Posts Tagged ‘Kate Hudson’

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.

Deepwater Horizon

Director: Peter Berg

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Kate Hudson, John Malkovich, Kurt Russell, Gina Rodriguez, Dylan O’Brein, Ethan Suplee, J. D. Evermore, Jason Kirkpatrick

Good films often work because of professional partnerships between an actor and director. This is the case in the second collaboration between Lone Survivor director Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg.

Deepwater Horizon graphically depicts the horrific events which went horribly wrong on the night of 20^th April 2010, when the Transocean oil rig run by BP, Deepwater Horizon exploded and eventually caused one of the worst ecological disasters in American history as the coastline states on the Gulf of Mexico were damaged by millions of litres of Brent crude oil which washed up on the beaches from Florida to Louisiana.

As in Lone Survivor, Peter Berg likes to tackle real and recent historical events. His version of Deepwater Horizon is both visually impressive, with stunning sound and visual effects as well as absorbing to watch, without going too deeply into the ecological side of the disaster.

As a director Berg chooses to rather focus on what went wrong at Deepwater Horizon. This is graphically explained in an earlier scene with Wahlberg and his wife Felicia played by Kate Hudson (The Reluctant Fundamentalist), when his young daughter explains to Wahlberg’s real life character Mike Williams as part of a show and tell, what her father does on an oil rig. She illustrates this by using a coke can, punctuating it with a straw then filling the straw with honey. Eventually the pressure builds and the coke explodes all over the dining room table.

Without delving too deeply into the technical aspects of went wrong, basically Deepwater Horizon was a faulty rig, or as one mechanic states this is “The Well from Hell”.

Under pressure from corporate bosses, and after several negative pressure tests, they attempt to start drilling for oil and soon everything goes horribly wrong and the flammable oil starts shooting up through the rig and with a combination of leaking gas causes a massive explosion and widespread devastation.

The best part of the film, is the actual explosion on Deepwater Horizon and how Williams and his colleague Andrea Fleytas played by Gina Rodriguez eventually escape off the oil rig, which soon resembles a floating towering inferno. The scene between Wahlberg and Rodriguez as the two have to psyche each other up to escape this disastrous oil rig which is rapidly being engulfed in flames is absolutely riveting.

Audiences should look out for an impressive performance by Oscar nominee John Malkovich (Dangerous Liaisons, In the Line of Fire) as a pushy corporate boss Vidrine complete with a southern drawl.

Kurt Russell has an opportunity to act with his stepdaughter Kate Hudson in Deepwater Horizon, both actors playing supporting roles.

Deepwater Horizon is a visually impressive account of the worst oil disaster in American History which led to one of the most devastating ecological disasters planet Earth has ever had to endure. The explosion of Deepwater Horizon, eventually led BP to pay millions of dollars in damages.

While Peter Berg chooses to focus on the actual event instead of its aftermath, Deepwater Horizon is a gripping film to watch especially considering that this disaster only occurred six years ago in 2010. In the factual film drama genre, Deepwater Horizon is highly recommended viewing, similar to Thirteen Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.

Mother’s Day

Director: Garry Marshall

Cast: Kate Hudson, Jennifer Aniston, Timothy Olyphant, Shay Mitchell, Jason Sudeikis, Julia Roberts, Hector Elizondo, Aasif Mandvi, Robert Pine, Margo Martindale.

Unlike Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve, previous Garry Marshall films which featured massive casts and a diverse series of interlinking stories, his third film Mother’s Day is confined by a much smaller cast and a group of actors who really should have been in a better film.

Golden Globe winner Kate Hudson (Almost Famous), Oscar Winner Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich) are joined by Horrible Bosses co-stars Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudeikis in Mother’s Day a structurally unsound portrait of different versions of mother hood with Aniston and Hudson taking the lead as struggling young mothers Sandy and Jesse battling to cope with vain ex-husbands in the form of Timothy Olyphant (Live Free or Die Hard) and over bearing mothers in the form of character actress Margo Martindale (August: Osage Country, The Hours).

