Category: movie-reviews

This is a very late review. Apologies, I have been extremely busy.

Better ease myself back into it by reviewing something from a beloved franchise. Kung Fu Panda 3 is surprisingly the third Kung Fu Panda movie. Po, the panda, must now learn how teach others the ways of Kung Fu. What follows is reuniting of old friends and the emergence of a deadly old enemy while simultaneously giving a beginners guide to Taoist philosophy.

Yes, I said beloved franchise. I really like the Kung Fu Panda movies. Their stories are involving, their characters endearing and Dreamworks has some of the best moving animation in the business.

My favourite element is the surprising amount of growth in character, particularly in the titular mammal. A lesser sequel than Kung Fu Panda 2 would have Po go back to square one in his training somehow. What they did was build on what he had done in the previous movie.

My main question was, entering into the theatre, would we get a fitting third part to this story?

Well, it ain’t perfect. These movies have all had a slight issue with the plot progressing a little too quickly. Sometimes, I’ve felt that we would benefit from having a few more moments of serene calm to just admire the world and see the characters interact. That’s an issue bigger than the film, in my opinion, most films of this kind have little time to breathe.

Another issue I noticed was that I could actually script out the dramatic moments of the film before they even happened. There were some scenes, which, though moving, telegraphed it’s emotional beats way too early.

Some of the problems of this movie come from its superior predecessors. While the journey of Po comes to a satisfying close in this movie, I believe some set-up of major details which didn’t come in until the sequels in his character in the first film would have provided something more wholesome. Also, the first villain’s actions feel entirely inconsequential other than what he served in the first film’s story.

But that’s the snobby critic in me talking. Let me just pull the rug from under your feet and tell you that this a seriously kick-ass movie.

First of all, our cast is absolutely on point. Jack Black was born to play the juxtaposed martial arts master and lovable dumb-ass, Po. He has managed to attach the growth of this panda to an understanding of what it means to be a doughy fan-boy who likes nothing more than dumplings and sleeping late. This balance is the entire theme of this trilogy.

The supporters are wonderful again. How the heck can a movie franchise called Kung Fu Panda have Dustin Hoffmann, Angelina Jolie and Jackie Chan as three of its mainstays. (Actually the last one kind of makes all the sense in the world.)

This supposed conclusion to the series has J.K Simmons as the best villain so far in the series and Bryan Cranston as a surprising addition to the story, for reasons that I can’t get into. Sufficed to say, I do like his character, though I don’t particularly like the whole “liar-revealed” cliché that this film goes for.

I love Dreamworks when they do action and comedy. In this respect they outdo Pixar by a country mile. The final battle is the best climactic battle I’ve seen from a western movie in too long.

Overall, yeah this is a perfectly good conclusion to this surprising trilogy of family movies. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get myself some Dim Sum.

Recommended Scenario: With short running times and pretty similar plotlines all culminating in a relatively satisfying whole, this was meant to marathoned as if it were Back to the Future.

Eddie Redmayne is back, once again playing someone who must contort themselves and speak in an unusual manner while having problems with their family. Hopefully we don’t get a repeat of what happened in Jupiter Ascending.

This time, he plays Lili Elbe, the first person to have a male to female sex change, back in the 1920s. Through the runtime of this movie, Einar Wegener, famed Danish painter, transforms into Lili, while the change puts a strain on her marriage to another Danish painter, Gerda Wegener (played by Alicia Vikander).

I was interested in seeing this movie since it was announced last year for three reasons. One, I enjoy (most of) the work of Redmayne and I now know that I wholly enjoy the work of Alicia Vekandar. Two, it’s directed by Tom Hooper, the director who may be Oscar baiting, but is actually a pretty darn good talent when he puts his mind to it. And thirdly, I was interested to see what a mainstream movie in 2016 would do with the subject of transsexuality.

Before we go onto what this movie does with its subject matter, let’s review the movie itself.

