The Godfather

The Godfather isn’t your typical American gangster movie. Instead of endless street fights and car chases, the movie takes a more subdued look at mafia life, spending time exploring characters’ lives and their relationships with one another. It exposes the weakness and fragility of powerful criminal figures, and adds a touch of humanity to their…

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

The thing that really stands out about the entire Lord of the Rings series, at least for me, is the fact that despite all the cliche, grand and hero-like dialogue, everything seems natural. Oftentimes when movies resort to such dialogue I am turned off, since no one speaks in such a manner. However, the long…

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

The middle movie in a trilogy is always in a unique position. It has to pick up where the first film left off, and must lead into the third. This causes the movie to not have a true beginning, and also leaves it without a complete ending. While this may lead to a sense of…

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Spider-Man is often considered one of the most popular superheroes, and rightfully so. In the demographic of teenage comic book readers, he is a figure that they can easily latch onto, being a high school kid with ordinary problems. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, director Jon Watts and Marvel have perfectly reproduced our friendly neighbourhood superhero, telling…

War for the Planet of the Apes

At the end of the day, everything boils down to survival. The most basic instinct of any living creature is to sustain itself, as without life nothing else matters. In War for the Planet of the Apes, we come to the end of an epic trilogy that centers on this important theme. As humankind dwindles…

Today’s Special

Why do directors return to the formulaic? When audiences complain about repetitiveness and beg for originality, why do directors continue to revisit familiar content? The answer is because formula is tried and tested, and movies that follow such storylines can always satisfy minimum expectations. Today’s Special is such a movie, following the plot of an…

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

No movie ever made can match the sheer size and epic-ness of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Since their release in the early 2000s, they have completely rewritten the history of cinema, lodging themselves as some of the greatest films ever made. They have influenced a generation of movie-goers, with many carrying the film…

Rear Window

Filmmakers these days tend to think that the bigger the movie is, the more audiences will enjoy it. As a result, we are in an era of big, blockbuster superhero movies, filled with non-stop action scenes and endless explosions. Due to name-brand and popular appeal, film-goers flock to these movies, and as a result producers…