lasttimeisaw

English Writer/Director John Michael McDonagh is the elder brother of filmmaker Martin McDonagh, the mastermind who is behind such sterling black comedies as IN BRUGES (2008, 8/10) and SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS (2012). CALVARY is John Michael’s second feature, after the well-received THE GUARD (2011), stars McDonagh brothers’ regular Gleeson as Father James, an Irish priest in soutane, who is warned in the opening confession by an unnamed man, that he has only one week to live, because he will kill him the next Sunday for being a good priest, to the effect of shock value, as a vengeance towards his own sexually abused childhood perpetrated by a priest. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks in advance!

Icelander Baltasar Kormákur, whose career starts with 101 REYKJAVIK (2000), is another European talent recruited by Hollywood, after two mediocre Mark Wahlberg’s star vehicles CONTRABAND (2012) and 2 GUNS (2013), his latest is an ambitious USA, UK and Iceland co-production retells the story of 1996 Mount Everest disaster, and it just opened this year’s Venice film festival, and now a 3D format arrives in the local multiplex. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

British filmmaker Peter Strickland is a peculiar figure in the contemporary arthouse cinema sphere, his debut KATALIN VARGE (2009) is a Romanian revenge thriller infused with an unearthly trait both in its visual and aural experiments. Now, a double-bill of his consequent two features, both confined in isolated surroundings, introduce an esoteric profession, and furthermore probe the extremity of his unique cinematic language. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

British filmmaker Peter Strickland is a peculiar figure in the contemporary arthouse cinema sphere, his debut KATALIN VARGE (2009) is a Romanian revenge thriller infused with an unearthly trait both in its visual and aural experiments. Now, a double-bill of his consequent two features, both confined in isolated surroundings, introduce an esoteric profession, and furthermore probe the extremity of his unique cinematic language. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

Xavier Dolan, Canadian enfant terribile’s fifth feature, MOMMY is gratifyingly his maturest work to date, won the Jury Prize in Cannes last year, and gutsily challenges our traditional cinema habit by altering the frame to an idiosyncratic 1:1 aspect ratio - bar two exceptions of 16:9 ratio sequences involving a soul-liberating celebration of life and a fanciful imagination of a mother indulging in her proudest moments of his son, which is quite a bravura to pull off, centralises its characters and dramatises their interactions and emotions. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

An exceptional episode of the legendary activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s (Oyelowo) truncated 39-year-old life is finally brought up to the big screen by a female black director DuVernay, chronicles the historical voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, which pressures president Lyndon B. Johnson (Wikinson), to pass the bill to eliminate restrictions on voting for black people. An Oscar BEST PICTURE nominee with only another nomination and final win for BEST ORIGINAL SONG (GLORY by Common and John Legend), to a great degree, is viewed being discriminatingly given the cold shoulder over other key nominations such as for Oyelowo’s leading actor and DuVernay in directing, a perennial disdain aiming at the senior-white-male demography in the academy. Yet, Rome is not built in one day and for the elderly, it is ever harder to change their deep-rooted prejudice, so we need more patience. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks

Thematically this movie is a romantic tall-tale, taps into the same territory of immorality like Richard Schenkman’s inventive indie Sci-Fi THE MAN FROM EARTH (2007, 7/10), Adaline Bowman (Lively), a woman stuck at the age of 29 forever thanks to a miracle happened when an car accident incurred on her, which an omniscient voiceover laboriously tries to explain from a scientific angle, as if today's technology has completely solved the mystery of living forever, even only superficially, we don’t buy it for a minute, instead of justifying the unjustifiable, why not just leave it open? Uncanny things happen all the time. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks

Oscar's BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE PICTURE nominee of 2012 from Norway, KON-TIKI is an ambitious endeavour from directors-duo Rønning and Sandberg (currently are recruited by Hollywood to shoot the fifth instalment of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN franchise), to recount the story of Norwegian national legend Thor Heyerdal’s monumental near 5,000-mile expedition on a balsawood raft (named Kon-Tiki) sailing from Peru to Polynesia in 1947, to simply prove that it is possible for South Americans to migrate in Polynesia in pre-Columbian times. keep reading my review on my blog: please google - cinema omnivore, thanks!