Redmayne and Vikander are both up for Oscars this year for their performances here. I agree, their performances are actually very good. Not too showy, but still getting all the right marks of despair in this confusing situation. Their relationship is the core of this movie and I am very pleased by how well they connect and how tragically things fall apart.

I don’t think either should win, however. My choice for Best Actor is Leo DiCaprio and Vikander’s role here is by no means “Supporting”, that is if I cared about the Oscars. I also believe that Vikander’s stand out performance of the past 12 months was her work on the marvellous Ex Machina.

The story is also very good. The formation of Lili into a full woman is very well-paced and does contain some moving moments. Watching someone discover who they really want to be, after years of it being hidden is something that I can’t help but be moved by.

For some reason though, I found myself not fully moved by this sad story. Perhaps it’s because it was obvious from the get-go where this story would lead. Anyone with a basic idea of what the premise is will be able to predict where this film will go.

There’s also an irritating sub-plot, if you can call it that, wherein Vikander’s character tries to reach out, romantically to another man. I don’t know if this actually happened and I get why they would include it, to show what this experience is doing to her, but I found it way too clichéd and distracting from the point of the piece.

Tom Hooper is a director that I notice has been getting flack from some corners of the internet film critic community, not necessarily because they don’t like his movies, but more because he appears to be exploiting a formula for giving himself Oscar gold.

While The King’s Speech, Les Miserables (2012) and even The Danish Girl all tick various boxes for the retrieval of the golden naked man (actors having transformative “actor-friendly” parts, bizarre hit & miss cinematography, historical subjects, British accents, royalty, technical and subjective gimmicks that grab headlines just for being there etc) I still love the former two films very much and I think that’s down to in no small part the work of the helmsman.

The Danish Girl is probably his best looking film thus far. I hope that he has learnt the lessons of his previous work, that just because one can break the rules of basic composition to convey something unique, sometimes those rules are meant to be followed. (Just re-watch Les Mis and ask why the camera is that close to Russel Crowe’s face.) What’s also good is that he still knows how to gain good performances.

Now let’s get onto the tricky subject, the subject.

With so much going on in the world regarding the LGBTQ community, it was only a matter of time before we started to get more mainstream depictions of those in that community. Queer cinema, cinema that predominately features gay, bisexual or transsexual themes, has been around for ages and has been getting the attention of critics for ages.

Maybe that’s why when I looked at initial reviews of The Danish Girl, some were a little negative when discussing this subject matter. They’d seen all this before and this movie feels like an introductory course on what being transgender means.

But to me, as someone outside of that community, having never gone to Cannes or Sundance or really seen any of these smaller movies, Boys Don’t Cry, Tangerine etc, my experience is probably a lot closer to that of the general cinema going public, or at least the ones who go to the awards season movies.

These people, for the most part, will obviously not need a beginner’s guide to what transgender people go through. However, with this film, a classy “Based on a True Story” drama, we have a means of breaking down an invisible, non-enforced barrier when discussing this subject. Like with something like Django*, taking a subject matter (in that case slavery) and putting it in a familiar genre (in that case the western) gave a bit of a refresh in the way we look at this issue.

Mainstream media is certainly talking a lot about the transgender community at the moment and the depictions in movies and TV that are coming out at the moment are thankfully positive.

I don’t think we’ll be talking about The Danish Girl as if it’s something earth-shatteringly controversial, but it serves as an example of 21^st century mass media opening up this whole issue to a new generation. I think that’s a humble achievement that doesn’t necessarily deserve a standing ovation, but deserves recognition from a polite nod.

Recommended Scenario: If you want a pretty decent costume drama that does something pretty unique with a pretty Eddie Redmayne.

*I’m sorry I keep going on about Tarantino films. I’m getting into a habit.

I’ve got to be honest, I was going to watch Spotlight, but I was too hungry and sad to watch a film tangentially related to that film’s subject matter, so I decided to eat a pizza and then watch a later showing of Goosebumps.

Goosebumps is sort of based on the popular series of children’s books by R.L Stine. By “sort of”, I mean the film is based in a reality in which the series of books is still a series of books, but R.L Stine is Jack Black and his creations within the books come to life and cause bedlam.

