Posts Tagged ‘Ethan Hawke’

Glass Onion: a Knives Out Mystery

Director: Rian Johnson

Cast: Daniel Craig, Kate Hudson, Edward Norton, Dave Bautista, Janelle Monae, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odon Jr, Ethan Hawke, Hugh Grant, Jessica Henwick

Running Time: 2 hours and 20 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Please note this film is only available on Netflix

Former Bond star Daniel Craig reprises his role as the flamboyant Southern detective Benoit Blanc in the extravagant and complex sequel to the 2019 hit Knives Out this time featuring an entirely new cast and the location moving to a secluded island in Greece.

Writer and director Rian Johnson who garnered an Oscar nomination for the original Knives Out in 2019, has written an even more fascinating sequel surrounding the mysterious tech billionaire Miles Bron wonderfully played with a panache bordering on narcissism by triple Oscar nominee Edward Norton (Primal Fear, American History X, Birdman)  who organizes a murder mystery weekend and jets in a couple of his closest friends from America following a complex invitation which he sends to all of them in midst of the Covid19 Pandemic in May 2020.

Glass Onion, a Knives Out Mystery is a contemporary who dunnit featuring a stellar cast of 40 and 50 year old stars, a sort of revamped Agatha Christie with all the modern 21^st century twists. Bron’s group of his closest friends include fashion model Birdie Jay played by Oscar nominee Kate Hudson (Almost Famous), muscle man Duke Cody played by Dave Bautista, Tech company co-founder Andi Brand superbly played by Janelle Monae who deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting actress and Oscar nominee Leslie Odom Jr (One Night in Miami).

All the friends gather on Bron’s private island in Greece where an elaborate and hi tech mansion rests complete with an array of interesting alcoves including a Glass Onion and a sports car on the roof. Bron announces to the guests that there is a murder mystery game in which he is the murder victim and they are all suspects. As the first night progresses amidst lots of drinks in fancy glasses, things go curiously awry when one of the guests is killed and Benoit Blanc has his hands full trying to solve the complex murder while assisting an associate who hired him earlier to solve a previous murder.

The Glass Onion is a delicious conundrum, a problem to be solved, a puzzle to be figured out, an onion to be peeled back layer by layer as audiences need to figure out who the real killer is.

Director Rian Johnson throws lots of glittering clues at the audience in the first half of the film, but Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is an extravagant and lavish murder mystery set in 2020 featuring a superb ensemble cast and an immaculate performance by Daniel Craig as the fashionable Southern detective who eventually solves the riddle.

For those that enjoy a fabulous murder mystery, catch the entertaining Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery which gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10.

Valerian and

the City of a Thousand Planets

Director: Luc Besson

Cast: Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, Rihanna, Clive Owen, Ethan Hawke, Sam Spruell, Rutger Hauer, Kris Wu, Herbie Hancock

French director Luc Besson attempts to re-enact his Sci-Fi success of his hit film The Fifth Element with a sparkling and innovative new space adventure film set in the 28th century Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets starring Dane DeHaan (Life, Kill Your Darlings) as Major Valerian and British fashion model turned actress Cara Delevingne (Paper Towns, Suicide Squad) as his sidekick stroke lover Sergeant Laureline.

After an impressive Virtual Reality sequence in a universal market, Valerian comes face to face with the Pearls a luminescent race whose planet accidentally got obliterated during a celestial conflict.

The Pearls, initially a harmonious alien race soon realize that dark forces are at play in the Universe and seek shelter in an abandoned space ship which is transported to the vast city of a Thousand Planets called Alpha.

The attractive duo Valerian and Laureline play the ever bickering lovers of this bizarre space opera have to report to the crafty Commander Arun Filitt played by Oscar nominee Clive Owen (Closer). As the duo have to discover what is really behind the malignant threat growing within the City, they come into contact with a collection of utterly bizarre CGI creatures and a guest appearance by superstar Rihanna as Bubble who appears in a Cabaret like moment as a glambot nicknamed Bubble.

Ethan Hawke (Boyhood, Training Day) appears all too briefly as the crazy pimp Jolly in Paradise Alley where he attempts to entice Valerian in all sorts of virtual lascivious entanglements with Bubble.

