Posts Tagged ‘Alex Wolff’

Oppenheimer

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr, Josh Hartnett, Matt Damon, Tom Conti, Dane DeHaan, Casey Affleck, Kenneth Branagh, Gary Oldman, Florence Pugh, Alden Ehrenriech, Scott Grimes, Jason Clarke, Tony Goldwyn, James D’Arcy, Gregory Jbara, David Krumholtz, Matthias Schweighofer, Alex Wolff, Jack Quaid, Michael Angarano, Matthew Modine, David Dastmalchian, Josh Peck, Rami Malek, Christopher Denham, James Remar, Olivia Thirlby, Gustaf Skarsgard, Jefferson Hall, Louise Lombard

Running time: 180 minutes

Film Rating: 9.5 out of 10

The sheer magnitude of director Christopher Nolan’s biographical historical drama Oppenheimer is hugely impressive. In fact it is the director’s Magnum Opus – his historical masterpiece. Nolan’s idea of making a film about the Manhattan Project was hinted at in the Mumbai scene in his 2020 time bending espionage film Tenet.

Unlike most historical biographies which follows a chronological narrative structure of displaying dates and locations, Nolan throws out the rule book and instead dazzles the viewer, challenging them in every frame with a multitude of different scenes occurring concurrently, skilfully playing with time frames but ultimately building up a character of a very intelligent but complex man, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the Atomic Bomb, the Sphinx Guru of Atoms as one of his colleagues call him just after the succesfull Trinity Test in Los Alamos, New Mexico in 1945 as part of the ultra-covert Manhattan Project.

For what Oppenheimer discovers, the harnessing of atomic energy, its military significance will ultimately overshadow its scientific genius much like gravity swallowing light.

At the centre of Oppenheimer, are three great performances. Cillian Murphy is captivating as J. Robert Oppenheimer, a gifted but conflicted scientist who even consults with Albert Einstein, a scene stealing moment featuring British character actor Oscar nominee Tom Conti (Shirley Valentine; Rueben, Rueben). Then Oscar nominee Robert Downey Jr (Chaplin) shows off his skilful acting abilities as the devious and vindictive Lewis Strauss, the head of the Atomic energy Commission who is out to get Oppenheimer, a sort of Cassius figure that seeks the downfall of an influential leader.  

Oscar nominee Florence Pugh (Little Women) as the seductive communist Jean Tatlock, Oppenheimer’s former girlfriend and part time sex siren is tantalizing as a defiant yet traumatised woman caught up with a complicated man on the brink of changing the world forever, just as geopolitics in the World War II era was shifting beyond recognition, from the age of mortal combat to nuclear annihilation. Tatlock’s character resembles the allure of communism in the late 1920’s when it was fashionable amongst the intelligentsia in bohemian circles, before the political system’s failures were tested and exposed.

Christopher Nolan expects his viewers to be historically literate, because as a history buff with an Imax camera, he is out to impress you, dazzle you with a superb epic, flipping between decades complete with oblique historical reference points from the Spanish Civil War to Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939 to the trials of communists during the witch hunts of McCarthyism in 1950’s America. You have to be up to date with this knowledge because as an auteur director Nolan demands a sophisticated audience.

With crisp cinematography by Oscar nominee Hoyte Van Hoytema (Dunkirk) and a jarring musical score by Oscar winner Ludwig Goransson (Black Panther), Oppenheimer is a cinematic feast which displays a competent universe of stars, a host of talented actors and many cameo’s that make up this epic, an overtly masculine take on a monumental historical figure filled with urgency and military importance, strategic significance and ethical complexity.

Whether celebrated or later despised as expertly crafted by Christopher Nolan who also wrote the screenplay, Oppenheimer is painted as a flawed but inventive scientist who gets too involved in the industrial military complex, represented by Matt Damon’s brute force army character Leslie Groves, while his past flirtations with communism were scrutinized as he had top level security to the hydrogen bomb that he built and created, which Truman used unblinkingly to bomb the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II in August 1945.

Oppenheimer is an intelligent multidimensional film about the controversial father of the Atomic Bomb set in an era when the world was changing too fast for the population to realize the consequences.

Oppenheimer gets a film rating of 9.5 out of 10 and is an intelligent dissection of the moment the world changed forever. Highly recommended viewing.

Patriots Day

Director: Peter Berg

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, John Goodman, Kevin Bacon, Michelle Monaghan, J. K. Simmons, Themo Melikidze, Alex Wolff, Jake Picking, Jimmy O. Yang

Lone Survivor director Peter Berg likes to stick to actual events when directing films. He is an astute presenter of the horrific tragic events which have occurred recently, deeply embedded in the American psyche.