I bet that sounds exciting! Well, one slight hitch. Our protagonist is not Stine, it is some boring high school boy called Zack or Zac or Zach (I’m not looking it up).

Why? Why do they keep doing this? Why can’t we have a movie aimed for kids that doesn’t have an underwhelming young actor in his “breakout role” where he is simply meant to be relatable. Yeah I get that it’s important for protagonists to be relatable, but sometimes you just have to let the kids look at a situation where Goosebumps characters come to life and ask no questions, but fork over cash.

It’s even stranger when that’s actually kind of what we’re expected to accept. There’s no back story which explains how these beings came to life. We are literally just told that R.L Stine’s typewriter is magic and we should deal with it. That’s economic, no nonsense writing right there. So why have the kid with what’s apparently the most marketable name in the history of media?

To be fair to the guy, he’s not awful. I’ve certainly seen movies with worse leads and lead performances. And the fact that they have someone in their later teens, means he doesn’t have any bad kid-actor syndrome. Sure, he’s bland as chalk, but at least he’s not offensively bland.

What I was worried about was how they were going to deal with the teen stuff our lead does. Luckily there are no skateboards, school bullies or any other irrelevant teeny things to distract from the plot. There is a spectacularly badly written love story between Stine’s daughter and Zachory, but if you cover your eyes and ears for a few minutes, you won’t want to end it all.

We are also joined by Nerd. The guy has a name, but I’m just going to call him what I remember him to be. A Nerd who does nerdy, dweeby things and is a big fan of the Goosebumps books, so we have someone who can suck up to how great this movie’s source material is (we’ll come back to that issue later). Like I said, they don’t do the bully angle and since he’s in late high school, there’s not really any ostracizing of the guy other than the fact that he just isn’t cool. I’ll give the writer credit, that is actually a realistic portrayal of what it’s like to be a nerd in late high school.

Before I go further in trashing this thing (if you can call it that, I believe I’m actually being relatively fair), let’s talk about the things I thought were OK.

First of all, Jack Black. I think he was good here. Not great, but certainly not bad. He has a strange OTT delivery of a mad scientist and a demeanour that is comically threatening at times. While the writing may not be that good, the guy is definitely trying to make this performance of a real guy not entirely kiss the guy’s feet.

Secondly the monsters. Not really because of the carnage they do or their designs, which are purposely basic and recognisable from previous stories of similar ilk, but because of the way they enter and exit reality. I just thought their CGI transformation involving ink from the pages of books was pretty cool.

That’s pretty much all I liked about this movie. The rest is pretty forgettable, sometimes confusing and sometimes annoying, but to go into detail about the stuff that ticks most of those boxes would go into spoiler territory.

What really bugs me about this whole endeavour is that, while I was never a fan of Goosebumps as a kid, I know that many people my age were and they would be interested in an adaptation of the BOOKS that they loved. Like I said, this movie had a good idea in having the books exist with the monsters coming to life from them, but I think what we need is a T.V Show.

In fact, we don’t need a T.V Show. What we need is nothing. We have a bunch of bestselling children’s novels already. Why don’t I just read those?

Recommended Scenario: Like I said, read the books, or watch Doctor Who like I did when everyone else was reading them.

This is a supposedly true story. When Michael Caine read his first scene from Jaws: The Revenge, in which he plays Hoagie Newcome, and the scene heading read “EXT. THE BAHAMAS – DAY”, he immediately signed onto do the movie. The man felt he deserved a little break in the Caribbean and felt it was worth being in that abhorrent mess that he himself refuses to see.

My point? This film has Caine’s character, a retired music composer and conductor, spending his annual holiday in a beautiful Swiss hotel and interacting with various hotel guests, with drama ensuing. Let’s hope that visiting Switzerland was not the only good thing that came out of this movie.

According to Caine in some interviews, it was this film’s director, Paolo Sorrentino, who insisted that the now semi-retired veteran actor take this role, threatening to cancel production if he didn’t take part, and Caine, flattered by being singled out by a director he admired from his previous Academy Award Winning film, La Grande Bellezza, and not wanting what looked like an excellent script go to waste, agreed.