While the pace of Valerian slackens in the second half of the film, the visual effects are utterly mind-blowing and since the majority of the film’s financing came from BNP Paribas let’s hope director Luc Besson gets a return on his box office both in France and internationally.

With fabulous onscreen chemistry between DeHaan and Delevingne, audiences should completely suspend their disbelief as they watch Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets which will certainly appeal to fans of comic book Sci-Fi. The funky score by Alexander Desplat and the gorgeous cinematography by Thierry Abrogast make Valerian cinematically palatable and infinitely beautiful despite some extremely imaginative sequences.

The voices of Elizabeth Debicki and John Goodman also feature in Valerian.

The story of home planets being destroyed is nothing original and has been done before in Star Trek Beyond and Star Wars, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is recommended viewing for hard core fans of Sci-Fi and gets a film rating of 7 out of 10.

Audiences should watch out for a cameo by Dutch actor Rutger Hauer as President of the World State Federation who appeared in the original Blade Runner film directed by Ridley Scott in 1982.

2016 Toronto International

Film Festival Winners

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) takes place every year in September in Toronto, Canada.

Films which premiere at Toronto are often nominated for Academy Awards the following year.

TIFF does not hand out individual prizes for Best Actor or Actress but focuses on amongst others the following awards:
People’s Choice Award & Best Canadian Feature Film

Opening Night Film: The Magnificent Seven directed by Antoine Fuqua starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke

People’s Choice Award: La La Land directed by Damien Chazelle – starring Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Finn Wittrock, J. K. Simmons & Rosemarie DeWitt

Best Canadian Film: Those who make Revolution only Dig their Graves Halfway directed by Mathieu Denis and Simon Lavoie

The Magnificent Seven

Director:  Antoine Fuqua

Cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, Haley Bennett, Peter Sarsgaard, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luke Grimes, Matt Bomer, Martin Sensmeier, Cam Gigandet

Antoine Fuqua gathers his favourite actors into his latest impressive film.

In Fuqua’s bespoke remake of John Sturgeon’s 1960 classic film The Magnificent Seven, as an African American film director he reclaims the Western genre in a bold step towards reimagining American Western mythology which will surely shape how cinema goers view the Western film genre.

Gone are the days of Western films primarily being made up of morally dubious cowboys mostly played by dashing European actors fighting savage Red Indians or each other in high noon stand offs.

Director Fuqua’s superb The Magnificent Seven is as diverse as Westerns come, showing that while perceptions of the American West have largely been Eurocentric, the real history of the American West was far more complex.

The setting is Rose Creek, California in 1879. A small dusty town a three day ride away from the Californian state capital Sacramento, at the height of the Gold Rush.

Rose Creek is being tormented by a malicious industrialist Bartholomew Bogue wonderfully played against type by character actor Peter Sarsgaard (Blue Jasmine), who not only burns down the moral centre of the town, the church, but casually kills some its town folk, much to the horror of the remaining witnesses.

Rose Creek’s town representative, a feisty widow Emma Cullen, played by rising star Haley Bennett enlists the help of sharp shooter Chisolm, expertly played by Oscar winner Denzel Washington (Training Day, Glory).

Chisolm gathers a motley crew of cowboys and one red Indian, consisting of the heavy drinking Irishman Josh Faraday, comically played by Chris Pratt, sharp shooter Goodnight Robicheaux played by Ethan Hawke (Training Day, Before Sunrise), lonesome tracker Jack Horne played by Vincent D’Onofrio, Billy Rocks played by Korean star Byung-hun Lee, Vasquez, played by rising Mexican star Manual Garcia-Rulfo last seen in Cake opposite Jennifer Aniston and finally Native American actor Martin Sensmeier who plays Comanche Indian Red Harvest.

With the gang in tow and the town folk galvanized for action, audiences should expect the final gun battle of Rose creek to be thrilling. Fortunately this is where The Magnificent Seven delivers as the final act of the film is truly brilliant, with superb sound editing and haunting production design, Fuqua pays homage to the original version and to the genre as a whole while deftly reimagining Westerns as a more diverse and multi-cultural affair.

