Grief remains one of cinema's favourite subjects. There's something about loss and pain that simply lends itself to cinematic storytelling. In many ways this does conform to the archetypal artistic moniker of sadness translating to creative beauty.

However, Manchester by The Sea by writer-director Kenneth Lonergan is different. There's no beauty in the loss felt by Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) in this film. A loss so unspeakably painful that trying to romanticize it for the sake of art would have been a travesty unto the suffering felt by him.

The film narrates the events following the death of his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) and his subsequent guardianship of Joe's son Patrick (Lucas Hedges).

The death of his brother in many ways reluctantly forces Lee to come out of a self imposed shell he has built for himself - arising out of the tragedy that he has experienced a long time ago and is still grappling with today.

In many ways this film could have turned out to be a cliched Hollywood drama of a man who has been knocked down far too many times before who finally gets the strength to persevere and succeed after being charged with being responsible for another human. However this is no such film.

Lonergan refuses to make Patrick a simple rebellious teenage boy or someone deeply depressed over the loss of his father. Instead Patrick seemingly manages to carry on with life as it always was - juggling girlfriends and doing his best to live life. That's not to say that he doesn't grieve over the loss of his father - however much like Lee, it's a silent, solemn mourning - in many ways a deeply personal and private emotion that the two seem to share and bond over without overtly expressing it.

In many ways the movie is a mediation on grief in the realest sense of the word and in a fashion true to form, it doesn't show a hero rising from the ashes of despair to achieve glory.

It shows a janitor who's had everything stripped from him emotionally still continue with his life - sweeping and cleaning because life doesn't stop even if it may seem like it has. Here lies the true beauty in the film - not in the grief itself, but in its acceptance of it and willingness to bear it.

5/5

The 80s were such a great time.
Super Mario, Back to the Future, MTV, Guns n Roses, Calvin Harris had love for you if you were born then - the positives didn't stop.
Or atleast that's what I'm led to believe.
I wasn't born in the 80s.

However, I have experienced some of its iconic contributions to pop culture. Karate Kid was one of them. The original. Not Jaden Smith's version.

Karate Kid was released in 1984 and was destined to be a cult film from its inception. It's the classic sports rags to riches formula and its terribly cliched. But it's so sincere and earnest in its quest to show us a winning story that you overlook it's flaws and just embrace it for how feel-good the movie really was. You had this likable lead character that you really wanted to win, this horrible villain you really wanted to lose, this Yoda-like sensei that you adored - it was perfect.
It wasn't a great cinematic experience, it was just a movie that made you feel so, so good - the ultimate guilty pleasure.

So when YouTube Red announced that they were reviving it for a series set over 30 years after the original, two thoughts came to mind -
What in the world was Youtube Red?
How monumentally bad is this going to turn out?

To answer the former, YouTube Red is YouTube's answer to Netflix and Prime - it's a paid streaming platform for original content that never took off. I can't imagine why seeing as YouTube's paid channel subscription service did so astoundingly well when it came out some time ago.

Now with regards to Cobra Kai and how bad it truly was - well it wasn't.
I was as surprised as probably anyone else was.
This was bound to fail. This was supposed to be the equivalent of how bad New Coke bombed when it came out in the 80s.

But what Cobra Kai does is retain that corny, cliched, yet irresistibly sincere storytelling that made the movie such a hit.

The best thing the story does is avoid any sense of repitition by switching up the leads. We aren't focusing on Daniel anymore. He's done well for himself since the All-Valley Karate Tournament. He's a successful car salesman, has a happy family, he's even part of a country club. Everything's worked out for him. He's used his Miyagi skills to market himself to the top of the food chain. He almost has it so good that you kind of dislike him for it. This is where it gets interesting.

Our villain from the original - Johnny, is the star of the show (as you would've guessed from the title). Life hasn't been too kind to him. Life has passed him by and his best years are clearly behind him. You'd feel sorry for him if not for the fact that he still seems to be as much of jerk as he was 30 years ago.

