Category: REVIEWS

Dr. Mia Jansen (Maya Stojan) is a psychologist and UFO sceptic. With a small team, Dr. Jansen starts making a documentary about alien abductions and paranormal phenomenon which she believes to be the result of mass hysteria.

Travelling to Phoenix, Arizona, the fated location of Area 51 Dr. Jansen and her team attempt to uncover the truth behind alien abductions once and for all, but when someone comes knocking on their door it leads the documentary down a path that uncovers more of the truth than Dr. Jansen was ready to hear.

Case 347 starts in a very typical way that most found footage movies start. Some text on screen tells the audience that there have been many case files opened due to the Freedom of Information Act and what follows is footage put together to tell the story of case 347.

Any fans of the genre or even those with a passing knowledge of the genre would recognise this cliché straight away. Those that know exactly what to expect will accept this little moment of dramatic licence, and those who balk at such heavy exposition so early on will turn off straight away. The movie itself is up to the expectations of the audience.

Unfortunately, what follows for the most part is a realistic look at a documentary team trying to get to the bottom of an alien abduction case. So realistic in fact that a lot of the time the movie feels boring because there has been so much time and attention put into making the film look and feel authentic, that there has been little thought into making the movie entertaining.

There are a few clichés thrown in to wake up the audience, but they come few and far between because as soon as something paranormal does happen there is a long wait for anything else to happen on the same level. By the end there isn’t any real story here as there is never a clear reason as to why any of it is happening, paranormal or otherwise.

It’s all well and good to have characters in a found footage movie talk to each other without having to explain everything to the audience, but by substituting exposition for cliché, jump scares and a melodramatic finale, all it does is leave the audience in the dark.

Charismatic and complex, Sergio Vieira de Mello (Wagner Moura) has spent the majority of his storied career as a top UN diplomat working in the world’s most unstable regions, deftly navigating deals with presidents, revolutionaries, and war criminals for the sake of protecting the lives of ordinary people.

But just as he readies himself for a simpler life with the woman he loves (Ana de Armas), Sergio takes one last assignment — in Baghdad, newly plunged into chaos following the US invasion. The assignment is meant to be brief, until a bomb blast causes the walls of the UN headquarters to come literally crashing down upon him, setting into motion a gripping life-or-death struggle.

Greg Barker’s Sergio is a film that has a lot in it, while also having next to nothing in it. Even though the film has a running time of approximately two hours, there really isn’t a whole lot that happens in terms of a visual and physical standpoint within this story. There are some plot beats that progress the plot forward obviously, but they happen so few and far between that it is hard to feel deeply invested in the story in the long run.

For the first thirty minutes, the movie’s slow pace didn’t really bother me all that much, mainly because I assumed that the story would pick up the speed after a while. Although this film doesn’t delve deep enough into Sergio de Mello’s life nearly enough as it should have, there were, thankfully, a handful of scenes that told me things about his life that I never knew.

My favorite scenes in the entirety of Sergio were the ones were the title character interacted with his love interest Carolina Larriera. This is mainly due to the absolutely excellent chemistry between Wagner Moura and Ana de Armas, the latter of which is making quite the name for herself in the film industry lately. With her chilling performance as Joi in Blade Runner 2047, her breakout performance as Marta Cabrera in Knives Out, and now her role as Carolina in Sergio, she is most definitely a star to be looking out for in the near future.

Here, she is asked to do a lot. Her character is one that is carefully quiet but also has a lot to say whenever necessary. Where she truly shines is in her emotional scenes, though. Armas completely sells her crying and emotional breakdowns here and it completely blew me away. The dynamic between Armas’ Carolina and Moura’s Sergio, who is also great in the film, was terrific.

But aside from those scenes, like I touched upon earlier, the movie just doesn’t have a bunch of things to say. I really wished it took a deep dive into the life of Sergio de Mello and his work, his influence and how it deeply affected the people around him. There is maybe one scene that did this excellently, but the rest of the movie did this on a disappointingly bland level. We really should have gotten a story that told a gripping tale of his work in the United Nations, but instead, we got a movie that oftentimes feels strangely more like a more edgy romance movie than a gripping drama like it should’ve been.

Ana de Armas and Wagner Moura are wonderous in Sergio, a movie that is otherwise disappointingly bland and tells its story in an unrewarding, traditional manner.

Nashville is the epicentre of the song writing world. People from all over come to Nashville to write their songs and to pour their hearts into their work – and some of them even make it. It All Begins with a Song is a documentary about those people who wake up with a chorus in their heads, who hear a word and have to write it down, and the people who stop an argument to write down something clever.

Chances are that you’ve never even heard of these people unless you know everything there is to know about music, but you’ve definitely heard their songs.

It All Begins with a Song takes the time to talk to those unsung songwriters, going through the song writing process and giving a unique look at the different ways in which they create their art. There are some who know their limitations, giving credit to those who help them.

There are those who find a moment in their everyday lives that inspires them, and then there are those who have a few words and phrases and compose a song in less time than it takes to make breakfast. There are all kinds of passionate music lovers in Nashville and It All Begins with a Song shows that some of them are even song writers.