So was it worth his time and effort to do a film NOT directed by Christopher Nolan? Well, you’re about to find out.

This movie which reflects on art and the processes of aging is thematically right up my street. The decline of oneself in life’s latter years is something that has terrified and fascinated me for years. I am also a “film critic” and cinephile. These two facts make me sit up when I hear that I’m about to watch a two-hour long film in which nothing much happens except some old people (and some young), many of whom are artists, sitting about and talking about art and being old.

When I say “nothing much happens”, that’s not as true as it is for some independent and artsy films. There is certainly a plot and interesting characters going through their interesting little lives. Yet before going into this movie, you should realise that this is a slow one. It put me in mind of some of Studio Ghibli’s films, which take the concept of Ma (a Japanese word roughly translating as “gap”, recently being used to describe the calm pauses in between the action) and running with it.

So yeah, if you’re one of those people who can’t stand slow, contemplative, artsy sorts of movies, this probably isn’t for you. I hope that does not come across as if I believe such people are beneath me, because I really don’t. Heck, a few hours after watching this movie I saw the utterly brilliant Team American: World Police and the next day I saw Deadpool (review coming soon) so you see, I can be cool and fun too!

When I watch some movies, I am joined by two imaginary friends whom I discuss the movie with afterwards. The one wearing the scarf and long coat said after seeing this movie, “Well, that was certainly a very good looking movie. The cinematography, editing and direction were simply excellent. And –“

At this point, the guy with the Star Wars T-Shirt and jeans to my left interrupted with “Don’t you think it was a bit pretentious”.

And I’m left in the middle trying to decide who I agree with more.

I have to agree that the whole “talking about art and screenwriting and music and aging” thing that I found so endearing at the start of this picture does come across as a little pretentious after a while. I like philosophical sub-text and text as much as the next man, but I feel that this movie lays it on a little thick. One could imagine this movie being subtitled with French actors at certain points and it becoming the epitome of what some see as those “critic-friendly” movies.

On the other hand, the scarf-wearing side of my brain is actually right. This IS a beautiful looking movie, for sure, not just for its setting in lovely Switzerland, but because of excellent craft of that imagery.

The thing that tips me over towards properly liking this movie is my adoration for the acting present here.

I have never seen a better Michael Caine performance in my life. He demands sympathy and respect as a fictional man of music in the twilight of his life. I’m actually a little surprised that he hasn’t been nominated for an Oscar. Those guys at the Academy love to reward actors who play artists. I mean look at The Artist. Ah, it’s probably because he’s playing someone who never really existed.

He is joined by Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano and Jane Fonda, all giving great performances.

So a mixed bag? Maybe. I’d say I definitely like this movie a lot more than I don’t. I love the imagery and the acting and quite a bit of the themes and writing. And yet I hate some of the pretentiousness that gets drizzled as a garnish.

No matter, what I can say about those aspects, there is one element that is absolutely flawless. It’s soundtrack. I’m no music critic, but I can finally use that old clichéd word “Haunting” as a perfect adjective for the tunes in this film.

You can probably find the music on YouTube. Check it out while reading my other reviews.

Recommended Scenario: If you like long walks in the park, contemplating the big things in life. And Michael Caine.

Final Note: This is unrelated to the quality of this film, so I’ve left it to the end. I have something I’d like to say to Independent Movie Producers.

I know for a fact that making movies is not easy. Particularly when you are running mainly on passion for the project and less on the profitability of a franchise (though of course that can also be hard). And if you are and independent film company, you want to get your name out there.

When films like Youth are made, they often rely on multiple sources of funding, meaning a number of companies. All these companies want to promote their brand.

Thus, they all have 8 or more seconds at the beginning of the movie to show their logos and possibly their theme tune. Then they show their name again in the opening credits of the movie.