Double bill time, FANTASIA is an experimental and groundbreaking high-brow entertainment from Disney, seamlessly harmonises two disparate art forms: animation shorts with iconic classical pieces, most of them flout the family-friendly narratives, thus instantly elevate the demography from its common wheelhouse, and creates an unorthodox experience, a combination of cinema and concert, but obviously not such an attraction for kids. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks

Rarely an Indian film without its trademark dancing-and-singing routines, director/writer Ritesh Batra’s feature debut marvellously utilises the exotic “dabbawalas” system of Mumbai, which is an intricate lunch delivery service to people at work from their their homes or restaurants and is remarkable for its accuracy, but Batra fictionalises a little mix-up of the system and links two strangers into an epistolary communication, and from there, their penfriend-ship will further sublimate into something more genuine and profound. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

Pixar’s latest offer is an absolutely worthwhile adventure for adults and teenagers alike (certainly not for toddlers though), makes further efforts to forever change the existential territory of animation feature, it is our generation’s great blessing to have Pixar continuously giving life to such master-class animations, which defy the temptation of huge profits from low-hanging fruits, as DESPICABLE ME series and its spin-off THE MINIONS (2015) unblushingly cashes in on. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

From Irish director/writer John Carney (also the of the indie dark-horse ONCE (2006, 8/10), BEGIN AGAIN is an urban symphony of NYC, stars two bankable names of Knightley and Ruffalo. Originally titled CAN A SONG SAVE YOUR LIFE?, which is more literal to describe the chance meeting between Dan Mulligan (Ruffalo) and Gretta James (Knightley), Dan is a damaged good, with the usual trappings, a middle-aged man abandoning himself to alcohol, separated with her wife Miriam (Keener) and distanced with their teenage daughter Violet (Steinfeld), once a promising executive of an indie record label, but now he is just fired by his business partner Saul (Bey) in the presence of Violet. It is the worst day of his life, and he is seriously considering to end his own life until he watches Gretta performing her own song in a bar, he is immediately attracted by her unsophisticated frankness in her music, and decides to sign her (although this is not up to him and he brings her to Saul to see if they can reach for a record deal). reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks

A 3D cinema-going of Marvel’s latest offering ANT-MAN, which has always been in the pickle during its journey to the big screen, originally it had been a brainchild of Edgar Wright for years, then he dropped out in the relatively late development due to creative disagreement, and Peyton Reed takes over the director chair. While Wright has a diehard fanbase and a distinct visual style (although his geeky smartness sometimes can go overboard, like SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD 2010), Reed can no more than be extolled as a slick journeyman in cranking up comedies like YES MAN (2008, 6/10), THE BREAK-UP (2006, 6/10), DOWN WITH LOVE (2003, 5/10) and BRING IT ON (2000), so fans should automatically lower their expectation. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

When I first read the brief synopsis of this biography feature from Tim Burton about painter Margaret Keane, and the notorious scandal in the art scene of 1960s in America, my prompt answer to how to solve the chief issue - who is the real creator behind all these paintings, Margaret (Adams) or her husband Walter (Waltz)?- is rather simple, unlike literature and music, painting is an art form too visual-dependent, so why not just let them paint? Then a second thought strikes me that maybe Walter is capable of simulating Margaret’s trademark style, which could elongate this lawsuit case into a more complicated protracted battle. Well, the truth is, I was thinking too much, during the court sequences, after a long-standing filibuster from Walter, which presumably should be funny but only feels insufferable, finally the judge orders them to paint, but as audience has already been informed that Walter simply cannot paint, that is all, case closed, Margaret’s win is such a duck soup, what a stroke of bathos! keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks

A double-bill of two film adaptations of Thomas Hardy’s novel, about a Victorian liberated and strong-willed girl named Bathsheba Everdene (Mulligan/Christie), who is an orphan but fortuitously inherits a farm from her late uncle, but in due course, her romantic entanglements with three very different men, the honest and devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak (Schoenaerts/Bates), the wealthy, middle age bachelor William Boldwood (Sheen/Finch) and a hot-headed sergeant Frank Troy (Sturridge/Stamp), will teach her a hard lesson with a shocking third act. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

