Category: REVIEWS

Science and religion are subjects that rarely ever meet, let alone have anything in common. It’s said that the difference between scientists and theologians is that theologians have all the answers and scientists are still looking. So, it may surprise people that The Dalai Lama has been interested in science ever since he was a child.

The Dalai Lama: Scientist is a documentary that looks at the way that his holiness sees the world through both science and religion and attempts to put the two together to make sense of the wider world.

Through interviews with his holiness himself and footage from interviews and discussions between scientists and The Dalai Lama, The Dalai Lama: Scientist explores in intricate detail the different aspects of both science and religion through subjects such as quantum physics, neurobiology and Buddhist philosophy.

After a short, but interesting interview with his holiness the documentary soon goes into the various discussions between some of the world’s most renowned scientists and The Dalai Lama. Unfortunately, this takes up the bulk of the documentary and there’s a lot to take in for an audience who are looking for a casual and uplifting documentary about two very different views of life finding a connection.

The documentary is narrated very dryly, only talking about what The Dalai Lama has said and done, with very little room for his holiness to speak for himself. It’s only through the discussions that the audience gets a true feeling of his personality, his presence and the devotion that his followers have for him.

There are also a lot of moments during the documentary where it briefly stops to put up cards with bullet points, making the documentary feel more like an educational video for a class, making the audience feel like a student in a class rather than an adult interested in the subject.

It would have perhaps been more interesting to hear more about how science has influenced The Dalai Lama’s life personally, but it seems that the documentary has a set quota to fill. So, before the audience has time to contemplate the points raised by the parts of the documentary, it moves on.

The Dalai Lama: Scientist may be interesting for those students studying philosophy, science or theology, but for an audience looking to absorb more about one of the world’s most respected religious leaders, it gives the audience far too much all at once with little time to breathe.

Angelfish: Another Review – Summer in the Bronx, 1993. Brendan (Jimi Stanton) is a troubled but hard-working high school drop-out with a manipulative mother and a brother on the verge of self-destruction. Eva (Princess Nokia) is a bright, young woman about to start college in the fall, but with the pressure to make her family proud clashing with her own secret hopes and dreams for the future. Sparks fly when the two meet, and their respective worlds collide. As the young couple’s relationship develops, their home lives and dreams for the future threaten to tear their new and fragile love apart.

Peter Andrew Lee’s Angelfish starts off a little bit rocky. We get jolted fairly quickly into a scene in which Brendan is shown working at a deli that he doesn’t really enjoy working at, but does so because he is in need of money and it is the only job that he can get at the moment. One day on a regular shift, a customer, Eva, walks in and starts to get catcalled by a man. Brendan sticks up for her, and he instantly develops quite the crush on Eva, and it seems as though she feels the same way about him, too.

This is perhaps the biggest issue with the film and one of the reasons why it took a little while to get into it. The whole movie revolves around their relationship and the tries and tribulations that they must go through in order to keep their relationship afloat. However, for a long time, it felt as though these two really weren’t meant for each other. After all, they just met at a deli and barely said more than a few words to one another.

Luckily though, the script that Lee wrote ultimately fleshed them out a lot more by the time the second act comes into play. From that point onward, the movie became not only much more entertaining and genuinely funny and sweet, but it became much more believable as to why these two liked each other.

One of the reasons why I eventually ended up caring for our two lead protagonists was due to the excellent performances that Jimi Stanton and Princess Nokia give. Together, they exude brilliant chemistry and have a terrific screen presence. They genuinely felt as though they had known each other in real life for many years, and working on this film together was natural for them.

In addition to them, this is just a beautiful movie to look at as well. Director of photography Jamal Solomon presents a ton of lush scenery as well as run-down city roads in a brilliant manner. Everything stands out greatly to the point where I genuinely cannot recall a single bland-looking shot here.

