Mini Reviews: The Driftless Area (2016), Mojave (2016) & Central Intelligence (2016)

As the middle of the year got closer, I was able to catch up on 2016 releases that I'd missed at the cinema. Some were great, others not so, and a select few were just plain 'meh'. I find an odd sense of pleasure writing a review about a movie I hated, but movies that fall into that middle ground are harder to write about, so today I present a Mini Reviews special for those!

The Driftless Area (2016)

What even is this movie?! It felt like it was trying to be two very different things. On one side, it was a dramatic romance, with what I think is a huge plot twist I won’t mention, but it’s so glaringly obvious I’m not even sure if it’s meant to be a twist. On the other side, it’s a thrilling cat and mouse chase, full of danger. The Driftless Area (2016) could have been either of these, and done it reasonably well, but it failed by being both. I watched this solely for the cast, whom I love, but I was left pretty disappointed. I expected more from Anton Yelchin, Zooey Deschanel and Aubrey Plaza, they are some of my favourite faces! An interesting watch, but forgettable.

Mojave (2016)

I spotted Mojave (2016 here in the UK) on a VOD platform, mainly because of the beautiful Oscar Isaac’s face. It was tempting to watch it there and then, but I checked out the plot summary at least before I made up my mind. IMDB describes this as ‘A suicidal artist goes into the desert, where he finds his doppelganger, a homicidal drifter’. Um, what? I spent 50% of the time watching this raging about the fact that Tom (Garrett Hedlund) looks nothing at all like his ‘doppelganger’, until I looked it up and realised the word has two different meanings. The other 50% I was cringing every time Oscar Isaac said the word ‘brother’ in that accent. Ugh.

Central Intelligence (2016)

Comedies are always hit and miss, but I was hoping to enjoy Central Intelligence (2016) more than I did. It was decent, Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart have great chemistry together, but the plot fell a little short. In fact, it felt like the exact same plot from another comedy I can’t recall right now. I’d like to see these guys pair up again, though! It was nice to see some of my other favourite faces, although *spoiler alert* because his reappearance was the plot twist, Aaron Paul saying ‘bitch’ made me laugh and cringe at the same time.

Review: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

For me, 2015 was the year that I managed to ignore a horrendous of amazing movies, which I obviously regretted when I finally got round to watching them months later. Since that realisation, I’ve been making a better attempt at watching the movies I’ve been recommended. I mean, they’re recommended for a reason, Allie, get your head in the game! I can’t for the life of me remember why, but I know I read about Inside Llewyn Davis a while ago, and with 2 cast members of The Force Awakens in it, I couldn’t pass on it any longer.

Inside Llewyn Davis follows the life of a folk singer named, oddly enough, Llewyn Davis, played by Oscar Isaac, as he struggles with his life both personally and professionally. His week starts off badly when he lets himself out of a friends apartment, and ends up locking their cat outside, along with himself. Have you ever tried to carry a cat around anywhere? I struggle to carry mine from room to room, so Llewyn gets a seal of approval from me for managing to carry this cat from one side of New York to the other without losing it. Well, kind of.

It wasn’t until halfway through the movie that I truly appreciated it for what it was, a journey, and at that moment my brain did a thing and I realised that it was directed by the Coen brothers! I’m such a big fan of Fargo and The Big Lebowski, and although Inside Llewyn Davis is much more toned down than these, the feeling is still there. I’m now on a major Coen hype, and if anyone could recommend another movie of theirs, I would really appreciate it.

Another thing I loved was the music. i’m not a folk/jazz fan at all, couldn’t be much further from it, but the night that I watched this I couldn’t sleep because I had the only two lines of ‘Hang me, oh hang me’ that I could remember playing on loop in my head. I had to actually find it on YouTube and play it just so my mind could rest. in fact, let me find it for you now.

What fascinated me the most was after watching the movie, I read more into it, about the cat named Ulysses and the fact that actually, Llewyn is this cat, on that adventure. It’s taken me 2 weeks to actually finish this post, because it’s played on my mind ever since, and if you follow us on Twitter you’ll see, each day that passed I loved it a little more and more.

If you haven’t watched Inside Llewyn Davis yet, I strongly recommend that you do, and if this post isn’t enough to sell it to you, let me try you with this. you get to watch Poe Dameron, Kylo Ren and Justin Timberlake sing a song about outer space. it doesn’t get much better than that, folks.

Mini Reviews: Sisters (2015), A Most Violent Year (2014) & Burnt (2015)

I was so excited when I saw the trailer for Sisters (2015) months ago that I can’t believe I missed it at the cinema! Everything just got drowned out with Star Wars, I think. After binge watching 30 Rock and Parks and Rec, and deciding that Liz Lemon and Leslie Knope were the best friends I needed, I had really high hopes for this. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as sisters, this can never go wrong! It was really funny. Perhaps not up there with my favourite comedies of all time, but one I’ll happily watch time and time again.

Spiralling into Poe Dameron hell heaven, I convinced my fiance to watch A Most Violent Year (2014) with me. “It’s a crime/drama darling, you’ll love it. What do you mean it has Oscar Isaac in? Was he in Star Wars? I had no idea.” It was actually a really gripping drama about an honest, hard working guy desperately trying to keep his business growing and his family safe during what was the most dangerous year in New York City.

I think the only reason I didn’t love it so much was that considering it’s name, it wasn’t really that violent? That sounds awful I know, but all I really mean is it wasn’t the movie I was expecting. I still really enjoyed it!