However, purely out of nothing but jealousy towards his counterpart Daniel, Johnny starts to change. He reopens his old Cobra Kai dojo. He wants to teach the skills he was taught in the past to the kids of today.

Now he ideally should just focus on improving himself rather than trying to achieve second hand personal growth through coaching skills but where does that make for entertaining content? He's trying to redeem himself and in doing so becomes a better person.

This plotline would've made any other show illicit eye-rolling levels of cringe worthiness, however like I said, the show somehow manages to keep the heart that the original had and to be completely honest, that's all the original had, and it worked - so why shouldn't this?

William Zabka and Ralph Macchio are integral to maintaining this sincerity that the show has. Their performances make the show seem less of a parody of the original than an actual, viable continuation of the series.

Cobra Kai shouldn't have worked but then again, who would've thought that waxing a car would've helped you learn karate 30 years ago?

4/5

Phantom Thread simply put, is a story about love, creativity and obsession. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Daniel Day Lewis in what was to be his last acting role, the film narrates the story of fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis) and his tumultuous journey in balancing love and creativity.

In many respects the film belongs as much to Day-Lewis' performance as it does to Vicky Krieps - debuting as the obsessive designers love interest.

Far removed from the prototypical passive artistic muses, Alma (Krieps) wants to be an active agent in Woodcock's life and is unwilling to simply be piece of art to be admired from afar. This is a jarring development for Woodcock - someone who resembles less of a man than an object of pure obsession and habit.

Thus unsurprisingly begins a romance that is originally replete with marvel and doting but evolves into annoyance and eventually loathing.

What ensues in the eyes of many as a compromise on both their parts may seem disturbing or masochistic and devoid of all common sense - which is what makes this story - set in the upper echelons of British aristocracy and featuring a lead so removed from normal life - seem so human.

Anderson is uncharacteristically understated with his approach to the film which suits it perfectly. There's a delicate nature to the film, almost frail in a sense. Somewhat like the very dresses that embody the movie - this impeding sense of fragility - that it will collapse at the slightest touch - that it needs to be treated with the utmost care - much like the titular character of Reynolds Woodcock himself.

And rightfully so.

For a movie dealing with artistry, the artist and his muse, the slightest of touches is all that's needed as anything more heavy handed would desecrate the very art that should speak for itself.

4.5/5

Isle of Dogs is the newest film from acclaimed filmmaker Wes Anderson. It also happens to be his second animated feature after Fantastic Mr. Fox and following in trend with that movie, Anderson ditches the Pixar-esque CGI animation and instead opts for the more personal and classical stop-motion format.

That is what has always set Wes Anderson apart. His movies are set in his own world. The outside world doesn't exist to him. He does what he sees right regardless of what the world is doing. In that sense all of his films have always felt so small-scale - in the best sense of the word - they're deeply sensitive, contained and personal features.

With Isle of Dogs however, things seem a little different. You wouldn't expect it, but this movie - which focuses on a young boy travelling to a secluded island inhabited with infected, quarantined dogs in order to rescue his pup, is possibly Anderson's most overtly political film to date.

With regards to that, the film is impressive - it manages to dissect the problems the current world is facing with power structures using the Fifth Estate to create and breed fear. This leads to fostering subsequent hatred which in turn often leads to the creation and isolation of marginalized groups - which in this case happen to be dogs.

Another aspect that is impressive is the voice acting - with a cast boasting the likes of Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Edward Norton and Bryan Cranston - you get what you expect.

Where the film falls short however, in what I feel is a trade off for its larger-scale political ambitions, is lose out on the emotional depth found in Anderson's earlier, more personal films.

Anderson's films are never necessarily sad but always involve a certain sense of moving melancholy - a scene or two that doesn't overtly command you to display a showing of emotion, but subtly nudges you towards it.

It's something that I've always marvelled at when it comes to Anderson - the way he makes the downright weird seem so touching.

