Tag Archives: Drama
20 Years On: Trainspotting (1996)
It’s that time again: enough sand has passed through the hourglass of eternity to discuss another classic in retrospective fashion. This week marks the 20th Anniversary of TRAINSPOTTING, Danny Boyle’s striking adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s game-changing novel about Edinburgh heroin … Continue reading
Review: Carol (2015)
When the awards come for CAROL, and come they will, it’ll be impossible (and unfair) to split Blanchett and Mara. One cannot exist without the other – the reason both actors work so well on screen how skillfully they play … Continue reading
Review: Creed (2015)
Astoundingly, CREED works equally well as a continuation of the ROCKY series and as a film in its own right. You might have expected one or the other, but it is an impressive balancing act to have it deliver as … Continue reading
Review: Room (2015)
It’s been a long time since a film affected me to quite this extent. ROOM got to me on a primal level, it cut into my soul and left me a blubbering wreck coming out of the cinema. It isn’t … Continue reading
Review: The Revenant (2015)
I’m one of a rapidly shrinking camp that still thinks that BIRDMAN deserved to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards last year. Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu is an iconoclast out to shake things up in Hollywood by being stylistically … Continue reading
Review: Aloha (2015)
Hey they used the old film studio logos and fanfares – that probably means something, right? A lot in ALOHA probably means something, but I’ll be damned if I can puzzle out what Cameron Crowe wanted his movie to say, … Continue reading
Review: Black Mass (2015)
BLACK MASS is a frustrating beast. I’d recommend you just watch THE DEPARTED again instead as it’s a much better Boston gangsters and informants movie that was partly based on Whitey Bulger’s story anyway. In the 1970s and 1980s, few … Continue reading
Review: The Lady in the Van (2015)
It’s always nice to sit back and watch a great actor do their thing. THE LADY IN THE VAN is often just that: Maggie Smith, Alan Bennett’s words. and a camera. You might not think Bennett’s stories would be particularly … Continue reading
Review: Mr. Holmes (2015)
Ian McKellen and Bill Condon have done it again, but in perhaps the exact opposite fashion to how they approached their stunning not-really-biopic of James Wale, GODS AND MONSTERS. In that film they wrapped a real person in the trappings … Continue reading
Review: Sicario (2015)
In case you were wondering, SICARIO opens with a card establishing that the term is derived from a Roman slur for violent Hebrew zealots and translates as “hitman” from Spanish. These dual definitions hint at two of the many … Continue reading
SSP Thinks Film 