Jimi's ex-girlfriend and her team of lawyers at the Australian premier of this so-so biography of Hendrix, featuring a superb titular turn by Outkast legend Andre 3000. Her enormous, vocal and understandable displeasure at the way she and Jimi were portrayed may have curtailed any wide release for this.

Director Denis Villeueve is the most convincing next generation replacement for the likes of David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson - pretty much the Scorcese's, Spielberg's and Coppola's of this era. Like those, brings his own problems and talents to the table - Nolan's inability to reign in a screenplay or Fincher's ability to adapt to entirely different settings. As an artist, h...

Almost every word screams stay away, found-footage, low budget, vampire, horror but this unexpectedly great and for once decent cinematography isn't the first casualty. A top tier entry into a deservedly maligned arena of film-making.

I'm probably alone but I found the sequel to 300 slightly agreeable and certainly better than Gerard Butler's gurning predecessor, with a slightly more interesting lead but mostly for the Greek goddess presence of a fabulous Eva Green. It looks pretty too.

My opinion of this Scorsese hit has weakened even further over the years, to the point I think it's his emptiest and most soulless film this side of The Color of Money. Di Caprio is magnificent on any metric and his pairing with Jonah Hill is as good a pairing as Gene Wilder and Richard Prior but the screenplay presents us with vapid nothing characters in a holding pattern for the same repeated ha...

Where I review the world's Oscars in alphabetical order.

These two touchstones of 70's cinema are far more arty and weird than expected and the underappreciated, divisive sequel is punishingly challenging. It's rare for any actor to shine as brightly as Gene Hackman but even rarer for a sequel to a multi-Oscar winning film to replace the director with someone equally exciting, going from William Friedkin to John Frankenheimer, both at their peaks. It ma...

A future cult classic. I've often criticized director Ridley Scott but never his taste or understanding of what great cinema is (just his ability to reproduce it). Here we get an insane cast try their hardest to make human sense of the first ever script by one the world's greatest living writers, Cormac McCarthy, who has fared significantly better with other people adapting his novels (No Country...

Massively underappreciated cat-nip for fans of the grimy, poverty stricken, violent Southern pot-boiler, this time moved north. Heavyweight producers (inc. Di Caprio and Ridley Scott) and an envious cast (Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Casey Affleck, Zoe Saldana, Woody Harrelson all on top form) up the class factor here immensely. Flawed but with such top notch talent and the cinematic environs of...

The only time I reviewed a film and gave it 10, though a retrospective review (I mention I would also give its predecessor a 10 too). The five major films from Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone, remained for many years the most undervalued artistic asset in cinema. It would take until the 2010's before either would even be tossed an Oscar and ironically for a film that is an extended version of a s...

Everything outside of the climactic face-off, in this "true" war film (based on ex-Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell's best recollections) is garbage, the lowest rent flag-waving. But the hour or so from engagement with the enemy is jaw-dropping. Director Peter Berg may have next to zero skill when it comes characters talking but the actually bone-crunching carnage, is some of the most brutal and hopeless...

Writer-director, Spike Jonze, is still undervalued and rightly picked up every screenwriting award going Her, with I think what was my film of the year. Scarlett Johansson is the magnetic, automated love interest for Joaquin Phoenix, that goes from operating system to all too real. Not just a prescient look at technology and romance but love and relationships themselves.

Maybe a shade too high but not much, still amazed four performances like this could walk away without a single Oscar. David O. Russell had a seismic year and followed up Silver Linings Playbook with yet more unforgettable characters and performances, this time with consummate, dynamic, Scorcese-worthy cinematic skill.

It sounds like I was on the right path with this one but 8.5/10 is still too high for a weirdly empty and hugely overrated (and very stiff) film.

Brad Pitt's mega-budget zombie production seemed troubled during the making and doubly so on the watching. Bizarrely unfocused and lacking a compelling screenplay, a misfire with a weirdly flat final third.

Perhaps a tad harsh here. This drug mule caper comedy is a very poor film but often hysterical and the cast is perfection.