There's a scene in Fantastic Mr. Fox where Mr. Fox comes face to face with his only fear - a wolf. It's not a scene that's essential to the plot at all and rumour has it that Anderson had to fight to keep it in the film.

But that simple scene is quite possibly one of the most moving scenes I have ever seen. There is one such scene in Isle of Dogs that takes on the mantle of the gentle emotional cue - but it doesn't work as well as it should - you can understand it, you appreciate what's being done, you know you should feel something, but you don't.

That I believe is what encapsulates this movie - it's visually stunning and uniquely Wes Anderson-ian in its plot, but there is a disconnect - what I imagine a teenager would feel when looking at a classical work of art. There's an acknowledgement of something beautiful and well crafted no doubt, but not something that necessarily moves you.

It's a movie that's easy to marvel at, but not necessarily enjoy.

3/5

Kubo and the Two Strings is a very ambitious film. Not solely with regards to it's animation, but with what it expects of its audience. This isn't a typical cookie cutter fable for kids. It's mature exploration of loss and life through the eyes of a young boy.

The story centres around Kubo - a young boy tasked with supporting his mother armed with his lute and magical skills of storytelling and origami. Kubo is warned against returning home after it gets dark as his evil grandfather - the Moon King will come for him. When the inevitable happens, Kubo's mother is forced to protect her son from her twin sisters - who make up one of the most unsettling villainous duos animation has ever seen.

Upon waking, Kubo finds himself in an unfamiliar wilderness along with a talking monkey - his new protector. Along the way they meet a half-man, half-beetle creature who was said to be a protege of Kubo's father Hanzo.

The trio learn that in order to defeat Kubo's enemies they need to find three pieces of his father's armour scattered around the wilderness. Thus begins our quintessential heroic quest.

Beetle and Monkey's personalities play off each other brilliantly and provide the base of the dry humour that surrounds this film. Kubo on the other hand is our typical 'greatness thrust upon them' hero - nervous but at the same time determined.

The animation in Kubo is stunning and ultimately a refreshing change from Pixar's usual style that has become the gold standard for animation these days. Charlize Theron (Monkey) and Matthew McConaughey (Beetle) are perfect as the prototypical bickering duo through the film and Art Parkinson is brilliant as a young Kubo.

What follows after they retrieve the items they set out for defies all expectations for a film that is supposedly aimed at kids.

To frame that better - what follows defies all expectations ADULTS have for a children's film with a finale that is laced with loss, yearning and ultimately forgiveness beyond expectation.

This is the core of Kubo and the Two Strings - it treats it's audience, that admittedly is mainly children, with a respect that many kids wish they received.

For too long have children's movies underestimated the content and emotions that they could handle - in ways this was an unconcious belittling of the emotional depth that kids were capable of possessing and processing.

Kubo tries to correct that sentiment with a story that will certainly not please those who may be expecting your typical animated movie.

However for those children who are open to it's unique approach they will come away with a movie that embodies so many fundamentals that their parents try to prepare them for such as loss, forgiveness and acceptance. Ironically, it's precisely these sentiments that were off-bounds for children's cinema for far too long.

A rendition of The Beatles' hit While My Guitar Gently Weeps plays during the credits which states -

I look at the world and I notice it's turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps.

I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
Look at you all
Still my guitar gently weeps.

No song could be more perfect to play this film out.

4.5/5

Sequels are tough.

They're tougher when the first movie turned into a cult hit that's clearly stood the test of time.

I can't imagine the pressure Danny Boyle may have felt when making T2. Maybe he felt none, maybe it came naturally. I can't speak for him.

I can however speak for myself.

And just like any person who sees that one of their beloved films - something they hold on to so dearly is going to run the risk of tarnishing it's name with a sequel that couldn't possibly top the first one, you can't help but feel a tinge of apprehension.

The fact that T2 is loosely based on Porno - the literary sequel to the original, did alleviate some concerns seeing as there was a legitimate sequel written earlier anyway.

