Tag / anthony hopkins

by Jaime Rebanal

Thor: Ragnarok – Review

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Taika Waititi makes his first step into Hollywood with directing a film as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But at the same time, it isn’t without him playing around with the familiar mythology to the point that he even shows a sense of self-awareness regarding the state of these films from the film’s opening sequence. It was something that I wished to see from more of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general, just this sense of self-awareness and creative freedom that felt lacking in many of their films. It’s nice enough to see that Taika Waititi is willing enough to play with what we can recognize to turn out what is easily the best film from the Marvel Cinematic Universe in quite some time, because it was a film that clearly had fun from the roots in which it was stemming from almost like Waititi would have brought to us for vampire mythology with What We Do in the Shadows.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Transformers: The Last Knight – Review

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If the title’s caption, “The Last Knight,” doesn’t keep to its promise by having Michael Bay direct another movie for this franchise, I’ll probably just give up on humanity altogether. I feel that I do need to clarify I actually don’t hate Michael Bay wholly, but even with that having been said I can’t find myself defending the sorts of films he makes when it’s evident I don’t enjoy the time I’m having when I watch them. With every new Transformers film he’s made, it only turns me away all the more from the sorts of films he continues making with the fact the first film was actually one of the first films in which I recall having slept in the theater. The most that I can say for Transformers: The Last Knight is that after egregious experiences with Revenge of the Fallen and Age of Extinction, this was a better film than the preceding three, but one must take a statement like such as they will.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Chaplin – Review

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Film lovers should already be familiar with the name of Charlie Chaplin considering the huge impact he has laid upon the comedy genre over the years. Richard Attenborough’s biopic comes along the same veins where his Oscar-winning Gandhi has come from and although not nearly as long, it’s in part an entertaining one but at the same time too by-the-numbers for its own good, which is the last thing I’d even want for a film about Chaplin. I don’t wish to dismiss Richard Attenborough’s Chaplin as the sort of film that does present itself as a disservice towards Chaplin’s legacy because in part it feels like it can excellently recreate that joy, although there’s another degree to where I’m not even sure what Attenborough intended his viewers to make of the life of the man behind the Tramp himself. What may have worked for Gandhi didn’t transfer well for a tale about Chaplin.

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by Jaime Rebanal

The Silence of the Lambs – Review

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NOTE: Jonathan Demme passed away on April 26, 2017, and this review is dedicated to his memory.

In the history of the Academy Awards only three films have managed to sweep up the Big Five, and the most recent one to hold such a distinction is none other than Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs. It was at the point where Demme was making a name for himself through the comedy films Melvin and Howard and Something Wild or documentaries such as Stop Making Sense. Within the many years that have come by, The Silence of the Lambs has already become widely seen as Demme’s best known film together with the most widely celebrated cinematic portrayal of Hannibal Lecter – for good reason. The greatest joy that Demme presents in The Silence of the Lambs doesn’t come from the consequence of event but how it works its way into one’s mind the way Hannibal Lecter finds his way under another’s skin just as the very best thrillers do just as The Silence of the Lambs is indeed deserving of every bit of its own reputation as one of the best films of its own period.

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