As a whole, Lee has managed to craft a love story that, at first, seemed a bit jarring and a little unbelievable. Thankfully though, he turns it around fairly quickly into a genuinely compelling tale of two people falling in love and tells it in a sweet and charming way.

Angelfish has a rocky start but ultimately develops into a genuinely sweet and compassionate film with excellent performances from Jimi Stanton and Princess Nokia.

With hundreds of cases solved and adventures shared, Scooby-Doo (voice of Frank Welker) and the gang face their biggest, most challenging mystery ever — a plot to unleash the ghost dog Cerberus upon the world. As they race to stop this global dog-pocalypse, the gang discovers that Scooby has a secret legacy and an epic destiny greater than anyone could have imagined.

Starting at about the age of six or seven and going until about the age of nine or ten, my mom used to drop my off at a babysitter’s house nearby to watch me for a few hours before I headed off to school for the day. At her house, she always told me I could put on the television and watch any show I wanted to.

Being a small child and loving cartoons, I naturally put on a ton of those. But one of my favorites was easily What’s New Scooby-Doo?, which I found to be deeply fun thanks to its childlike sense of wonder, its fun adventures, and great sense of humor. I still remember watching that and getting immensely excited whenever I heard that theme song.

So, as a result, I was quite curious and eager to see what director Tony Cervone had to offer with Scoob!, his new animated feature. Unfortunately, though, I found myself massively disappointed in the movie, largely in part due to its humor.

This was such a surprise but in a really bad way. As I mentioned earlier, the humor that was in the television series was one of my favorite things about it. I always found myself either laughing quite hard or smiling from ear to ear for a large portion of each episode’s running time. Here though, the comedy is just downright awful.

The screenwriters make a bold choice to include a large amount of references to pop culture and modern technology, movies, and songs here, and it was unfortunately a terrible idea. When The Peanuts Movie was coming out, I was incredibly worried that it was going to feature our beloved Charlie Brown make references to iPhones and how much he wants to talk to Lucy over Snapchat or something. Thankfully though, the film avoided that at all costs. Scoob! doesn’t.

In just the first act alone, we see an appearance from none other than Simon Cowell who voices himself. Shaggy and Scooby tell him that they are big fans of his, which leads them to then belt out “Shallow” from A Star Is Born. I’m not even joking.

But if that’s not bad enough, Cowell gets mentioned several more times in the film to the point where the fictionalized version of himself literally becomes a subplot that doesn’t work. And that’s the biggest issue with this movie – there are way too many storylines at play here and none of them feel exciting or adventurous as they should.

The original cartoon was filled with plenty of stories that kids and adults alike could watch and enjoy. Here, not much happens in terms of a compelling story that you can get invested in. A lot of the events that happen here feel extremely flat.

One thing that definitely deserves to get a bunch of praise in Scoob! is the animation. In terms of a visual standpoint, I think this may just be the best looking animated film of the year so far, with Onward coming in quite close. The animation team clearly spent countless hours making sure that each and every character is brimming with personality and added small, minute details that are easy to appreciate.

But I just wish the rest of the movie was as good as the animation was. Don’t get me wrong; this film does have some good things in it. The animation is great, the voice acting is terrific, and the first twenty to thirty minutes were remarkably strong, but unfortunately, it all fizzles out into a generic, relatively bland mystery from there on out. Zoinks.

Scoob! may have a wonderous animation style and fun voice acting, but its sense of humor is painfully dry and its story is too underdeveloped to make this an adventure worth going on.

By Heidi Sharpley.

Hmmm, where do I begin?  Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually, Notting Hill – all brilliant  British rom/coms we’ve watched over and over again.  Coincidently, all starring Hugh Grant.  However, it is my humble opinion that not even Hugh Grant the floppy-haired prince of rom/com could save “I Am The Prize”.