A double-bill of two film adaptations of Thomas Hardy’s novel, about a Victorian liberated and strong-willed girl named Bathsheba Everdene (Mulligan/Christie), who is an orphan but fortuitously inherits a farm from her late uncle, but in due course, her romantic entanglements with three very different men, the honest and devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak (Schoenaerts/Bates), the wealthy, middle age bachelor William Boldwood (Sheen/Finch) and a hot-headed sergeant Frank Troy (Sturridge/Stamp), will teach her a hard lesson with a shocking third act. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

This indie feature opens with a blurred VHS tape showing - the film is based on a true story, which actually is from Coen brothers’ FARGO (1996, 9/10), has its implicit double meaning, because the film itself is a reinterpretation of a real-life event about our centre character Kumiko (Kikuchi), a 29-year-old office lady in Tokyo, who is hooked by FARGO’s scenes where a briefcase of cash is stashed in the snow land by Steve Buscemi’s Carl Showalter, firmly believes it is her destiny to retrieve the money and embarks on a journey to USA. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

Wes Anderson’s stop-motion puppet show, adopted from Roald Dahl’s beloved children novel, has evaded from me for all these years, again, I’m not an avid animation fan and particularly into children’s fare, but this winsome gem can nimbly edge into my Top 10 film of the year. Mr. Fox (Clooney) used to enjoy his adventurous life as a food-stealer with Ms. Fox (Streep), but now he is a suave columnist, they have a son Ash (Schwartzman), and lead a quiet life living underground. Nevertheless, as a wild animal, Mr. Fox cannot reconciled to the quiet life which Ms. Fox urges him to hew to, he purchases a new tree house regardless of his lawyer Mr. Badger (Murray)’s persuasion because three meanest human farmers are living nearby. Later Mr. Fox’s teenage nephew Kristofferson (Eric Chase Anderson) comes to stay with them, whose athletic bent walks away with Mr. Fox’s commendation and leaves a gauche Ash pale in comparison. keep reading my review on my blog: please google cinema omnivore, thanks

The real story itself has every aspect to be an uplifting material for a big screen adaptation, the Republic of Austria v. Altmann case, the righteous Jewish octogenarian Maria Altmann (Mirren) against the acquisitive Austrian government machinery, for the right of Gustav Klimt’s $135 million worth painting Woman in Gold, where Maria’s aunt Adele (Traue) is the said woman, and as a refugee fled from her homeland under the persecution of **** half a century ago, Maria has every right to get what belongs to her family and at the same time, to make peace with the mixed feeling towards her native land. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks

COOKIE’S FORTUNE is maestro Robert Altman’s lesser known work, an outlandish comedy about an intrigue deriving from Cookie (Neal)’s suicide in a small town in Mississippi. It is a sterling ensemble piece and Anne Rapp’s satirical script excels in mockery of the Presbyterian church and the provincial racism while Altman is mostly at ease with the straightforward storyline. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks

A UK prison drama directed by David Mackenzie (YOUNG ADAM 2003, 7/10 and ASYLUM 2005, 6/10), which has instantly leapfrogged Jack O’ Connell to the most promising young actor echelon, who would win BAFTA Rising Star Award later for Angelina Jolie’s UNBROKEN (2014), if his demonic performance in James Watkins’ EDEN LAKE (2008, 8/10) has evaded you, you should definitely give it a try! keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

Hailed by CAHIERS DU CINÉMA as the No.1 film of the year innately has a double-edged effect on any film, since this prestige not only auspiciously attracts attention from arthouse frequenters, but spontaneously elicits higher expectation as well, so that fewer can break the jinx, either is Dumont’s 200-minute rural tale, distributed as a four-episode mini-series originally, now arrives the theatrical version for a binge-watch. continue reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks

In the spirit of celebrating that USA has just legalised same-sex marriage equality, a double bill of two recent indies from American queen cinema cannot be more felicitous, and hopefully we will get more LGBT characters in mainstream productions in the near future from Hollywoodland. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

Last year’s universally-acclaimed art house sensation from Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, my second entry after his masterful debut THE RETURN (2003, 8/10) over a decade ago, it has been the hot-shot in the foreign language film category of the past Oscar season since it was honoured with BEST SCREENPLAY in Cannes last year for Andrey and his co-writer Oleg Negin. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks.

