Sunday 8 July 2018

this week on 100 Films

3 brand-new reviews were published to 100 Films in a Year this week, and they were...


Dudes & Dragons (2015)
the gag rate is alarmingly low. The exposition scenes are balanced on a knife edge where you can’t tell if the actors are playing it tongue-in-cheek because it’s supposed to be humorous, or if it’s because they’re reaching for a florid style that they think is correct for a serious High Fantasy movie. Put another way: take those joke-less scenes out of context and you might think they were just am-dram Fantasy.
Read more here.


Manchester by the Sea (2016)
This is not a plot-driven movie. There’s still a story, obviously, but it’s more of a character study about people coping with grief — not in the wailing, all-consuming way you might typically associate with grief being depicted on screen, but in a more subdued, naturalistic manner. In harmony with that, there’s an element to it which is, not irreverent, but certainly mundane — like making calls to funeral directors over breakfast, for instance — and scattered with darkly comic realities.
Read more here.


Passengers (2016)
Sometime in the future, shortly after mankind has begun to colonise other worlds, the spaceship Avalon is on a 120-year journey to a new planet with thousands of colonist-to-be in hibernation onboard. Just 30 years into the trip, the Avalon strikes an asteroid field, causing a malfunction that wakes up just two passengers: Jim (Chris Pratt), a mechanical engineer, and Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence), a journalist. Faced with the prospect of never reaching the destination they’d set out for, the pair begin to develop a relationship. Or so the trailer would have you believe (and this is where the spoilers come)
Read more here.


More next Sunday.