Whether it’s the explosion of a Gulf of Mexico oil rig as documented in Deepwater Horizon or the chaotic 2013 bombing of the Boston marathon, his films are rather factual, bordering on the docudrama and definitely riveting.

His latest film Patriots Day once again features Oscar nominee Mark Wahlberg (The Departed) as the everyday hero, a hero that the average American cinema goer can relate to, and a working class hero who manages to survive under extraordinary circumstances.

Wahlberg knows the drill and in Patriots Day he plays Boston police sergeant Tommy Saunders who is given crowd control duty at the finish line of the epic Boston Marathon. The year is 2013.  An American city is once again under attack by radicalized terrorists.

This time those terrorists are of the non-descript home grown variety, the sociopathic Tsarnaev brothers played with desperation and cool nonchalance by Georgian actor Themo Melikidze and Alex Wolff (My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2).

As the events of April 15^th 2013 unfold, from the horrific bombing at the finish line of the infamous Boston Marathon using pressure cooker bombs filled with nails and all sorts of nasty devices aimed at causing maximum damage and pain, director Berg keeps the pace tense and thoroughly absorbing as the FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers superbly played by a terse and efficient Kevin Bacon (Black Mass, Frost/Nixon) takes control of the city-wide investigation.

Oscar winner J. K. Simmons (Whiplash) plays Watertown police sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese who would ultimately be the person along with the PD that would apprehend the perpetrators as they make a desperate attempt to flee the greater Boston Metropolitan area. Audiences should look out for a brilliant scene involving the Tsarnaev brothers’ carjacking a Chinese exchange student wonderfully played by Jimmy O. Yang.

Patriots Day is an edge of the seat action thriller, meticulously recreating the week of the Boston marathon bombing from the time of the incident to the dramatic capture in the neighbouring suburb of Watertown featuring some superb sound effects and a suitably tense original score by Oscar winning film composer duo Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross who did the haunting music for The Social Network and Gone Girl.

Highly recommended viewing for those that enjoyed Deepwater Horizon and 13 Hours: the Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, Patriots Day will surely hold audience’s attention while they inadvertently lap up all the Patriotic images of America as Peter Berg drives home his point about the continued threat of urban terrorism as the film ends with the real life survivors accounts of their horrific experience of the Boston marathon bombing of April 2013.

In Patriots Day, director Peter Berg presents the facts in all their visceral details and lets the audience judge for themselves.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

Director: Kirk Jones

Cast: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, John Stamos, Rita Wilson, Michael Constantine, Lainie Kazan, Joey Fatone, Alex Wolff, Elena Kampouris, Andrea Martin

Canadian Greek actress Nia Vardalos has made a small dent on contemporary cinema with her range of comedies including the hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Connie and Carla and My Life in Ruins.

Now after an extended break between the first film made in 2002, Vardalos follows up the smash hit with the belated sequel My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 about an extended Greek family set in Chicago and produced by Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 follows the raucous family of Toula a retrenched travel agent who has to work in her father’s restaurant Dancing Zorba’s and even gets her pouty teenage daughter Paris played by newcomer Elena Kampouris to assist her. Paris is on the brink of finishing high school and must soon choose a suitable college for her tertiary education.

Naturally Toula’s family all want Paris to remain in Chicago and study at North-Western University, while her hilarious grandfather Gus, wonderfully played by Michael Constantine only wants his granddaughter to marry a Greek boy.

The wedding plot which the title refers to does not involve Paris although initially audiences are led to believe that, but rather Toula’s parents Gus and her mother Maria exuberantly played by Lainie Kazan, who after attending the Greek orthodox church one Sunday discover that they were never officially married when Gus forgot to sign his name on the marriage certificate.

Directed by British director Kirk Jones responsible for such hit comedies as Waking Ned Devine and Everybody’s Fine, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 is a hilarious and fun filled family film with running jokes about the perils of living with an extended family and also about the importance of rekindling love in one’s own marriage, especially between Toula and her Waspish American husband Ian played by John Corbett (Sex and the City 2, The Burning Plain).

Look out for a fabulous Andrea Martin (Wag the Dog) as the straight talking Aunt Voula who perceives that Toula’s brother Angelo played by former NSYNC singer Joey Fatone is of a different persuasion.

Nia Vardalos manages to fill the screen with her wide eyed gaze as she continually portrays the overbearing Greek mother Toula trying to help her daughter through the important transition from High School to College, while not making the same mistakes as her own mother Maria. As an inter-generational family comedy, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 hits the mark, especially with a lively collection of supporting actors including John Stamos, Rita Wilson, Joey Fatone and Alex Wolff, but certainly not as funny as the original film.

Audiences expecting a sequel get a funny and warm comedy without too many surprises or originality. Perhaps the gap between the two films is too long but then again, that Greek family needed some time to grow. Recommended viewing for extremely light entertainment.