Set 20 years after the original, the movie shows us a sober Renton who seems to have done well for himself returning to Edinburgh. Spud hasn't fared too well, where after losing everything, he's back on the drip. Sick Boy has taken up running a bar and has ambitions of opening a brothel in place of it. He also happens to enagage in a slice of blackmail alongside his Bulgarian girlfriend. Typical.
All this while Begbie is serving 25 years in prison, although he does manage to break out.

Needless to say, the four are all brought back together with Sick Boy and Begbie still not over Rentons betrayal 20 years ago. While Begbie is characteristically violent in his vindictiveness and won't settle for anything less than Renton's head, Sick Boy and Renton enter into an uneasy partnership in their joint desire to open up a brothel. Ewan McGregor (Renton) and Jonny Lee Miller (Sick Boy) play off each other brilliantly and the movie is really built upon the interactions between the two fiends with Spud always acting as the naive soul that's simply along for the ride.

Much like the first movie, T2 is filled with acidic, black humour and a gritty portrayal of reality in the Scottish underbelly. The boys have aged and so have their outlooks on life, Renton's iconic 'Choose Life' speech is given a new spin - to reflect with how times have changed, with not only the four, but with the world itself.

T2, in ways, is a grown up version of Trainspotting. That means that while at it's core it's the same slick, stylish film, it's a little less fun, not as exhilarating and a touch more sentimental. But it's only right that it is.

Choosing life means you choose to grow up.

4/5

Whatever Works shouldn't work.

It's a story of an old, cynical, Jewish New Yorker that Woody Allen wrote for himself but doesn't star in.

It has a young, naive Southern belle that fits every single stereotype known to man who falls in love with this crippled old man and marries him even when all he does is point out exactly how wrong she is in everything that she does.

It involves a staunchly conservative couple from the South turn into a polyamourous artsy photographer and an openly gay man.

It involves the same crippled man jump out of the window in the same fashion that caused his limp earlier and land on a middle aged woman who gets with him subsequently.

Whatever works may be the most farfetched, cliche-ridden, nonsensical thing you have ever seen.

But it works.

It works so well.

A large part of that is down to Larry David - who plays his role as the prototypical Woody Allen character with such finesse that you'd imagine them to be twins seperated at birth.

What David does is add onto the typical Woody-esque character's traits with a certain sense of 'angry old man' arrogance and resentment which fits the character of Boris Yelnikoff perfectly and makes him an objectionable yet likeable man.

Don't watch Whatever Works if you're looking for a Woody Allen movie with the emotional depth of Hannah and Her Sisters, or the realistic, yet hilarious portrayal of love as seen in Annie Hall. Don't watch it if you want something whimsically enchanting like Midnight in Paris or suspenseful like Match Point.

Watch it because whatever this movie is, it works.

3.5/5

Sean Baker shot to fame with his debut film Tangerine which focused on a fresh-out-of-jail transgender prostitute in L.A who was trying to get over her cheating boyfriend.

The movie was one of the best examinations of life on the margins of society for many such individuals who are classified as deviant. This would've resulted in it making headlines.

Which it did, albeit for different reasons.

It so happened that the movie was shot entirely on an iPhone.

The hype over that aspect in many ways clouded how good the film was by itself and with his follow up film, The Florida Project, Baker manages to maintain that gritty realistic look at the marginal sections of society albeit without the distracting factor of a unique recording device.

The film is set in one of America's fastest growing living establishments - motels. While they used to be a symbol of American cross country journeys at one point, they've now evolved into the only affordable living establishment for a growing section of America's lower class.

The film follows a mother daughter duo - Halley and six year old Mooney as they live their lives in Magic Castle - an obscure motel in the proximity of Disney World.

Halley as a mother is a complicated figure. She clearly does love her daughter and does want to provide for her. Although her means are certainly limited which in turn has dulled her priorities. Caught up in trying to provide the basic necessities for her daughter - which include activities like selling rip-off perfumes to unsuspecting tourists to turning tricks from her motel room - Halley finds it hard to have the strength or desire to discipline her daughter.

