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Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
2016 | Drama, History, War
This is honestly one of my favorite films ever made. I love Andrew Garfield even before he was in this film but then to see him in this film, he just shines. He is a phenomenal actor and while he's the main character, he doesn't take up too much space. It's clear that the story really isn't about Andrew Garfield as Desmond Doss, the story is about Desmond Doss and what he did for his country. I'm not sure that makes sense, but go with me. He gives such a powerful performance that it doesn't feel like you're watching an Andrew Garfield film, it's like you're watching what really happened to Desmond. I think those are the best films. When it isn't about the actors, it's about the story they're telling. When the story outshines the cast, I think that's when you have a great film on your hands. Sure, it helps that this cast was phenomenal - I love seeing Vince Vaughn play different levels of seriousness - but the story is what prevails here.

I think this might be Andrew Garfield's best film and easily one of the best films ever made.
  
    Concept

    Concept

    8.0 (1 Ratings) Rate It

    Tabletop Game

    In Concept, your goal is to guess words through the association of icons. A team of two players -...

Stillwater (2021)
Stillwater (2021)
2021 | Crime, Drama
6
5.5 (4 Ratings)
Movie Rating
On paper this has it all: Matt Damon's first great performance in *years*, an actually good sidekick child actor, a complex and consistently surprising father/daughter relationship, and though I initially dreaded the 2hr20min runtime it ended up being insanely economical with it against all odds. The only problem is it does all that without offering up a single piece of compelling imagery - framed into another one of these "white American solves problems in foreign country" things (to the point where a French woman asks Damon if he owns a gun while she's fucking him, like okay...) with a bargain-bin Lifetime Channel score. Not to mention the surreal way this rips off/takes inspiration from the Amanda Knox trial. Though you know what - they'd have their own separate sets of problems either way but - I'm glad this took the route of normie-fied mom & pop film as opposed to a tiring, self-serious prestige slog if it just had to be one or the other; that way it makes the unexpected shift in tone a little over halfway through so much more special. And that ending is a real gut punch.
  
Hallowed Out
Hallowed Out
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Haunted Tour Ends in Mystery
Julia Snowden has gotten roped into an effort to bring some tourists to town during October via a haunted homes tour. One of the stops is Gus’s restaurant where a rumrunner was killed by gangsters during Prohibition. An actor has been brought in to help with the reenactment, but the night of the first tour, he is shot when the lights go out. Who did it?

It truly is wonderful to revisit the characters, no matter how briefly it might be. The plot is strong, and the characters we meet along the way are just as strong. I didn’t see the twists of the mystery coming, and the ending caught me by surprise. There is a delightful sub-plot as well that kept me grinning. And there’s a recipe or two at the end.

NOTE: This story is a novella, roughly 100 pages, and was originally part of the novella collection Haunted House Murder. If you have that book, there is no need to buy this ebook. If you haven’t read the story, now is the time to sit back and enjoy this Halloween trip to Maine.
  
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
2022 | Action, Adventure
Wakanda Forever!
In late 2020 the actor Chadwick Boseman died, after a long - and private - battle with cancer, aged 43.

He was the original Black Panther.

That meant there was a lot of talk at the time about what Marvel was going to do: re-cast, or not?

The answer was 'not', with a pre-credits sequence in this movie dealing with his (and the characters off-screen) passing, before the usual Marvel logo montage concentrates solely on him.

His on-screen sister Shuri then takes the lead for the rest of this movie, ably supported by on-screen mum Angela Bassett, as the nation of Wakanda struggles to accept his passing and as the rest of the world start looking for their own supplies of Vibranium, encroaching on a secret underwater civilization who then also approach Wakanda with a threat couched as an offer of cooperation.

The loss of T'Challa is felt throughout the movie, with Shuri railing against his passing and unable to accept what has happened for the most part of it, right up until the (somewhat moving) very final scenes of the film.