My advice to you is this. If you’re going to put up all your logos, please, for the sake of the patience of the audience members, many of whom have been seated patiently since before the pre-show adverts began, put all your logos on the screen simultaneously. Use a big grid layout. Have that shown for 5 seconds and you’re done.

I personally don’t like checking my watch before the movie’s even begun.

Thank you. Keep fighting the studios.

Thanks to a lack of knowledge of the difficulties between this film’s distributors and Cineworld, I had no idea that my second most anticipated movie of this year was even out until far too recently. Like William Shatner’s Buck Murdoch from Airplane II, I’m left asking “Why the hell aren’t I notified about these things?”

The Hateful Eight, written & directed by Quentin Tarantino, is a three hour western in the snow telling the story of a group of distrust-worthy sorts stuck in a haberdashery in the middle of a Wyoming mountain blizzard, just after the Civil War.

Note “three hour”. Note “Tarantino”. To those unfamiliar with Quentin’s excesses in dialogue, violence and various stylistic tropes taken from cinema’s past, this is a movie to daunt you if ever there was one.

Since this is my first Tarantino review, you will forgive me if I make something of a section of this review dedicated to my opinion of the man’s oeuvre.

Mr Tarantino is ultimately a marmite director. One loves him, or one hates him. I have to say that, in terms of my only real reference to him that I have, that being his ability to make movies, I love him. I don’t find any of his movies NOT entertaining or stupid. I feel there is a genuine intelligence behind his use of violence, his utterly brilliant dialogue and his love for his medium surpassing many working in it.

With that said, I don’t think I could watch his films every day. With the exception of Resevoir Dogs (which I would say is the place to start watching his movies from), Tarantino does like to go overboard in the length department. While Django Unchained is a genuinely great movie and probably his most important work in terms of content rather than impact, I do think it does end a few too many times. And did Jackie Brown need to be a whole 154 minutes? Probably not. (Don’t get me wrong, those movies are awesome!)

There are more things I would like to say about QT and his work, especially in relation to recent events involving the police unions of America, but I’ll leave that to another blog post. Now, I’ll get on with the review.

The team behind this movie decided to use Ultra Panavision lenses that have not been used for around 60 years, which provide a huge epic feel similar to Ben Hur and other epics of that time period. This may seem a little backwards on the surface, considering this movie takes place largely within one location. Why go to all the effort of using these beautiful cameras if you’re basically shooting a play? Well, you’d be surprised how profoundly cinematic an interior close up can be through this glass. I know that traditionalists will be irritated that I did not review this film in its 70mm format, but even on digital, this is definitely one of the most beautiful looking movies of the year so far, especially when action goes outside to the wide, white landscapes of Wyoming.

And since we’re in the same place for such a long time, the cast had better be good. I mentioned that this film seemed like a play and these excellent actors provide the feeling of purity similar to an original cast production. Not one bad performance was given by any of them. Not one line of Tarantino’s once again delicious dialogue was badly spoken.

Story-wise, The Hateful Eight is pretty solid. The premise involving bounty hunters and cowboys and old generals all distrusting one another is obviously as western as they come, but the tightness of it all feels quite Hitchcockian. The pacing at times is a little off. One must be prepared for a LOT of talking before anything gets done. Yet once things get done, they really get done.

The violence is once again gloriously over the top once it comes. I am of the opinion that no matter how violent a movie is, if it can relate to the reality of the piece without it being the centre of our attention, I am fine with it. I understand not everyone has the same appetite for blood that I do, so I give a fair warning that there is a considerable amount of it.

Does this movie have flaws? Well, like I said, the pacing feels a little off at times as usual in a Tarantino flick and the actions of some of the characters, which I know are described as Hateful, can be a little questionable. One could probably make a version of this movie with a few of the key players, which are still really, really well written, left out. (Of course, the title would have to be changed appropriately to accommodate the reduction in cast size.)

I and some more legitimate critics feel that with Django and this movie, Tarantino has grown a political conscious in his writing and directing. Whether that was always there in his previous work, I do not know, but it is certainly more present here. I also don’t know whether this is a direct reaction to his critics who see nothing but a talented man wasting his time on “lesser films”. It wouldn’t be the first time that a meta-cinematic touch has been inserted (remember the burning cinema filled with Nazis of Inglorious Bastards).