Not since the Coen brothers reworking of the Oscar nominated True Grit, have I enjoyed a Western as much. The Magnificent Seven does justice to its genre assisted by superb performances by Washington and Sarsgaard as opponents with a vicious score to settle.

Audiences that enjoyed James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma and the Coen brothers True Grit, will love Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven as he reclaims the Western genre and hopefully opens the doors for this much loved film genre to be bravely re-explored in the 21^st century. This is a genre which desperately needs a Hollywood resurgence.

Now if only a director could tackle a film version of Cormac McCarthy’s brutal tale of the Mexican frontier wars in his gripping Western novel, Blood Meridian, then that would be a film worth seeing.

Boyhood

Director: Richard Linklater
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater, Marco Perella, Jamie Howard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys-mbHXyWX4

Texan director Richard Linklater’s 12 year cinematic achievement, Boyhood comes to life in a 164 minute film which seamlessly blends the course of existence for Mason from aged 6 to aged 18 is both fascinating and compelling. The fact that the director used the same four actors to make up the quasi nuclear family is equally impressive.

Ellar Coltrane plays Mason, the central character in Boyhood along with the director’s daughter Lorelei Linklater who plays Mason’s on screen drama queen sister Samantha and Hollywood veteran actress Patricia Arquette as his struggling unpredictable mother along with Linklater favourite Ethan Hawke (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset) as Mason’s drifter musician father Mason Senior.

In that rambling talkative style which has become a trademark of Linklater’s films, Boyhood as seen at the Durban International Film Festival is shot all over the director’s home state of Texas from Houston to Austin and even rural parts of the state, as the journey from innocence to experience for Mason as he along with his sister is dragged by his mother to many step-families with a variety of equally unimpressive stepfathers from the cruel and vicious psychology lecturer to the Afghanistan war veteran.

As the children change schools as the mother moves around in search of a better life and career opportunities, cinema goers gradually see the development of the central character as he charts the difficult teenage years, while Linklater provides a fascinating socio-political commentary of American daily life, from the effect of foreign wars on the average population, to the financial crisis, to the usurping influence of technology on the children’s lives as they become teenagers.

The three sections of the film is separated by the family or one of the family members making road trips signifying a different phase of their average but equally interesting lives. The viewer follows Mason’s school years as he succumbs to peer pressure, discovers the mysteries of the opposite sex to eventually having his first sexual experience in his sisters college dorm room.

Despite the length of Boyhood, Richard Linklaters script remains pertinent and fascinating as he provides an insightful analysis of the cultural cornerstones of American 21^st century society from religion to guns to politics and even to the environment. Fans of Linklaters triptych, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight, will be in familiar territory and will surely acknowledge that this is the directors most significant and ambitious cinematic achievement especially because of his lack of any aging makeup or special effects, the mere fact that this film, Boyhood was imagined and conceived in real time makes it even more remarkable, one of the reasons that Richard Linklater won the Best Director prize at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival.

Patricia Arquette (True Romance) and Ethan Hawke are clearly competent actors to hold their own in such a cinematic canvas as are the two child leads with Ellar Coltrane’s nonchalance clearly perceived at every transformation of Mason’s character as he goes from childhood innocence to young adult experience. Boyhood is highly recommended art house viewing and a dynamic cinematic tribute to American socio-political commentary, while remaining a classic Richard Linklater masterpiece.

2014 Berlin International Film Festival Winners

The 64th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from February 6 to 16, 2014

The Berlin International Film Festival known as the Berlinale takes places annually in February and is regarded as one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world.

The Opening Night film was The Grand Hotel Budapest directed by Wes Anderson

Winners of the five main prizes at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival were as follows: –

Golden Bear (Best Film) – Black Coal, Thin Ice directed by Diao Yinan

Silver Bear (Best Director) – Richard Linklater for Boyhood starring Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane & Lorelei Linklater

Best Actor – Liao Fan for Black Coal, Thin Ice

Best Actress – Haru Kuroki for The Little House

Silver Bear for Best Screenplay – Stations of the Cross written by Dietrich Brüggemann

Source: – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64th_Berlin_International_Film_Festival