I love Bradley Cooper. I love food. I love movies. Combine all three and I thought this was the recipe to my heart. Har har har! I even picked this as my ‘Looking Forward’ choice for whatever month this came out in. In my defense, it was a slow month anyway, but I was genuinely looking forward to seeing Burnt (2015). Well, when your dinner is served burnt, you’re disappointed, and I was disappointed with this movie. I didn’t mind the pretentiousness of everything it offered, but every single character was unlikeable, and I didn’t care who succeeded. Not a boring movie at all, but a disappointment.

Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

I’ve been in hiding for nearly a week now, avoiding Star Wars spoilers, but last night I finally got to experience The Force Awakens. I use the word experience because that’s truly what it was! I won’t discuss any major plot points here, but if you haven’t seen the movie yet I strongly recommend you don’t read my post (or anyone else's!) before you have, because it’s so much better walking in blind.

Have you ever tried staying away from the internet, your blog, and all social media for 5 days? It’s awful to admit, but it was so difficult! By last night though, I had to remind myself to actually bring my phone with me. It was kind of redundant at that point!

If you read my post last week, you'll know that around this time last month I started watching the Star Wars series for the first time. I’ve always been that person who grunts ‘ugh’ whenever the subject is brought up, and when my family decided that The Force Awakens had to be our Christmas movie this year, I reluctantly decided I should probably watch the movies so I at least had an idea of what was going on. What I didn’t expect was to be so sucked in by it all, or to be stood in the cinema lobby literally shaking with excitement!

Speaking of the cinema lobby...I want to publicly thank the Cineworld in Broad Street for their incredible hospitality. 4 days after the opening night I wasn’t expecting anything, but as we came up the escalator to the IMAX lobby, we were met with staff handing out posters, and 2 stormtroopers on guard duty of every door, posing for everyone and taking photos. It was incredible, and I felt like a kid again. Here are some of our photos!

Life doesn't get much better than getting a selfie with a stormtrooper...I'm just ashamed that I was so giddily happy I just grinned like an idiot!

So, let’s not talk plot, but all the things I loved about The Force Awakens. Firstly, after far too many adverts and trailers, that screen with ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away’ following by the deafening ‘Baa, badaba, ba...etc etc’ got the whole audience giddy with excitement. Everyone in that room was either being elbowed by their companion, or they were the ones lashing out with their elbows. I was one of the victims. Ouch.

Stormtroopers! Sadly, the First Order didn’t have a budget to provide them with better armour, or provide them with target practice, but they have never been cooler, and one in particular was amazing in hand to hand combat! The stormtroopers are my absolute favourites in the entire series (I tend to favour the underdogs) so I was so excited to see them again.

BB8 is the cutest little droid I’ve ever seen. I want one! Everyone should have their own little BB8. It’s quite amazing how much of a personality he has, expressed solely through beeps and the movement of his head. It was almost like a Baymax moment when he gave Finn the thumbs up!

Force powers. I felt a little worried for the smaller children when Kylo Ren used the force as a torture device, I think a 12 year old me would have a few nightmares after that. Nonetheless, my favourite moment of the whole movie might just be Rey attempting a ‘These aren’t the droids you’re looking for’ moment. It was brilliant!

Ugh, honestly I could carry on gushing, but you’ve seen it for yourself, so you know what I’m going to say. My only gripe was the fact that I left the cinema with more questions than I went in with, but all that’s really done is made me more hyped for the next movie! I’ve got over a year now of debating with anyone who will listen who Rey’s parents are.

I really don't even want to score this movie right now! I hate giving out 10s, I like to think that there's always room for improvement...but my judgement is so clouded right now. Consider this a placeholder score!

Mini Reviews: Saving Mr Banks (2013), Cake (2014) & Ex Machina (2015)

I can’t quite believe Saving Mr Banks is 2 years old now, it feels like I’ve been putting off watching it for a couple of months, not years! I remember little of the Mary Poppins story, in fact I can only recall a couple of the songs, and maybe that’s why I put this film off for so long. I’m glad I gave it a shot though, as this was a beautiful story.

Emma Thompson does a fantastic job at portraying this frustrating character who you struggle to warm to at first, but by the credits roll I had tears in my eyes. The whole cast made this a wonderful film to watch, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I’m a huge fan of Jennifer Aniston and films that tackle depression have always interested me, which I realise sounds quite morbid! Therefore, I thought Cake would be a film I would really enjoy. Cake is a dark story of a woman who becomes obsessed with the suicide of a friend in her support group for chronic pain, who also tries to deals with her own severe issues.

Maybe watching this in chunks throughout my lunch breaks didn’t help, but I found the story so hard to understand, I had to read half on an IMDB synopsis to work out what was going on. Once I worked it out it was more enjoyable, but still fell flat for me.

When the posters and trailers came out for Ex Machina came out, I wasn’t bothered in the slightest. I didn’t even notice it come and go from my local cinema. However, anyone I knew who went to see it or watched the DVD said how brilliant it was, and the got my curiosity. It’s hard to even explain the plot of Ex Machina without ruining the experience, but I would recommend it to anyone.

It starts of as a family friendly, futuristic film and out of nowhere, takes a very dark turn, and rapidly turns into adult-only territory. I haven’t seen anything like it, and although I don’t think a re-watch will give the same impact, it was a brilliant experience first-time.