Bridesmaids – Film Review

I have a long “movies I missed at the cinema” list and now this 2011 comedy starring Kristen Wiig is off it. I believe that watching a film by yourself at home, without the infectious communal atmosphere of a movie theatre, is a pretty good test of just how funny a movie is. I laughed out loud a good many times during Bridesmaids; bonus points for tickling my funny bone while I was feeling like a sleep-deprived zombie.

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Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets – Film Review

I have a big soft spot for all things wacky and bizarre, and I enjoyed this colourful and wildly imaginative space fantasy from Luc Besson much more than I thought I would, after the so-so reviews. But if there was ever a movie killed by the horrendous casting choices, Valerian is surely it.

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Farewell, My Queen – Film Review

The royal palace of Versailles and its doomed queen Marie Antoinette get a new perspective in this French film, which covers the last fraught days of the monarchy through the eyes of a young woman serving as the queen’s official reader. While ultimately somewhat slight, the movie’s eavesdropping-on-history approach is compelling, and gains a lot from being shot at the real location.

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The Piano – Film Review

I can’t believe I’ve overlooked this 1993 Jane Campion masterpiece for so long, though on the other hand I doubt I’d have appreciated it as much as a teenager; its bleak yet sensuous atmosphere, literary vibe and complicated relationships probably resonate better with my older self.

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Annihilation – Film Review

Watched the latest unsettling sci-fi mind-bender from Alex Garland, the writer/director of Ex Machina, that got dumped on Netflix for being “too complicated” for the wider audience. I’m sorry that I never got a chance to see it on the big screen, but good on the creative team for refusing to dumb it down.

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Serenity – Film Review

I finally caught up on the short-lived but much-loved Firefly TV series a couple of months ago, which made me want to visit an alternate universe where the show was allowed to run for as long as its creator Joss Whedon had intended. In the absence of a working interdimensional portal, I had to do with this 2005 feature film, which is a much better farewell than the dizzyingly abrupt ending of the TV series.

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