But that’s a story for another day. Sufficed to say, this is a highly intelligent movie which, though lagging a little at times and could do with a little fan-editing, I think could fit easily in the top half of the filmography of one of my favourite modern directors.

Before the recommended scenario, I should give one for the newbies to his work. Watch The Hateful Eight once you are familiar with his style, warts and all.

Recommended Scenario (For Everyone Else): When you wanna watch Django Unchained meets 12 Angry Men meets The Revenant.

Over the course of this film, which stars Academy Award Winner Christian Bale, we see his character discover something monumental in 2005, the same year Bale helped us rediscover Batman in Batman Begins, to 2008 when that monumental thing destroyed the economy and Bale reappeared as Batman in the $1 Billion Dollar grossing movie The Dark Knight! Life imitating art, imitating life, I suppose.
The Big Short stars Christian Bale, Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt, and tells the story of some people who foresaw the collapse of the U.S and, effectively though a little more complicatedly, bet against the strength of said economy.

 

Based on the book from the same author as Moneyball, having seen this film, I have to be honest, I have the same bizarre feelings towards it as I did that film adaptation, namely, I did not get a lot of it but I very much enjoyed it.
Films like these do something I adore when it comes to the portrayal of difficult to handle concepts, whether those be baseball or economics. They treat the audience like adults. Director Adam McKay, known for Anchorman, and the other excellent writers of this movie use a meta – cinematic style which, when done right works so unbelievably well. Some of the winks to the people in my theatre had me chuckling. Not laughing, but chuckling.
And that’s something you need to know before heading into this movie, it is NOT a comedy! With “The Martian” and this being nominated for and winning so many comedy awards, perhaps Hollywood is acknowledging that so much of the comedic cinematic foundation is as solid as the housing market of 2008.
But, I digress. What this is, is a drama with an excellent, dry sense of humour, done in a documentary-esque style which highlights that like The Wolf of Wall Street, which, on a side note, was definitely a comedy, the punchline to this grotesque, painful, but beautifully told joke is “The Aristocrats”, our people in power who have done nothing meaningful to sort out the crisis those people put us into (at least according to The Big Short). That’s the kind of skill only a really good comedy director, writer and group of actors can have.
I am not a political guy, the last time I checked. What opinions I do have in that sector (outside of general principles of fairness regardless of creed, colour or class) I prefer to leave out of my reviews. And when it comes to financial matters, I’m almost happy to say I’m in a state of blissful ignorance, occasionally interrupted by scepticism from Newsnight or from optimism from a deeply entrenched belief in the goodness of humankind (blame The Lord of the Rings).
Movies like these are of course developed to appeal to Lehmanns like myself, yet like I said this one did not talk down to me. Like a good teacher, it showed me the real world in its harshness with a light-heartedness that helped me swallow the shocking horror of what some corrupt men and women did to so many.
This is a film. It’s a piece of entertainment which most likely will have been influenced somewhere down the line by the prejudices and beliefs of those who made it. In once sense it doesn’t matter whether what it’s telling us is 100% factually accurate (in fact the film openly acknowledges that some of what it’s showing us didn’t happen), what matters is that it spreads a message about corruption and greed in a powerful and often darkly amusing way.
And regardless of whether what I saw was all real, like after seeing a shocking documentary, I left the cinema in a mixture of joy over seeing a great film and anger over western capitalism.
Recommended Scenario: When you want to see the awesome cinematic possibilities of American economics.

If you’ve come here expecting me to review Tommy Wiseau’s cult classic The Room (2003), you are unfortunately mistaken. That movie is known as one of the worst movies ever made. This movie has been nominated for Best Picture.

Room, based on the bestselling novel by Emma Donoghue, is story of a young mother and her five year-old son who have been locked for years inside a room. And it’s brilliant.