Brooklynn Prince is stunning in her portrayal of Mooney as quite possibly the worst child known to cinema second to Rosemary's Baby. There are moments of petty behaviour like spitting that are intertwined with acts that can only be described as full fledged arson.

What we have then is a duo that is comprised of a mother that is certainly in love with her child but is ill equipped financially and mentally for her. This in turn reflects on the daughter that acts out in a sense of trying to gain attention arising out of a lack of boundaries. It's a seething commentary on parenthood and economic status.

Willem Dafoe is brilliant in his role of Bobby - the manager of the motel who in ways embodies the emotions of the audience as the film goes on wherein his equation with the mother-daughter duo is naturally strained due to their antics and their inability to pay up, but also filled with sympathy and a nugget of actual concern for their well-being buried deep within. Bobby wants them to be okay but he's bound by his own duties to the motel and can only work within a specified limit.

As mentioned, this film is one of the most realistic films made about modern suburban American lower class society - a growing section of marginalized people today.

All this makes the ending of the movie - a dream sequence seen through Mooney's eyes all the more heartbreaking because of how jarring the difference between dreams and reality truly is for these people. Magic Castle can never be Magic Kingdom no matter how hard you try.

Disney magic is available to only a select few.

4/5

I remember the first time I heard an Iggy Pop song. It was during the opening sequence of Trainspotting. I didn't know the name of the song or who was playing in the background of Renton's opening monologue, but I knew I loved it.

There was this infectious drum beat kicking in at the start and it was then supplemented by a guitar riff that just made you want to move. And then that voice. It wasn't melodious, it wasn't even especially manly - it was just infectious. I was hooked. I had to look this song up and fell in love with it - Lust for Life. Loved the name.

One thing led to another and I had to find this man and eventually his band - and thus I came upon Iggy Pop and The Stooges.

Gimme Danger is by all measures the perfect title for a documentary for The Stooges. Jim Jarmusch - known for his unconventional, flat out weird and yet affecting works seems like the perfect fit to bring the story behind one of rock's most unpredictable bands to life. The proverbial stage is certainly set. However, the documentary falls short of being perfect embodiment of the bad boys of early punk rock in the sense that it does the one thing they tried not to do. It stays conventional.

Now that isn't to say this is a poor documentary. By usual documentary standards it's a fine piece of work. Even though it resorts to the typical documentary trope of talking heads interspaced with vintage footage, the content of the Stooges story is more than enough to carry this documentary on smoothly.

It's got great concert footage from some of the Stooges' iconic concerts at Ann Arbor and Detroit. It also has an informationally exhaustive look at the origins of the American punk rockers that seem sadly conventional by normal rock band standards - there was the typical accidental origin behind the members forming the band to playing countless low key gigs to finally making it big and engaging in superstar levels of hedonism.

Now it's not the story I'm faulting. The fact that their origin story may not be as unique as the band truly was isn't Jim Jarmusch's fault. What is however, is what he chooses to focus on.

The band were widely known as Iggy Pop and the Stooges for good reason. Their front man - Iggy Pop was the real deal. He stole the show. This wasn't your Axl Rose - Guns n Roses-esque limelight hogging kind of deal - this genuinely was Iggy Pop's band. People would firstly come for the man and then the music.

In no ways am I criticizing Jarmusch for highlighting the other members of the band, who deservedly need attention and have their own valuable, entertaining insights. It's just that by focusing on everyone else's experience to that degree, the mystique of Iggy is lost. The same mystique that made The Stooges one of the greatest performers of all time.

We don't know the origins behind Iggy's infectiously confounding dance moves or how he came up with his stage name and the details of his behind the scenes antics - all the things that elevated him from simple rockstar to cult like status. This feels like a documentary about The Stooges with a guest appearance by Iggy, when in reality, the band was the exact opposite.