Talking about prodigy filmmakers, Xavier Dolan might feel threatened, at the age of 21, Brazilian director Bruno Barreto’s third feature DONA FLOR AND HER TWO HUSBANDS (adapted from Jorge Amado’s namesake novel), became the most successful film in Brazilian history, a record it would retain for about 35 years, and it launched its star Sonia Braga onto international ****, who would reach the apogee in her iconic turn in KISS OF THE SPIDER MAN (1985, 9/10) as the embodiment of the titular spider woman. continue reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

I am on my vacation in Croatia, but cannot resist the temptation to visit a local multiplex and watch this box-office **** blockbuster, now has officially revitalised the JURASSIC PARK franchise, it brings back the nostalgic audience who has welcomed and impressed by the first tent-pole came out exactly 22 years ago with umpteen salutes, and competently revamps the visual spectacle to win over new audience. Director Colin Trevorrow and his team has accomplished a quite impressive job! keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

Before watching Paul Thomas Anderson's latest labour-of-love, I am quite puzzled how come this film hovered under the radar almost entirely in the past Oscar season, since PTA is pretty much in his heyday both in his career path and artistic creativity after THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007, 9/10) and THE MASTER (2012) , with only two minor Oscar nominations (Adapted Screenplay and Costume Design), its box office journey is also underperformed, a meagre $8 million after its domestic run. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

After last summer’s critics-panned squib TAMMY, which is not quite a financial disaster, but Melissa McCarthy’s star power has inevitably been questioned whether her box-office draw can still maintain after her rotund figure and comedic schticks have been overly cashed in on these years. Thanks heaven SPY has arrived, a third collaboration with Paul Feig, and unites her with the criminally under-appreciated her BRIDESMAIDS (2011) co-star Rose Byrne, and under Feig’s helm, together they concoct up a thoroughly hilarious spin-off of James Bond’s spy trademark, with an overhaul of a female lead and in passing, finally fulfils Jude Law’s yearning as a suited-up top agent after he lost the battle to Daniel Craig almost 10 years ago, and gives Jason Statham a rare opportunity to tease his own action hero stereotype. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks

At last, I get the chance to watch this much-hyped action-er in the local theatre, squeezed in a third-rate screen-room with a pretty small screen, this is what I can find for a current movie enters its third week run in Cairo, the hardware facilities are inferior, but we should all make the best of what we can acquire. This reboot of the cult brand of MAD MAX from the mastermind behind its original trilogy is a felicitous remedy to the generational fatigue of CGI-rampaged action tentpoles the world is overloaded with presently. After decades of immersion into animation filmmaking (paid off with an Oscar trophy for HAPPY FEET 2006 with his co-directors), George Miller’s grandiose return to live-action feature, the first one after LORENZO’S OIL in 1992, detonates the genre film enthusiasts with its cutting-edge visual spectacles which counter-act the current trend with the majority of its staggering set pieces accomplished with blood-and-flesh stuntmen and authentic objects other than virtual fictionalisation aided by computers, more pleasingly, the film has already conducts a profitable box-office trajectory worldwide, albeit it bears a hefty budget of $150 millions. keep reading my review on my blog, just google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

It may sound dismissive to phrase the sentence “CAKE features Jennifer Aniston’s career-best performance so far” since the only noteworthy acting job from Ms. Aniston’s filmography before CAKE is THE GOOD GIRL (2002), a modest dark comedy gives her a nomination of Independent Spirit Awards more than a decade ago (being an eternal fanboy of FRIENDS, it is painful to admit that the sea change takes a bit too long to happen, ok, who am I kidding? She has been one of the most bankable mainstream actress and beloved celebrities in the cutthroat line of work, who would whine about that!), however, it is truly a sterling transformation for any actor to portray Clair as the way Ms. Aniston has done, a woman constantly suffered from chronic pain, and this is only the physical torture, a past tragedy of loss her son is severely gnawing at her internally, to the verge of giving up her own life. keep reading my review on my blog, please google cinema omnivore, thanks!