It opens with a bunch of flowers being delivered to Laura in her office and quickly turns into a debacle as the flowers conceal a giant rainbow dildo that Laura and her best friend Martin think of creative ways to exchange to cause each other embarrassment, humiliation and supposedly give the audience some laughs.  Instead, the scene is, over-extended, over-acted, over-the-top and under delivers.  And basically that covers the overs and under of the next 1h and 34 minutes of “I am the Prize”

Martin is unlucky in love and Laura decides to help him find a girlfriend.  After setting him up on failed blind dates, she pays for him to join a seminar group called Intimate Attraction Ultimate Domination.  The presenter is misogyny personified but we’ve seen the plot before only better.  Remember Tom Cruises’ character in Magnolia and his ridiculous ethos of respect the cock and how to fake like you are nice and caring? Not even slightly funny during these times of #metoo.

I cringed for the actors in this movie and identified with none of the characters.  The script gave them no option but to over-act and it was like watching panto but without the audience participation and laughs.  Awkward teenage humour really doesn’t work when delivered by adults with eloquent English accents.  If some of the lines had been spoken by the desperate school  boys from the “Inbetweeners” during their farcical plays for hooking up, I may have really laughed along.  

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/iamtheprize

This low budget movie cut too many corners.  It lacked atmosphere.  Every bar and restaurant scene had no other patrons. The token waiter delivers a plate of food in an empty restaurant while we observe dialogue exchanges.  It was as captivating as watching a foreign language instructional video.

This is one of those movies that makes you appreciate a long afternoon stroll in the great outdoors or even curling up with a good book.  

Bombshell: The BRWC DVD Review – As a film that attempts to define the Me Too movement “Bombshell” disappoints. Unfocused and manically frenetic the film fails to properly explore the underbelly of sexual harassment, the environments that cause it to thrive, and even be abetted with encouragement and dudebro high fives.

Multiple intersecting and interjecting storylines are never fully developed and the film is left with one-dimensional characters, most of whom are based on real life victims of sexual harassment. What the world needed was a hard hitting expose, and what we got were some strung together shaky cam shots and flimsy exposition.

There was a great potential here to show what happens when a woman attempts to climb the corporate ladder in a thoughtful and emotionally rich way, but, instead, the script from screenwriter Charles Randolph gets confused. It is muddled in unabashed limousine liberal speak that distracted from the real point, women being assaulted by higher up executives, women being forced into quid pro quo situations, and the post traumatic stress that follows any form of sexual harassment or assault.

It was more of a hit piece on conservatives and Fox News when it should have been focused on the emotional torment these women went through when they were being harassed throughout their careers. It came off preachy and disingenuous, almost cheapening their stories. Sexual misconduct does not know political lines. It is not assigned democrat or republican, it is a widespread cultural and societal issue and should be treated as such.

Director Jay Roach was definitely an unlikely choice as he made a name for himself in filmmaking as the helmer of the Austin Powers series, and who could forget the famous line “do I make you horny, baby?” Considering his problematic directing history with female characters, such as Vanessa Kensington (Elizabeth Hurley,) from the original “Austin Powers” who was initially disgusted by Austin’s sexual advances, but then as he chipped away at her resistance she fell in love with him, or Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham) from the Austin Powers sequel whose name says it all; it was no surprise to me that this movie did not dig deep, and did not understand women. It barely even scratched the surface, there certainly were and are better choices that could have been made in terms of a director for this piece.

All of this being said, the film did excel in makeup. Kazu Hiro deserves accolades for transforming the actresses into the anchor women they portrayed, and some of the resemblances were uncanny. None of the performances were particular stand outs for me, or even very good. My favorite performance, ironically, was the fictional character Kayla played by Margot Robbie, and I think that likely has to do with her being able to craft it herself.

Though “Bombshell” undoubtedly tackled an important topic, it came across like a made for TV movie that really missed the mark, and it is a shame because it was a story worthy of being told, just not in such an uninspired and careless fashion. Here is to hoping that one day women get the MeToo movie they deserve.