Mike Goes To Movies

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) Today marks the 20th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick's final film, the infamous, sexually-charged Eyes Wide Shut. In structure and theme the film centres upon dreams and desire. Dr. Bill and Alice Harford, portrayed by A-listers (and then-married) Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, are a married couple heading a seemingly standard American nuclear family. Below the surface of the couple however lie deep-seated jealousies, desires and lust. Like most of Kubrick's films, Eyes Wide Shut requires multiple viewings - every scene and every shot is constructed to be a masterpiece in its own right with hidden meanings and secrets littered throughout. It is a testament to Kubrick's auteur that this film does not rank among his very best, however, given to most other filmmakers it would certainly be marked as such. Eyes Wide Shut is a voyeuristic experience into the erotic dreams of an upper-class New Yorker - here, Cruise's Dr. Bill. Upon hearing his wife...

Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019) I'll be honest, though I did enjoy Homecoming I didn't think it was anything overly spectacular. Even with my great like of Michael Keaton, I thought that everything about the film was done admirably and well but nothing entirely special came out of it. It was for this reason that my interest in Far from Home wasn't over the moon, other than the fact that I also really like Jake Gyllenhaal and think Mysterio is an interesting villain. However, I can now say that I actually enjoyed Far from Home more than Homecoming - it is a wildly entertaining superhero flick and has one of the most visually arresting sequences I have seen in a superhero film thus far. Far from Home picks up the pieces from both Homecoming as well as Avengers: Endgame. Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is still in high school, struggling with the balance of being both a superhero and a teenage student, as well, that he's now mourning the death of his great mentor, Tony S...

Russian Doll - Season 1 (2019) I had been meaning to watch Russian Doll, Netflix's newest critical darling, when it released in February, however, life got in the way a bit (as it always does) and I just finished the show's incredible inaugural season a few days ago. Created by Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland, Russian Doll is the newest incarnation of the 'Groundhog Day' formula, that is, a plot revolving around a character being stuck in a time loop. In this case, it is Nadia (Lyonne), a gregarious, headstrong young female living in New York City. The catch, in this case, is that Nadia's time loop restarts every time that she dies - which just so happens to be quite often. For the first two-thirds of the show, the series plays out more as a comedy, with much of the humour stemming from Nadia's in-your-face and eccentric antics as well as her attempts at staying alive to not restart her loop. What makes this series special though is the slo...

Toy Story 4 (2019) It is a true testament to the excellence of the Toy Story series that sometimes you actually wish for the films to not hit you as hard as they do. The visceral emotions that this series evokes is on par with anything you will find in a non-animated or 'adult' film. Woody being replaced by Buzz, Buzz realizing he is only a toy, Woody being shelved for his broken arm, Jessie and Lotso's backstories, and, of course, the tragic scene in Part 3 where our beloved toys accept their deathly fates taking each other by the hand and waiting for whatever comes next... goddamn... Like it's three predecessors, Toy Story 4 has its own debilitatingly-impactful moments - though I will surely not spoil them here. In fact, the general story and arc at the core of the newest instalment may be one that will strike home for adults more than for its adolescent audience making it a film that people of all ages should make an effort to go out and see. Again, it would be...

Aladdin (2019) Ugh... I think the most succinct review I could give to this film is to put in one of those frowny-face emojis... Here is yet again one more uninspired live-action remake of a beloved Disney classic. This one had an uphill battle right from the get-go knowing it would have to compete with the late Robin William's tour de force performance as the Genie. However, truth be told, Will Smith's go at the role is not the worst part of this film. In fact, though Smith is no Williams, he does an adequate job at the role and tries his best to put his own spin on it (though it is difficult not to see Genie as simply being a blue-Will Smith). Aladdin is a strange beast as it is a mixture of recreating the original film verbatim and then also adding in some new plot points for Jasmine and the Genie.  The depth of these two characters are noticeably upgraded while the title character's arc remains quite unremarkable and relatively uninteresting.  Jasmine contends wit...

Chef (2014) You're so money you don't even know how money you are! (...wrong Favreau film). 2014's Chef is a very enjoyable film, and one that will most-definitely have you hungry for some tasty food (especially of the food truck variety). No, this is not necessarily a profound film or one that will have you re-evaluating your life choices and greatest mistakes, but it is a nice feel-good story and its charm will draw you in from the beginning and hold onto you like a big bear-hug through to its end. Chef's abounding charm oozes through in every scene. This film was very clearly a passion project of Jon Favreau's who wrote, directed and starred in this film and you can see the joy he is having in making it throughout the film's entirety. It also seems that others took notice of Favreau's passion as he has a very talented cast along with him for the ride, including John Leguizamo, Sofia Vergara, Oliver Platt, Bobby Cannavale, Dustin Hoffman and two frie...

Rocketman (2019) This film really is what you would want from a musical biography. Not only is it the customary showcase of a vast plethora of Elton John's incredible catalogue of hit songs, but more than that, its retelling of John's story is one that is piercing, fascinating and important to behold - detailing the extreme hardships of his childhood that paved the way for the struggles and addictions he would consistently contend with through much of his adulthood and through the beginning of his uber successful career. The story is quite the dark one, but one that therefore deserves to be told - both as an important character study and also to help understand the human behind the superstar. Rocketman shares more than a few similarities with last year's very-mediocre Bohemian Rhapsody and, by all accounts, Rocketman is what Bohemian should have been. (Interestingly, Rocketman's director, Dexter Fletcher, was a producer of Bohemian - perhaps he took more than a fe...