Again to reiterate, Gimme Danger is not a bad documentary by any standards. It's just that for a band and a frontman notorious for being unconventional and controversial in all respects, the documentary is rather tame effort. It's less 'Search and Destroy' than Let's Discover More.

2.5/5

Woody Allen has gone on record to state that he loathes Manhattan. He felt it was too preachy and self-righteous and he even tried to get the producers to destroy it before it released under the condition that he'd do his next film for free.

Under normal circumstances, such a comment from a director about his own film never bodes well for the movie. If the creator himself hates it, why wouldn't I?

And under normal circumstances that would be a fair reaction. This however, is no normal circumstance. Manhattan has widely been regarded as one of Allen's best works and consistently ranks up there with the best - year after year. So what is it about the movie that makes people love it but makes Allen hate it so much?

I can't speak for Woody Allen or countless other individuals, however I will agree with the latter in confidently stating that Manhattan is a delight.

While Annie Hall was Woody Allen's love letter to love itself, Manhattan is his love letter to New York.

Manhattan narrates the story of Isaac (Allen) - a middle aged man who quits his day job to pursue a career as a writer. He's disillusioned with life in New York and has forgotten what made him feel alive. Perhaps writing about the city he held so dearly would help him rediscover his youth.

In order to pursue his writing career, he hangs around a pretentious artistic group of friends that Isaac should love.These intellectual conversations are supposed to fuel him. But they don't.

What does fuel him is Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) - an 18 year old infatuated with him. Now Allen has received a lot of criticism over how young his romantic interest in the movie was and the allegations he faced later on in his career did nothing to help his case.

While I'll refrain from talking about his legal matters and what he did or did not do in his private life, I understand the casting from a purely cinematic point of view. In leiu of what the film needed and what Allen was trying to do, having a love interest who was so diametrically opposed to the kind of person Isaac wanted to be made sense.

Tracy is this naive, youthful, energetic girl who believes in love and believes in living. She is everything Isaac isn't. She has this innocent joie-de-vivre that most people lose as they grow older. And in all honesty, how couldn't you lose it. The world isn't a bright, happy place. But to a young teenager, it is. And that's exactly what Isaac needed. Tracy embodies the best of New York - the city that Allen and his namesake Isaac fell in love with.

The supporting cast in Manhattan includes a magnificent cameo by Meryl Streep as Isaac's bitter ex wife who's writing a tell all memoir about their marriage - much to Isaac's displeasure. It also includes Woody regular Diane Keaton as the stuck up writer that Isaac temporarily falls for - she's who he should fall for - the logical choice, but if Annie Hall taught us anything, it's that love isn't logical.

Manhattan is one of the few Woody Allen movies that doesn't ride solely on his screenplay and the sublime performances. Gordon Willis' cinematography steals the show. Shot in Technicolor that was then printed in monochrome, his black and white reflection of the city mirrors Isaac's life at that point. There's a disillusionment and despair settling in. But as the film rolls on, the disillusionment and despair fades away and the black and white setting transforms into a reflection of the beauty of minimalist simplicity - love doesn't have to be complex - it doesn't have to make sense, love just happens - it's that simple.

I still can't fathom why Woody Allen hates Manhattan so much. Maybe its because it gave romantic cinema it's most commonly used trope with the concluding hero's race to confess his feelings before his love leaves from the airport. It's a fair enough reason I suppose.

Or maybe the reason he hates it is because it's so uncharacteristically Woody in the sense that it has a feel good finish.

Love is great and all but it never truly works out like the films show it to. Love can be confusing and frustrating and it rarely works to our favour - something other Woody Allen movies can attest to. So when Manhattan ends the way it does - I could understand Allen's frustration with it - it isn't realistic - there's a false sense hope. But what I believe Allen is forgetting here is that Manhattan is not a documentary - it's a romantic comedy, and false senses of hope are what these movies are made for.

4/5