Category Archives: Film

King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, Jude Law, Djimon Hounsou, Eric Bana, Aiden Gillen, Freddie Fox, Craig McGinlay, Tom Wu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Neil Maskell, Annabelle Wallis, Geoff Bell, Bleu Landau, Jacqui Ainsley, Georgina Campbell, Rob Knighton, Michael Hadley, David Beckham, Katie McGrath, Peter Ferdinando, Michael McElhatton, Mikael Persbrandt.

 

Legends come from stories long since handed down and embellished, made uncertain and then allowed to fade into the darkness of our collective memories, such is the fate of us all and without proof, who is to say that you also won’t become a myth.

Beauty And The Beast. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Kevin Kline, Josh Gad, Hattie Morahan, Haydn Gwynne, Gerard Horan, Ray Fearon, Ewan McGregor, Ian Mckellen, Emma Thompson, Nathan Mack, Audra McDonald, Stanley Cadenza, Clive Rowe, Adrian Schiller.

 

Heralded as one of the great Disney classics of all time, Beauty and the Beast is a scintillating tale of compassion over anger, of love over objectivity and quite rightly has become engrained in the heart of those who have taken its message of purity and simplicity against force and prejudice to its true place in the psyche; love conquers all they say and yet sometimes love is not quite enough to warrant taking a much loved animated film and turning into a live action feature, sometimes love just isn’t enough.

Miss Sloane. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Michael Stuhlbarg, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Mark Strong, Jake Lacey, Alison Pill, John Lithgow, Sam Waterston, Douglas Smith, Dylan Baker, Ennis Esmer, Lucy Owens, Noah Robbins, Joe Pingue, Michael Cram, Meghann Fahy, Grace Lynn Kung, Sergio Di Zio.

 

There will be those that dare suggest that Feminism has no place in the 21st Century, that to them, disturbingly on the increase in the younger more affluent ends of female society, the word is dead, that it is meaningless to them; however without a construct and movement in place such as Feminism, it would be unlikely that a film of such intrigue and collective brilliance such as Miss Sloane would have ever been made.

Alien Covenant, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demián Bichir, Carmen Ejogo, Jussie Smollett, Callie Hernandez, Amy Seimetz, Nathaniel Dean, Alexander England, Benjamin Rigby, Uli Latukefu, Tess Haubrich, Lorelei King, Goran D. Kleut, Andrew Crawford, James Franco, Guy Pearce.

Perhaps once upon a time it would have been too much for a cinema audience to ask that the phenomenally superb and Box office smash Alien would ever get the treatment it deserved in sequels; to think it could happen in a prequel was beyond even the stretch of imagination of many a die-hard fan and yet lurking in the shadows, skulking with shiny black skin and acid for blood is the 21st Century equivalent of a nightmare made real, the outstanding Alien Covenant.

Sleepless, Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *

Cast: Jamie Foxx, Michelle Monaghan, Scoot McNairy, Dermot Mulroney, T.I., David Harbour, Gabrielle Union, Octavious J. Johnson, Tim Connolly, Drew Sheer, Sala Baker, Tim Rigby.

The story of the corrupt cop is always one that can enthral an audience, to see someone who is supposed to uphold the law cross the thin blue line to the other side, normally for money, is one that is as old as Hollywood and as poignant as modern day society. It is also a tale which has been assuredly been done every way possible, that in many respects it is no longer shocking because we live in a world where moral boundaries have become blurred and downright insensible; we have become immune to it because we understand it goes on all the time, the chronic Sleepless feeling we have is the only defence to the constant news about it.

The Promise. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon, Christian Bale, Marwan Kenzari, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Angela Sarafyan, Tom Hollander, Numan Acar, Milene Mayer, Igal Naor, Tamer Hassan, Alicia Borrachero, Abel Folk, Jean Reno, James Cromwell, Kevork Malikyan.

 

You may believe you know a story, you may bury it in the past in an effort to move on, to think that humanity has learned its lessons and we have become more attuned to dealing with the atrocities a nation can inflict upon its people, on another group of people just because they are different, because they pray a different way, because their customs are not your own, that they perhaps are more successful so bitter jealousy comes into play; humanity never learns, humanity keeps repeating the same sense of the damned and inexcusable and it is a lesson sharply delivered in The Promise.

Unlocked, Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 5/10

Cast: Noomi Rapace, Orlando Bloom, Michael Douglas, Toni Collette, John Malkovich, Akshay Kumar, Adelayo Adedayo, Tosin Cole, Brian Caspe, Aymen Hamdouchi, Jessica Boone, Philip Brodie, Affaello Degruttola,

Lady Macbeth, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Florence Pugh, Christopher Fairbanks, Cosmo Jarvis, Naomi Ackie, Bill Fellows, Paul Hilton, Golda Rosheuvel, Ian Cunningham, Fleur Houdijk, Rebecca Manley, Kema Sikazwe, David Kirkbride, Joseph Teague, Cliff Burnett, Anton Palmer.

 

Guardians Of The Galaxy: Volume Two. Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Sylvester Stallone, Kurt Russell, Elizabeth Debicki, Chris Sullivan, Sean Gunn, Laura Haddock.

All the fun of the original but with added family angst, if you are going to describe Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume Two in any way that resembles a nutshell then you can only go by that, a great family film that has kept Marvel Studios firmly in the top racoon place when it comes to portraying superheroes on film and that D.C. has a long way to go.

Forgettable, Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *

Cast: Rosario Dawson, Katherine Heigl, Geoff Stults, Cheryl Ladd, Whitney Cummings, Robert Wisdom, Isabella Kai Rice, Simon Kassianides, Jayson Blair, Marissa Morgan, Aline Elasmar.

It should be a refreshing take on an idea, the real life animosity that resides in the heart of a spurned ex-wife over the new woman in the man’s life, the lies, the sense of fragile and the broken manifesting itself as a potential weapon, of a rage boiling to its maximum, to the end point where the terrifying spectacle of what you see is the representation of all that can go wrong when women fight over a man. It is not the nicest thing on Earth to witness and it does leave you wondering exactly what women see in the opposite gender to make them go down the path of no return.