The Cynical Cinephiles

Director: James Gray Cast: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, Donald Sutherland In the near distant future, the entirety of human life is threatened when unexplained power surges hit the Solar System. Astronaut Roy McBride (Pitt) is approached by U.S Space Command and informed that his missing father of 16 years, H. Clifford McBride (Jones), is suspected to be alive and that the surges are a result of Clifford's "Lima Project" in deep space. Roy accepts the mission to go to Mars and establish communication with his father in order to prevent a worldwide catastrophe. As deeply personal as it is visually gorgeous, Ad Astra is perhaps the most artful and impactful big budget movie since Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk (2017) . The film relies less on action sequences (although there are a handful of those to be found) and instead favours an introspective view on humanity, touching on densely thematic and allegoric philosophies. Gray enacts all of the a...

Director: Lorene Scafaria Cast: Constance Wu, Jennifer Lopez, Keke Palmer, Julia Stiles, Lili Reinhart, Lizzo, Cardi B Having endured a summer where an onslaught of sequels and tent pole films dominated the box-office, the arrival of writer-director Lorene Scafaria's Hustlers (based on an acclaimed New York Magazine feature) provides a much needed dose of refreshing indulgence by telling a story that feels comfortingly familiar and simultaneously wildly subversive. In order to make ends meet, Destiny (Wu) begins working as a stripper in a New York City night club. New and inexperienced, Destiny is befriended by and taken under Ramona's (Lopez) wing, the top earner and most in demand out of all the dancers. After the financial crisis diminishes their income, Ramona convinces Destiny and two other dancers to indulge in her scheme to fleece the wealthy Wall Street clientele who frequent the club. The core bond and sisterhood that the women develop is unlike any dynamic th...

Director: Rupert Goold Cast: Renee Zellweger, Jessie Buckley, Michael Gambon Encapsulating the life and truth of a famous figure is a daunting challenge or prospect for any film-maker, which is why recent biopics have selected a concentrated and defining time period to explore. Judy opts for this increasingly popular approach and focuses on the final few years of Judy Garland's life.  Finding herself in a financial crisis, beloved actress and singer Judy Garland (Zellweger) agrees to perform a run of sell-out concerts in London, 1968. During her time there, she enters a whirlwind romance with her fifth-husband, battles with her ex over custody of their children, re-engages with fans, forges new friendships and reminisces over her turbulent past. Similarly to early 2019's Stan & Ollie, the screenplay for Judy frames its protagonist in the final years of her career as she performs night after night in a series of concerts to her U.K audience. However, her s...

Director: Quentin Tarantino Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Margaret Qualley, Timothy Olyphant, Dakota Fanning, Bruce Dern One of the few remaining auteurs of our time who can simultaneously guarantee audience satisfaction and critical approval, Tarantino has expressed many times that his next feature (his tenth) will be his last. As he approaches his cinematic swan song, the director is clearly experiencing a sense of nostalgia and has penned a love letter to the industry in the daring and dazzling Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood . Los Angeles, 1969 - the Golden Age of Hollywood. TV star Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) and his long-time stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt) both individually struggle to adapt to the shift that their industry has undertaken over the course of their respective careers. Meanwhile, Sharon Tate's (Robbie) star is on the rise as she graces the silver screen in a slew of hit films. Tarantino has always attracted a high-calibre cast but for  On...

Director:  Andy Muschietti Cast:  Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan, James Ransone, Andy Bean, Bill Skarsgard It is back. Two years after the phenomenal success of It (Chapter One), adapted from the first half of the Stephen King novel of the same name that became the highest grossing horror film of all time, the second instalment of the two-parter hits our screens. Having defeated the maniacal clown Pennywise (Skarsgard) in the summer of 1989, the Losers' Club disbanded and went their separate ways, leaving the traumatic experience and Derry behind them. 27 years later, Pennywise resurfaces and Mike Hanlon (Mustafa) calls the rest of the gang to take a united stand against the shape-shifting terror and end his reign once and for all. Armed with an already petrifying reputation, Pennywise exacerbated the fear of clowns that permeated the zeitgeist, upheld by Bill Skarsgard's defining performance as the iconic horror antagonist. Until ...

Director: Alexandra Aja Cast: Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper When a Category 5 hurricane hits her Florida home town, Haley (Scodelario) ignores all evacuation orders and goes off in search of her missing father, Dave (Pepper). Haley finds Dave severely injured in the basement of their family home that slowly begins to flood as the raging storm outside strengthens. As the water levels rise, the father and daughter face an even more dangerous threat - a pack of gigantic alligators intent on feasting on anything that makes a splash. Director Alexandra Aja has cut his teeth making horrors his entire career but Crawl transpires to be his most commercially appealing effort to date. Having grasped a clear understanding of the film's limitations, Aja manages to channel them and craft a white knuckle ride where you never know where the next chomp is going to come from. At a taut 87-minutes, Aja knows when to stop the fun so as not to risk repeating the same threats and near-misses the...

Director: Jon Watts Cast: Tom Holland, Samuel L. Jackson, Jake Gyllenhaal, Cobie Smulders, Jon Favreau, Marisa Tomei, Jacob Batalon, Zendaya Coming a mere three months after  Avengers: Endgame, the cinematic event   that left audiences reeling, Spider-Man: Far From Home deals with the consequences of the time-travel epic and explores how the web-slinger is adjusting to a world *SPOILER* without Tony Stark. Having returned from "the Blip" that vanquished half of the universe and helping to defeat Thanos, Peter Parker (Holland) hopes to embark upon a school summer vacation where he can sightsee and romance M.J (Zendaya). His plans for rest and relaxation are thwarted when creatures called Elementals surface and begin to wreak havoc across Europe and he is recruited by Nick Fury (Jackson) to fight them alongside a new superhero, Mysterio (Gyllenhaal). One of the opening scenes in Far From Home humorously pays homage to the fallen Avengers who sacrificed their lives to de...