TheRetroCritic

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After getting some positive buzz in festivals, South Korean and American co-production Okja finally got a Netflix release last month. The cast includes Jake Gyllenhaal, Tilda Swinton, Steven Yeun, Paul Dano and, so far, the film has received praise from critics and audiences alike. You wouldn't necessarily think that a Korean film about a giant CGI pig would gather this much interest yet director Joon-ho Bong ( Snowpiercer , The Host ) turned an odd concept into an unlikely hit and it's quite probable we'll see him tackle a major Hollywood film very soon. On paper, Okja sounds like little more than a Pete's Dragon -style kids' movie where a cute, oversized, weird-looking animal befriends a youngster and they both get into goofy adventures as others try and break them apart. Indeed, this is very much a Pete's Dragon for this generation, much more so even than the actual Disney remake from 2016, but there is an edge to this one that you might not be expectin

I talk briefly about new sci-fi horror film Life .

A few months before the release of Alien: Covenant ( Ridley Scott's latest entry into the long-running sci-fi franchise), comes Life : another creepy space-set horror thriller in which a group of astronauts are forced to face a thoroughly unpleasant monster. While some reviews for this movie might not go much further than mentioning how derivative it is since it is essentially a mix of Alien , The Thing and Gravity , one could argue that what it lacks in originality it makes up for in sheer terror and, in fact, surpasses some of the aforementioned films in some ways. Life may seem like a B-movie but it is so well made that dismissing it as just that would be unfair. The way in which the inside of the space station is shot really makes you buy the setting with its zero gravity and tight compartments as we follow the crew members floating through the station convincingly, something that Gravity didn't quite capture. The reasonable running time actually means the tension is

Jake Gyllenhaal stars in Enemy , a strange little movie from Denis Villeneuve, the director of Prisoners and Arrival , about a teacher who discovers that a small-time actor looks exactly like him for some reason and tries to figure out why. The trailers suggested a thriller but this is really more of a low-key character study with a surreal edge. Enemy keeps you guessing from start to finish and it's likely that, even after the end credits have rolled, you'll still be thinking about it, piecing it all together. After playing a wild-eyed creep in Nightcrawler , Jake Gyllenhaal is back with yet another unique, off-beat performance (or two) as both the nervous teacher and his suspicious doppelgänger. Toronto is shot beautifully through a gold filter and Villeneuve proves himself once again capable of merging gritty and strange perfectly, much like Christopher Nolan does, as this one-man-show is framed by nightmarish visions of giant spiders. As to what the film itself mea

After trying to keep a troubled Hugh Jackman in check in last year's Prisoners , Jake Gyllenhaal is back with yet another dark, strange and, incidentally, really strong flick: Nightcrawler . Think Drive crossed with something a bit sleazier like David Cronenberg's Crash with some newsroom-themed satire thrown in. A super-skinny, crazy-eyed Gyllenhaal plays a small-time thief with big, if achievable, aspirations who discovers a new business opportunity through filming real crime or accident scenes and selling the footage to a news channel: the more graphic the footage, the better. Rene Russo is the TV producer buying what the dodgy freelance journalist has to offer, encouraging him the entire time to keep up the good work and deliver juicier and juicier footage. But even she did not realize the full extent of Louis Bloom's (Gyllenhaal) lack of morality and sociopathy. Director Dan Gilroy has created a truly fascinating, complex character in the vein of Robert De Niro&

Well, the Summer's officially over and it's looking like the actually good but slightly more depressing movies are starting to come out. And you know what? I'm totally ok with that. In the vein of Zodiac or even Se7en , Prisoners is a new thriller/whodunit with an all-star cast in which two little girls go missing, a bunch of people go looking for them and dodgy suspects are hinted at throughout. I know it sounds pretty standard but Prisoners is by no means a standard, been-there-done-that flick. Surprisingly, the film is one bleak, intense and brutal experience with fascinating, complex characters and so many twists and turns that its maze motif is entirely justified. Hugh Jackman plays the father of one of the missing daughters, a guy we're told likes to be ready for the worse, well: he sure wasn't ready for that one. Which is why the way the film develops that character is so interesting: making him do questionable things yet keeping his humanity intac