What really would have worked was if Goldie Hawn was cast as Kate Hudson’s mother in this film, it would have elevated Mother’s Day to an entirely different level of comedy as they are Hollywood mother and daughter.

Garry Marshall also entices his Pretty Woman costars Julia Roberts and Hector Elizondo back on screen together. Roberts plays a Home shopping Network TV Queen, Miranda who doesn’t appear to have children. Jason Sudeikis who was so hilarious in The Hangover trilogy stars as a widower Bradley battling to cope with bringing up two young daughters after his wife and mother of his children, a marine, was inexplicably killed in combat. Jennifer Garner pops up briefly as the dead mother seen through video footage.

Whilst all the characters in Mother’s Day gradually interlink in contemporary Atlanta, the plot of the film is overlong and at times contrived, but nevertheless Mother’s Day is a very light hearted comedy, which will appeal to many an audience who are looking for a cosy and warm cinematic outing with their moms.

Audiences should not expect anything terrific or profound in Mother’s Day, but a really fluffy feel good film without too much depth or substance. Watch out for Aasif Mandvi (The Million Dollar Arm) as Jesse’s closeted Indian husband Russell who also has to deal with his own overbearing mother. British actor Jack Whitehall also makes an impression as Zack, an aspiring stand-up comic in the bars of Buckhead, Atlanta.

Mother’s Day is a fun film, but nothing more than a whimsical take on motherhood from a truly American perspective without the added bonus of having some real star power. This is no August: Osage County or Terms of Endearment but then it was never intended to be.

The 58th Golden Globe Awards

Took place on Sunday 21st January 2001 by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association

Golden Globe Winners in The Film Categories:

Best Film Drama: Gladiator

Best Actor Drama: Tom Hanks – Cast Away

Best Actress Drama: Julia Roberts – Erin Brockovich

Best Director: Ang Lee – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Best Supporting Actor – Benicio del Toro – Traffic

Best Supporting Actress – Kate Hudson – Almost Famous

Best Film Musical/Comedy: Almost Famous

Best Actor Musical/ Comedy: George Clooney – O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Best Actress Musical / Comedy – Renee Zellweger – Nurse Betty

Best Foreign Language Film – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Taiwan)

Good People

Director: Henrik Ruben Genz

Cast: Kate Hudson, James Franco, Tom Wilkinson, Sam Spruell, Omar Sy, Anna Friel, Diana Hardcastle, Michael Fox

Golden Globe nominee Kate Hudson (Almost Famous, Reluctant Fundamentalist) and Oscar Nominee James Franco (127 Hours, Milk) play a young American couple, Anna and Tom Wright who have left America behind following the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and have decided to build a new life in London. With a renovation work in progress involving fixing up an old house in Mortlake, West London, their dreams seem to be coming true until they run into more debt.

Luckily or unluckily their basement tenant dies of a drug overdose leaving a bag of cash in the ceiling. The moral dilemma involving a sudden discovery of treasure ensues when Good People turn bad. As Tom Wright says money is not necessarily bad, people are.

Directed by Danish born Henrik Ruben Genz, Good People is a gritty entirely grim and nerve wracking domestic thriller involving the Wrights, a washed up cop Detective John Haden played by Oscar nominee Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) and a really nasty drug dealer Jack Witkowski who is out to avenge the death of his brother, played by Sam Spruell (Snow White and the Huntsman, The Hurt Locker) who is in turn chased by a French drug dealer who models himself on Genghis Khan, played by Omar Sy who was so brilliant in the 2011 French film The Intouchables.

This is a deglamourized thriller with director Genz painting the British capital in an exceedingly grim and dull light. To be frank, never has Kate Hudson looked so washed up in a film as she does in Good People. Normally Kudson is a vivacious blonde actress known for starring in such perky and colourful American romantic comedies as How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, Fool’s Gold and Bride Wars.

