movies Archives — Lisandru Blog

Beauty And The Beast

Beauty And The Beast very much falls in to my Cinderella pile. As comparison piece to the original animation, this live action adaptation loses each battle it tries to forge. The ability to build a world using animation makes for a much more expansive, escapist aesthetic, and this kind of world building is very much missing in the remake. Belle’s (Emma Waston) ‘small provincial town’ looks exactly like what it is, a sound stage in a warehouse somewhere in Hollywood. Things get slightly better when we get to the castle scenes, but this time the problem lies not in the look of the sets but in the look of the characters. Lumiere (Ewan McGregor), Cogsworth (Ian McKellen), Mrs Potts (Emma Thompson) and co. don’t possess half the charm of their 90s predecessors, with the focus on making the ornaments look as ‘authentic’ as possible limiting their opportunity for real expression. View More

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising

Returning stars Seth Rogen, Zac Efron and Rose Byrne are joined by Chloë Grace Moretz for Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, the follow-up to 2014’s most popular original comedy. Nicholas Stoller again directs in a film that follows what happens when the will of parenthood goes against the bonds of sisterhood. View More

X-Men: Apocalypse

All the major comic book adaptations released in 2016 so far have featured revelatory references to 1980s properties: From Deadpool’s fourth-wall-stomping riff on Ferris Bueller to the blink-and-you-miss-it Excalibur shout-out in Batman v. Superman or Civil War’s playful nod to The Empire Strikes Ba…

The Legend of Tarzan

John Clayton as Tarzan following his parents’ death in Africa would be raised by an ape and would be known by the name Tarzan, would leave Africa and go to his parents’s home in England along with woman he fell in love with and married, Jane Porter. He would be asked by Belgian King Leop…

Raiders: The Story Of The Greatest Fan Film Ever Made

It’s been a tough few years for film fandom. While it should be a golden age — with various nerd properties hitting theaters and enjoying critical and commercial success — for a particular subset of the culture, that success has spoiled into something darker. Other outlets have written about this (in particular, Birth.Movies.Death. and The A.V. Club) covering how a (very vocal) portion of fandom has turned into an entitled and threatening bunch, affixing their identities to various studio properties and attacking those who don’t share their views. It’s easy, with this loud minority issuing threats and insults to dissenters, to forget that fandom can be a source of positivity. After all, many creators start out as fans themselves. View More

Right Now, Wrong Then

The title of Hong Sang-soo’s new film, Right Now, Wrong Then, can mean many different things depending on the intonation and emphasis given to the phrases it contains. “Right now” could mean “this very second,” and the following negation of this phrase could then suggest the importance of the presen…

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

Hard-partying brothers Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave (Zac Efron) place an online ad to find the perfect dates (Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza) for their sister's Hawaiian wedding. Hoping for a wild getaway, the boys instead find themselves outsmarted and out-partied by the uncontrollable duo. View More

The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book is a live-action adaptation of Disney's famous animated film, The Jungle Book(1967). It is also based on Rudyard Kipling's novel of the same name. Mowgli(Neel Sethi) has lived in the jungle, for as long as he can remember. In the jungle, he is raised by a pack of wolves, led by Akela(Giancarlo Esposito). A wolf named Raksha(Lupita Nyong'o), is the only mother he has ever known. He has an ally & a friend, in a panther named Bagheera(Ben Kingsley). When the treacherous tiger Shere Khan(Idris Elba), opposes to Mowgli staying in the jungle, Bagheera has to return the man-cub to the man village. While on their journey, Mowgli & Bagheera receive help from a grizzly bear, named Baloo(Bill Murray). Now, it is up to Bagheera & Baloo to take Mowgli to the man village, safe & sound. View More

Elvis and Nixon

On a December morning in 1970, the King of Rock 'n Roll showed up on the lawn of the White House to request a meeting with the most powerful man in the world, President Nixon. Starring Academy Award® nominee Michael Shannon as Elvis Presley and two-time Academy Award® winner Kevin Spacey as Richard Nixon, comes the untold true story behind this revealing, yet humorous moment in the Oval Office forever immortalized in the most requested photograph in the National Archives. View More

Everybody Wants Some

Everybody Wants Some it's like a lost gem of the 1980s when a group of college baseball players navigate their way through the freedoms and responsibilities of unsupervised adulthood. Proving that slapstick comedy, hot girls, and stoners are ageless, Dazed and confused director, Richard Linklater created a relateable comedy about male bounding and sets it in the 1980s. A freshmen baseball player experiences the best first three days of college possible.It may look like it came out at the same time as such slapstick comedies as Porky's and Animal House, but just like those screwball comedies, Everybody wants some is timeless. View More

Sweet Bean

The "Sweet bean" movie begins with a sequence of the main character Sentaro (Masatoshi Nagase) walking up to the roof of his apartment building for a cigarette. He walks out of his apartment, up the steps, smokes, walks down the steps, and back into his place. Kawase’s patient camera, keen to silently observe motion and thereby her characters’ interaction with their environment, likens this doubled movement to breathing. The story is shaped by a similar oscillation: that of night and day. It revolves around Sentaro’s small shop, where he sells dorayaki, a mouth-watering Japanese dessert consisting of sweet bean paste (the “an” of the original Japanese title) sandwiched between two pancakes, and it mostly develops through a series of days at the shop. View More

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Following his titanic struggle against General Zod, Metropolis has been razed to the ground and Superman is the most controversial figure in the world. While for many he is still an emblem of hope, a growing number of people consider him a threat to humanity, seeking justice for the chaos he has brought to Earth. As far as Bruce Wayne is concerned, Superman is clearly a danger to society. He fears for the future of the world with such a reckless power left ungoverned, and so he dons his mask and cape to right Superman's wrongs. View More

Midnight Special

idnight Special is a movie about an eight-year-old boy, who develops some kind of extraordinary power. An exceptional opening scene kicks off the story, and Nichols makes sure we are alert by forcing us to absorb and assemble the slew of clues flying at us … an Amber alert, cardboard on the windows of a cheap motel, a news report tying us to San Angelo, Texas, duct tape on the peep hole, a duffel bag of weapons, two anxiety-filled men, and a goggled-boy under a white sheet who seems extremely calm in an otherwise hectic environment. We learn a lot, yet many questions remain. View More

Divergent Allegiant

Allegiant is the third movie in The Divergent Series franchise.The film continues exactly from the end of Insurgent to a journey that Tris and Four take to discover what is beyond the wall that surrounds Chicago,an experiment city. View More

The Lobster

The overwhelming taboo surrounding romantic independence drives The Lobster, the latest low-key, high concept black comedy from Yorgos Lanthimos. In this us-but-slightly-different universe, if you haven’t found your “suitable partner” by a certain age, you’re turned into an animal. The pursuit of love isn’t just aspirational; it’s mandated. It’s also laff-out-loud funny as translated in film’s absolute apathy, which might be oppressively bleak were it not so consistent with its low emotional intelligence. Collin Farrell’s puppy-eyed David has 45 days at a soon-to-be couples’ resort to find his match before he is turned into the titular lobster. The conceit is a winning one, but it’s mostly a dim flashbulb illuminating The Lobster’s wry commentary on the lengths we are willing to go to find that special someone (please slide into these DMs). In an uncluttered look at the conventionally fraught language of love, The Lobster dehumanizes the very myth that separates man from crustacean. View More