Tag: Ian McShane

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Coraline (3D)

Director – Henry Selick – 2009 – US – Cert. PG – 100m

UK release date 08/05/2009

Originally reviewed for Third Way in 2009; republished to coincide with not only the 15th anniversary cinema reissue of the film on Thursday, 15th August 2024, but also the LAIKA: Frame x Frame exhibition which shows at BFI Southbank from Monday, 12th August to Tuesday 1st October 2024 (free to visit, but booking essential – click here) accompanied by a stop-frame animation season including all five LAIKA feature films and much, much more

Selick has successfully positioned himself as Hollywood’s stop-frame puppet animation film-maker (as distinct from plasticine animation film-makers Nick Park and Aardman). His The Nightmare Before Christmas suggested leanings towards horror and the macabre; Coraline goes further in the sense that one’s immediate reaction after viewing was to question whether this was a film suitable for children (on reflection this may be a grown-up reaction and kids may in fact love the film, in much the same way that as a child I enjoyed hiding behind the sofa during the scary bits of Dr. Who.) The source material is an acclaimed children’s book by Neil Gaiman. Anyway, you have been warned.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

John Wick
Chapter 4

Director – Chad Stahelski – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 169m

** The first hour or so.

***** The last hour and a half or so.

The eponymous assassin is given a path to follow that will rid him and others of his obligations to shadowy organisation The High Table once and for all – available in Collector’s Editions, Steelbook, 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD from Monday, June 12th

The fourth episode in the John Wick franchise is not a film to come to without seeing the previous three first – and in the recent past, so they’re fresh in your memory. That was the mistake this reviewer made. Too much in the first hour or so refers back to what has gone before. Characters wander through vast urban or other sets (there’s an early sequence in the open North African desert) often spouting ponderous dialogue.

This works if you have an actor of the calibre of Ian McShane, who plays Winston, the deferential owner of the New York Continental Hotel, and, perhaps surprisingly, it also works with the franchise’s action star Keanu Reeves, who has got the delivery of grunts and one word dialogue lines (“yeah”) down to a fine art.… Read the rest