A vampire love story loosely based on Émile Zola's THERESE RAQUIN, Chan-wook Park’s THIRST (its original Korean title literally means: bat) is a blood-soaked psychological thriller about a Catholic priest Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho), after experiencing a death-defying recovery owing to an undisclosed blood transfusion during his volunteer mission to find a vaccine for a deadly virus, he becomes the only survivor among all the infected, which attracts many devotees to worship him as a miracle from God. But the reality is that a craving for human blood has been commenced after the incident, the virus is still plaguing him, his skin is afflicted with blisters, only human blood can prohibit the symptoms and turn him into a nighttime creature endowed with all its well-established trappings like self-recovery, human-exceeding agility and strength. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

Tamara Jenkins' breakthrough indie drama-comedy THE SAVAGES, surprisingly captured 2 Oscar nominations back in 2008 , one for the unmistakably excellent Laura Linney and a BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY nomination for herself, so freshly coined as an Oscar nominee and subsequently granted the membership of the academy , allegedly her next project should be on the horizon at any time, nevertheless, as a telling manifest of the shameful situation of female directors in the movie industry, 8 years has passed, we still have no news of Tamara’s follow-up to her excellent work, a life-affirming dissection of the worst-case scenario for (almost) every grown-up - how to fulfil our responsibility, when we must become the caretaker of our ageing parents during their last days. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks

After consummating “McConaissance” in DALLAS BUYERS CLUB (2013), Jean-Marc Vallée’s next step is another star-vehicle biography, Reese Witherspoon plays Cheryl Strayed, a young woman embarked on a 2,650-mile hike of Pacific Crest Trail from Minneapolis, Minnesota to the Bridge of the Gods connecting Oregon and Washington in 1995. The aim of her journey is to detoxicate herself from her past bad habits of promiscuity and heroin addiction which had encroached her entire life after the untimely death of her mother Bobbi (Dern) and had already destroyed her marriage with Paul (Sadoski). keep reading my review on my blog, google: cinema omnivore, thanks

Speaking of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, contemporary audience may still recall the 2004 remake headlined by Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep, directed by Jonathan Demme (a 6/10), which is a proficient political thriller and grafts the timeline from Korean War to Gulf War. Now it is time to revisit the original version directed by John Frankenheimer, the only film I have watched among his prolific filmography before this one actually is his final big screen feature, the romance-thriller mixed-bag REINDEER GAMES (2000, 5/10), Frankenheimer passed away in 2002, and this 1962 black-and-white stunner is no doubt above a few notches over its comparatively problematic remake, substantially due to the Harvey-Lansbury pair’s Oscar-worthy performances. keep reading my review on my blog, google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

This Ira Sachs’ follow-up of his strained relationship chronicle KEEP THE LIGHTS ON (2012) revolves around a senior gay couple in Manhattan, New York, Ben (Lithgow), an obscure painter and George (Molina), a music teacher in a Catholic school, after gay-marriage has been legalised, they finally tie the knot after 39 years together, their love has been blessed by friends and family, but the segueing repercussions cost George his post due to the obvious prejudice among those religious conservatives, and the unforeseen financial plight forces them to sell the apartment and live with their relatives and friends, yet as none of them have extra rooms for both, so they have to spend the transitional time separately. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks

EX MACHINA auspiciously marks the directorial debut from British screenwriter Alex Garland, who is also a novelist, he is the author of THE BEACH, later would become a misfire for Danny Boyle and its star Leonardo DiCaprio in 2000, and after having soaked himself as a screenwriter in Sci-Fi genre pieces like Boyle’s SUNSHINE (2007) and Mark Romanek’s NEVER LET ME GO (2010), his latest offering is a tantalising cautionary tale about artificial intelligence. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

If we presumably equates “violent” to “death”, we are destined to be mislead by J.C. Chandor’s third feature, A MOST VIOLENT YEAR, as we follow our poker-faced protagonist Abel Morales (Isaac), who has experienced a tough year with his oil company business in NYC 1981, negotiate his way with unscrupulous business competitors, a stalwart district DA Lawrence (Oyelowo), we assume in any certain moment he would start a killing spree in the Godfather style. This never happens, since the dogma of Abel’s action is that he will never do anything to jeopardise his business, which means he will never act like a gangster, he is not a felon (as he tells Lawrence in the coda), although Chandor manifestly imbues his crime-tale with a solemn layout and vintage colour pattern under the heavy influence of Francis Ford Coppola’s gangster school, not to mention Isaac is obviously channelling Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone but in a no-violence policy. keep reading my review on my blog, google: cinema omnivore, thanks

