Tag / nicholas hoult

by Jaime Rebanal

‘Dark Phoenix’ Review: A Sour Final Note for the X-Men Series

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Following Hugh Jackman’s final tenure as the Wolverine in Logan, the X-Men series finally comes to its own end by directly adapting the Dark Phoenix Saga – if the title wouldn’t already give that away. But even as a story of this sort would have had so much potential given what the X-Men have always stood for in their long run on the big screen, Dark Phoenix doesn’t even feel engaged with its own story to feel like there’s any sense of closure coming about. It doesn’t even feel like it was made to be a proper ending to this series with Disney having acquired Fox as a means of getting the rights to include the X-Men into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For his directorial debut, it doesn’t even seem Simon Kinberg was even prepared to give this an ending and thus he tried to make Dark Phoenix too many things all at once but there was never a point in time when it ever felt like it were on its way to adding up properly. It doesn’t have anything to answer now that it’s all come to a finish, but it’s not quite the disaster it could have been with all the constant reshoots pushing the film back over and over again.

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by Jaime Rebanal

2018: Another Year of Cinema Come and Gone

This year was a real game changer for a person like myself. To kick things off, it was the first year in which I was able to attend TIFF as a press member rather than as any other audience member. It was a defining moment for myself, though I don’t want to brag a little too much about what happened there. It was just a good year for cinema in general. That’s all I can really say, and I want to bring more attention to the many films that I absolutely loved this year – and so many of them came around this year and so forth. We’re already nearing the end of a decade, and through the good and the bad, the cinema has always been able to provide nothing but the greatest pleasures through and through. Although as we look through the films that have come to define 2018 as a whole, there were many surprises that came along the way just as there were disappointments – all of which came in between the very best and the worst in cinema through the year. So without further ado, let us begin. Continue reading →

by Jaime Rebanal

Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite is His Funniest, Most Beautiful, and Most Tragic Effort Yet: Review

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The Favourite marks another shift in pace for Yorgos Lanthimos, but it’s still one that feels every bit as absurd as one you would expect for him. But his style had always been an acquired taste and I’ve never exactly found it easy to get into his work, but the case with The Favourite is something else entirely. This is the sort of film that feels perfect for the sort of style that Yorgos Lanthimos has been known for over the years, for every moment of it that carries his distinctively dark sense of humour also finds itself in a perfect spot, by making fun of the monarchy – for their interactions only ever feel every bit as stinted and as awkward as one would ever expect them to be, trying to cope with how much power they have over the worlds in which they control. But The Favourite also may be a fitting enough title when talking about what Yorgos Lanthimos has accomplished here, for not only might it be my favourite of his filmography but it’s also the hardest that I’ve ever found myself laughing during a comedy in so long.

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