Whether or not you’ve heard of the songs or the artists that have sung their songs, there’s no denying that there is an abundance of talent in such a small space. These people could probably do things that most of us could only dream of doing and what It All Begins with a Song does is put the audience right in front of the songwriters for artists such as Pink, Aerosmith and Elvis Presley and gives them a chance to say ‘thank you’.

With only a couple of stars the audience may recognise, It All Begins with a Song is as modest as the people on which it draws its focus. However, it leaves the audience in awe at the talent and drive that these inspirational songwriters have that inspire the audience they’ll never even meet.

It’s hard to believe that it all it begins with a song, three chords and the truth.

Robert the Bruce is a figure not nearly given enough credit for his achievements. This is likely because Scottish independence was effectively lost in the 1600s and has yet to be regained, despite the reasonably straight forward and democratic way of attaining it. Many see him as a figure of inspiration, but to others, he’s a symbol of a lost cause. That has not tarnished Angus Macfadyen’s connection with him. 

I say connection because in 1995 Macfadyen portrayed The Bruce for the first time, and as of 2019, 24 years later, he’s reprised his role in a script he wrote with Eric Belgau. This is obviously no coincidence, there’s a connection there, something about the courage, and aims and desires of the old king tie him to Macfadyen. The aura of all those feelings and how they all made up one great man is what the film “Robert the Bruce” is all about. 

First and foremost, I must echo a common sentiment about this movie; it is slow. The film’s director Richard Grey shows almost no interest in echoing the explosiveness of this film’s spiritual successor Braveheart. Instead, he opts to make a far more personal and introspective experience, focusing mainly on how a family facing hard times inspires a wavering Robert to pick up his sword and recommence his fight for Scottish independence. 

There is intrigue based on the premise alone, the idea of this legendary leader wavering in his darkest hour, but the execution highlights a lack of substance. About 40 minutes in the film loses its way entirely and gets more bogged down in the family looking after Robert, and not on the title character himself. Morag (Anna Hutchison), is a single mother whose husband died fighting for Robert, she finds herself raising three children with no desire to remarry and every night she prays for Scottish revolutionary victory. She’s not an altogether bad character, but the shallowness of her children, two of whom she isn’t even the biological mother of for no discernible reason other than to overcomplicate the script, is unforgivable. Iver (Talitha Eliana Bateman) in particular could be taken out of the film entirely to little impact. 

The longer this went on, the worse the film got, but thankfully there is somewhat of a saving grace. Angus Macfadyen waited years to get this film made, and to his credit delivers some of the most effectual and emotional work of his career. The interactions between Morag’s son Scot (Gabriel Bateman) and a wounded King Robert are the best in the film. Despite Scots youth, Macfadyen becomes so convincingly vulnerable in their discourse, and the sense of regret and failure becomes completely clear and harrowing. 

Another strength is the beautiful settings which are a credit to the film. Especially considering the shoot didn’t take place in Scotland. Rather, it is Montana that takes centre stage in this Scottish period piece, and while that is unfortunate, it does a more than admiral job. Thanks in no small part to the, admittedly tame, but excellent cinematography by John Garrett. 

All in all, though Robert the Bruce is a disappointment. When it’s so closely linked to such an epic picture and story, it needed to be epic in stature, and that just wasn’t possible on this budget. For every bit of dismemberment in Braveheart, we have a solemn piece of regret here, and it just doesn’t inspire the same powerful emotions. No, this film didn’t need to be violent, but it did need to do something to evoke the sensation William Wallace’s story does so effortlessly. 

Robert the Bruce allows Angus Macfadyen to reprise the role he was born to play. However, despite his fine work, the film fails to be the sum of its parts.

Yoav’s (Oded Leopold) life is falling apart. First, he finds out that his best friend, Alma (Ruti Asarsai) is pregnant and he’s upset that she didn’t tell him sooner, then his boyfriend, Dan (Udi Persi) starts talking about babies, raising the question of them becoming parents.

After all, Yoav and Dan have been in a relationship for fifteen years, but for Yoav it’s all becoming a bit too much to handle.

15 Years is a domestic drama about a couple in Tel Aviv where one of them starts to contemplate how his life is changing and how things are getting out of his control. As soon as Alma announces to a room full of people that she’s pregnant before she tells Yoav, the cracks start to show. Yoav becomes angry and distant, falling into a spiral of self-destruction as he thinks about what life has in store for him if he decides to go down the more domestic route of family life.

Yoav has issues with his family as well, his mother died some time ago and his father is terminally ill. So, he’s feeling the pressure not only from the life that he has, but from the new life that will soon come for his best friend, and also feeling his own mortality creeping up on him.

Yoav feels that if a child were to brought into his life, either through his best friend or his relationship, then he would literally feel the years dripping away. Add to that the fact that his parents are all but gone from his life, and he makes a dramatic decision to push away those closest to him in order to sort out his feelings.

15 years is a slow-moving drama that not everybody may understand and some may not relate to, as on the surface it seems that Yoav’s behaviour is selfish and vain. However, with so many pivotal moments in his life all happening at once then perhaps some audiences will understand where he is coming from.

All they have to do is to get past the way that writer/director Yuval Hadadi pushes Yoav away from the audience as Yoav does with those that he loves.