A revisit of Kevin Smith’s subversive religious comedy DOGMA, “subversive” may it seems in a story where God is a woman (played by the one-and-only Alanis Morissette, whose voice can shatter anything into fragments, deservingly to be the choice chanteuse during my adolescence); there is a 13th apostle Rufus (Rock) who has been omitted in the Bible simply because of his skin colour; two fallen angles Loki (Damon) and Bartleby (Affleck) find a loophole induced by a new “Buddy Christ” propaganda from Cardinal Glick (Carlin) in New Jersey, they will get the supposed plenary indulgence and re-enter Heaven, until one of them goes berserk becomes a human-killing winged creature. A blasphemy cannot be dodged for sure, but eventually the film appears not as subversive as the synopsis suggests, au fond, Smith simply picks various characters from religious myth and squeeze them into a wacky adventure of fantasy without even badmouthing Catholicism, there should be no hard-feeling (as the opening pointers amusingly noted). keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

In Swedish writer/director Ruben Östlund’s fourth feature, a nuclear Swedish family takes on a skiing vacation in a luxury resort at the French Alps, Tomas (Kuhnke) and Ebba (Kongsli) with their two kids Harry and Vera, however as the title suggests, Tomas’ one instinct reaction during a "force majeure” - an avalanche which turns out to be a false alarm, and his further denial triggers the marital dissonance between them, and eventually puts their marriage through an unanticipated test. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks

One major gimmick of Irish director Lenny Abrahamson’s music drama-comedy FRANK is its star Michael Fassbender (the “it” actor presently) will only appear with a giant paper mask containing his head and never reveal himself in the entire film, but spoiler alert! It turns out that Lenny cannot keep the promise and allow Fassbender’s sex appeal (his face to be more accurate) to go untapped and be concealed inside that doll head. So in the last ten minutes, when our eccentric titular protagonist Frank (Fassbender) finally reveals himself without his shield to the outside world, a mixed feeling arises, admittedly Fassbender is my favourite actor among his generation, it is a surprise to see his visage (thanks to the deceptive publicity stunt) in the climax scenes of the film, a pathos-exuding music performance of the song I LOVE YOU ALL, written by the composer Stephen Rednecks. However at the same time, a part of me wishes Lenny Abrahamson could have had the guts to let Frank do the scenes with his mask on, keep the eccentricity running until the last drop. keep reading my review on my blog: please google cinema omnivore, thanks

A double-bill of contemporary Germany's leading director Christian Petzold’s most recent films BARBARA and PHOENIX, both are executed with the same team and stars Nina Hoss, Petzold’s longtime muse and Ronald Zehrfeld as two leads, punctiliously examine the mentality of German people in the post-WWII era. In BARBARA, the locale is a rural surrounding of 1980s East Germany, Hoss is the titular Barbara, a doctor newly banished to a small hospital due to some unexplained collusion with West Germany, Barbara’s frosty bearing means she is not here to make friends, and her condition is sympathising although the hostility and vigilance between her and her colleagues is mutual, but she is also constantly under surveillance from the authority after hours, she even has to endure the humiliation of her body being manually checked each time when they launch a fine-tooth comb in her small unadorned apartment. However Barbara has her own secret, she has a West German lover Jörg (Waschke) who apparently is a rich business man and planning to rescue her from the repressive and authoritarian East Germany, Jörg even comes to visit her frequently and they engage in some uninhibited carnal knowledge. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

As I gave THE AVENGERS (2012) a 5/10, it is a sad truth that I still haven’t reached the rarefied status of completely ignoring those populist “it” movies, like FURIOUS 7 (2015, 6/10), the second assembly of the Avengers is another box-office mammoth of 2015, and this time I have to squeeze in a small packed screening room with an equally small screen in the local cinema here in Cairo, my worst fear towards 3D technique came true, it is disastrously dim-lit, why on earth we can watch a bright trailer on our computer screen yet when comes to the real one, we have to endure this schlocky quality? to keep reading my review on my blog, google: cinema omnivore, thanks

a double feature with Saint Laurent It is rather unusual that two French biographic films about the prêt-à-porter fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent (1936-2008) both came out in the same calendar year, YVES SAINT LAURENT opened in January 2014, directed by actor-turns-director Jalil Lespert, stars a rather unknown Pierre Niney as our protagonist and Guillaume Gallienne (the triple threat of 2014 CÉSAR AWARDS winner ME, MYSELF AND MUM 2013, 7/10) as his business partner and life companion Pierre Bergé. While Bertrand Bonello’s more ambitious and high-profile SAINT LAURENT debuted in Cannes last year, with Gaspard Ulliel and Jérémie Renier take the central roles as Yves and Pierre. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