Two future Academy Award Winners if ever I saw them.

Unfortunately, this review can’t actually cover some of the details of what makes this movie so wonderful, due to my strict no-spoilers policy, but I shall make an attempt to dance around it.

First of all, it should be clear that this is a movie that relies heavily on two actors carrying the whole thing through their performances. Brie Larson as the Mum has been nominated for an Oscar and rightly so. This is an actress at the peak of ability showing all the struggle and heartache of this frightening scenario whose only reason to go on living is her love for her child.

Speaking of that child, newcomer Jacob Tremlay is our eyes and ears as a 5 year old who has not seen the world. He is utterly glorious here. Larson’s character has had to lie to Jacob’s about the way the world works to help him survive, like most mothers must do, but blown up by the unusual situation they are in to the nth degree.

These two could not keep this film going if the writing wasn’t as fluid and beautiful as it is. We as an audience know these two inside and out in the first five minutes and no matter how removed from our experiences, this scenario is, we never feel any distance away from how these people feel. Emma Donoghue adapted her novel herself into this screenplay and her knowledge and love of the story shines through to me even though I’ve not read the book. An excellent adaptation.

All of this comes together in a package as tight as the titular room itself under the direction of Lenny Abrahamson who brings out the best performances from his cast using this screenplay while capturing every detail.

This movie goes from horror movie, to touching mother-son drama, to coming-of-age tale. There are times I honestly could hear my heart pounding through my chest.

Like every year, January has given the UK all the best parts of the end of last year from the US as a late Christmas present. Let’s hope that the rest of 2016 can continue with wonderful movies like this one.

Recommended Scenario: When you want reminded how powerful the relationship between a mother and son can be on screen.

It would be interesting if, while appearing in this movie that has a broad theme of female empowerment, Jennifer Lawrence still wasn’t being paid the same as her male co-stars.

Joy is the latest movie by David O’Russell, starring O’Russell regulars Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro and Bradley Cooper. It tells the story of a woman who invents a new product and attempts to get that product onto the market, while supporting her kids.

Whether it works or not, this movie hits all the marks of a David O’Russell picture, not just in its casting. The characters are mostly American suburbanites, they talk in a way that ranges from good writing to something I can’t quite put my finger on, hit and miss humour, and it follows a rags to riches narrative.

When I say that the writing fluctuates in quality, I don’t know if I’m being fair. I honestly do like the style, but like with Tarantino at times, one can see that there is a particular pattern to the way that people speak.

The humour in movies like The Fighter, Silver Lining’s Playbook and American Hustle does go from inspired to a bit awkward and this movie is no exception. These films can generally be described as dramadies (thanks to movie reviewer Jeremy Jahns for coining the word) where one can tell from the editing style and the timing of the acting, that it’s a comedy, but where most of the lines and moments aren’t jokes. A good example would be Punch Drunk Love.

While I can make excuses for what I’ve already mentioned, I can’t make an excuse for one flaw I have with this movie, I didn’t feel anything for most of the first act. There’s something about the way that the first act is told that meant I felt oddly distanced. I don’t think it’s the oddness of the characters, more that the way the narration (this film is narrated by the protagonist’s inspiring Grandmother) tells the story just didn’t gel with what I was seeing. It was only once the second act started, I started to like this movie.

So, what? Do I hate Joy? No, I think it’s a pretty good movie.

First of all, the acting is very good from most everyone involved, particularly from Lawrence and De Niro. Robert De Niro definitely looks happy in the various comedies I see him popping up in, but, not to prejudge, I feel that he’s better spent in a movie like this than in Dirty Grandpa.

Secondly, the story did make me feel good once it got going. I am a sucker for a film about someone who goes after the american dream. A nice man sitting next to me in the cinema was pumping the air, in front of him when things were going good and I have to admit, I was almost covering my eyes when things were going bad.

So, this movie is flawed, no question, all movies have flaws (except The Lord of the Rings). Yet if one takes into account what it made me feel by the end, it’s actually rather good.

Recommended Scenario: If you need a pick me up in January.