With a script by Kelly Masterson and based upon a novel by Markus Sakey, Good People is a gripping if slightly depressing violent thriller saved by good performances by Wilkinson and Franco as the morally dubious husband Tom. Anna Friel (Limitless) and Wilkinson’s real life wife Diana Hardcastle (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) also star.

Viewers need not catch Good People on the big screen as seeing it on DVD or TV would be more preferable due to the film’s lack of imaginative scenery and utterly dreary production design.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Director: Mira Nair

Cast: Kate Hudson, Kiefer Sutherland, Liev Schreiber, Martin Donovan, Riz Ahmed, Om Puri

Indian director Mira Nair’s elegant and gripping film adaptation of the brilliant Mohsin Hamid novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a riveting tale of cross cultural clashes which occur when a wealthy Pakistani Changez, played by Riz Ahmed goes abroad and studies at Princeton and then pursues a cutthroat career in global economics at a prestige New York firm, Underwood Samson.

Hamid’s novel takes place as a dialogue between Changez confessing his love affair with America  to a yet unidentified man at a cafe in Lahore amidst growing tensions in the wake of 9/11 and America’s war on terror in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan. It is an elegant and evocative tale of how Changez, was offered the American dream on a platter and then see it disintegrate before his eyes under the horrific aftermath of the Manhattan terror attacks. In the midst of his shifting view of the American dream, from being strip search at JFK to being humiliated in America’s corporate and artistic worlds, Changez’s embarks on a cross cultural relationship with a liberated Upper East side conceptual artist Erica.

Nair’s well crafted film version of The Reluctant Fundamentalist differs in parts to Hamid’s novel, exploring the inherent dangers of pursuing a Capitalist dream in a Western society which turns its back on you, in the wake of a Terrorist attack and the resulting shifts in American and Pakistani  perspectives. The film delicately portrays the backlash suffered by many American Muslims living and working  in the US, particularly New York in the aftermath of 9/11.

Changez as one of the bright young stars, recruited directly out of Princeton for the international corporate fixer agency Underwood Samson by the sexually ambivalent Jim Cross as his mentor, gorgeously underplayed by Kiefer Sutherland (Flatliners, The Sentinel), is sent on global excursions from Manila to Atlanta to Istanbul to assist companies in downsizing their labour force and maximizing profits with their corporate maxim being focus on the fundamentals.

At the start of his professional Manhattan career, Changez meets the dynamic and liberated Erica and soon embarks in a passionate affair. In Hamid’s novel , this complex romance is evocatively  told as part of Changez’s confessions to a supposed stranger at the Lahore cafe. In Nair’s film version this doomed relationship reaches a climax in a particularly poignant scene at a swish Manhattan gallery opening when Erica’s displays her vision of conceptual art and inspired by her own relationship with Changez through the title: I slept with a Pakistani once.

I slept with a Pakistani once.

Erica, awkwardly played by an auburn haired Kate Hudson (Nine, The Skeleton Key), unburdens her own guilt by embarking on a rebound affair, as a way of dealing with the sudden death of her boyfriend Chris of which she was the supposed cause. While the relationship between Changez and Erica is not as well sketched out in the film, the ambivalent dialogue in the Lahore cafe is fully realized in the scenes between Changez and Bobby Lincoln an experienced CIA operative played by Liev Schrieber (Defiance, Salt and the excellent TV series Ray Donovan) who is trying to get vital information out of him about a suspected Al Qaeda kingpin operating in Pakistan, whilst also suspecting him of masterminding an established or imagined terror network.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist expertly delves into the disillusion of the American dream from a Pakistani perspective. Like other Mira Nair films always with a flair for the dramatic most notably Vanity Fair and the award winning Monsoon Wedding has stunning  production values, compliments this visually rich film with a wonderfully evocative soundtrack.

The film’s script by Ami Boghani intelligently explores the common ties of humanity despite different cultures and the journeys of self discovery required to fully appreciate the fundamentals of a fulfilled existence. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a an ultimately flawed but brilliantly told international thriller which is better appreciated if viewers have first read the novel. Recommended viewing.