The Parondi family comes from a southern Italian village, after its patriarch passes away, the mother Rosaria (Paxinou) decides to bring her other four sons Simone (Salvatori), Rocco (Delon), Ciro (Cartier) and the underage Luca (Vidolazzi) to seek refuge with her eldest son Vincenzo (Focás) in Milan. Their unexpected arrival instantly enkindles a wrangle with the family of Ginetta (Cardinale), Vincenzo’s fiancée. In the opening gambit, Visconti manifests how he is well-versed in orchestrating a huge cast simultaneously and effectively expediting the scenes from a festive get-together to a classic Italian verbal battle with utter precision. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

In viewing of its title, this dark comedy features SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE alumni Hader and Wigg doesn’t look like a gag-packed farce as one may preconceive, THE SKELETON TWINS is director Craig Johnson’s second film, it became a Sundance darling in 2014, and surges onto the top-tier of USA's indie output last year, so I am tempted to check whether or not it deserves the merits. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

Five years after his Oscar-nominated feature debut THE SECRET OF KELLS (2009), which unfortunately I’ve yet to watch, the Irish filmmaker Tomm Moore’s second film SONG OF THE SEA continues to capitalise on the ancient mythology with the traditional hand-drawn animation technique, and again becomes a dark horse on this year's Oscar race of BEST ANIMATION PICTURE. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks

Nostalgia of the original PADDINGTON BEAR series and the beloved novel by Michael Bond aside, Paul King’s PADDINGTON is a trademark Christmas offering from UK, a love letter to London and everything is tailor-made to not cross the borderline of being kids-friendly, but for adult audience who doesn’t grow up with the said bear, the film is generically predictable (the only exception belongs to the yardstick that Londoners never even raise their eyebrows to see a talking bear in front of them) and one might feel a bit disappointed that it couldn’t be more daring or ingenious considering its all-too-cute art productions which resemble lightweight Wes Anderson artworks and a wonderfully anthropomorphic CGI bear named Paddington (voiced by Whishaw). keep reading my review on my blog: please google "cinema omnivore", thanks!

Generally speaking, X-MEN series is my favourite among the superhero universe, yet the distant memory of Gavin Hood’s X-MEN ORIGINS:WOLVERINE (2009, 7/10) has faded into blurry fragments, this time, Hugh Jackson’s Logan (who is in top form in his Wolverine physique) embarks on an exotic journey in Japan, all by himself (with Jean haunting him all along to allure him into discard his immortality), to say a farewell to an old friend Yashida (Yahmamouchi) in his dying bed, whom in the opening sequences, Logan saves during the Nagasaki bombing, only to discover there is a sinister scheme awaits. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks

LABYRINTH is Jim Benson’s follow-up of the grotesquely eye-opening puppet enterprise THE DARK CRYSTAL (1982, 7/10), and also his final painstaking work, where he pairs a cherubic Jennifer Connelly and a trend-setting David Bowie (look at his 80s coiffure!) as human actors with all his accomplished puppets, to present a spellbinding fairytale in a labyrinth at the heart **** kingdom. It was a disastrous commercial failure upon its release, but time has been pretty generous to it and now it has achieved the cult status and even a possible sequel has been hatched for many years. keep reading my review on my blog, please google: cinema omnivore, thanks!

An Easter weekend cinema-going of this topical car-chasing no brainer, a franchise has already exceedingly overstayed its shelf-life, reaches an unforeseen acme catalysed by the tragic loss of its co-leading man Paul Walker last year (ironically in a car crash, again a bloody testimony of "movies are deceitful”, considering in this latest offering, no lack of crashes, but not even a minor concussion incurred or whatsoever.). After the series best FAST FIVE (2011, 7/10) and a degenerative FAST AND FURIOUS 6 (2013, 6/10), this time, the director chair has been delegated to James Wan, the master-hand behind SAW & INSIDIOUS horror trademarks, it is a sure-thing its box office will explode and achieve another series-high, but reckoning a story and cast overhaul is inevitable for its next move, let us take it as a sincere eulogy not only to Paul but the franchise itself. continue reading the review on my blog, google: cinema omnivore, thanks!