David R. Walker

Posts Tagged ‘Brandon Sklenar’

Drop

Director: Christopher Landon

Cast: Meghann Fahy, Brandon Sklenar, Violett Beane, Reed Diamond, Ed Weeks, Travis Nelson, Ben Pelletier, Gabrielle Ryan  

Running Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

Film Rating: 7 out of 10

Horror director Christopher Landon who helmed the 2017 film Happy Death Day returns with a more psychological thriller in his new film Drop starring The White Lotus star Meghann Fahy as single mother Violet who decides to step out of her comfort zone and go on a date with the incredibly handsome photographer Henry played by Brandon Sklenar (Midway, It Ends with Us).

Violet leaves her 5 year old son in the capable hands of her sister Jen played by Violett Beane. Violet wears a fabulous red dress and is ready for a night on the town in downtown Chicago at the exclusive restaurant Palette on the 38^th floor of a skyscraper.

As she patiently waits for Henry to arrive, she receives digital drop images which threaten her night out. A cyber stalker starts commanding her to do specific things one of which is to kill her date. If Violet doesn’t comply then the cyber stalker will instruct a professional killer played by Ben Pelletier to kill her son Toby.

From a visual perspective Drop is a fascinating film in which the director and a very creative production designer namely Susie Cullen create a restaurant which becomes a character of its own. Drop makes use of the concept of urban cinema to a maximum.

Palette is the chic downtown restaurant to bring your date to, a sleek 5 star gourmet experience with gorgeous lighting affording an expansive view of Chicago. A place with creepy waiters and lots of single men hanging around using their smartphones. Anyone could be a killer.

As Violet tries to navigate an extremely tricky evening, Henry soon realizes that the first date jitters are far more serious especially when the sleazy piano man Phil played by Ed Weeks suddenly collapses after too many martinis.

Much like director Mark Myclod’s bizarre 2022 thriller The Menu starring Nicholas Hoult and Anya Taylor-Joy, Drop works on multiple levels as a Hitchcockian thriller about a traumatized woman who is desperate to save her son while trying to uncover who is really threatening as well as a tailored narrative about how woman can feel vulnerable in any given situation.

In a pure character switch, the heroine is the one who saves the hero while the villain remains out of sight right until dessert is served.

Drop is captivating, engaging and exciting. A clever psychological thriller whose only downfall was a script that needed some character nourishment in terms of a decent back story. Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar do their best in a psychological thriller about first dates which crash and burn.

If you enjoy a good psychological thriller, then catch Drop in cinemas now. Drop is rated 7 out of 10 and is worth seeing especially for those wanting to dive back into the dating pool.

It Ends with Us

Director: Justin Baldoni

Cast: Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Jenny Slate, Brandon Sklenar, Kevin McKidd, Amy Morton, Hasan Minhaj

Running Time: 2 hours and 10 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

We thought romance had died a sudden death on the cinema screen recently.

Luckily director Justin Baldoni’s adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s 2016 bestselling novel It Ends With Us has lavishly appeared on the cinema screens.

American actress Blake Lively takes on the role of Lily Bloom, a beautiful young woman who after briefly mourning the death of her father in her home town of Plethora, Maine, moves to Boston, Massachusetts to start a new life and open a florist.

On the rooftop of a swish apartment building in downtown Boston, Lily meets the handsome Ryle Kincaid a neurosurgeon who she initially resists but then he sweeps her off her feet. Lily Bloom superbly portrayed by Blake Lively (The Age of Adaline, The Town, Café Society, Savages), who proves she has the acting skill to navigate a complex role, is still dealing with the trauma of having an abusive father Andrew Bloom, briefly played by Kevin McKidd (Tulip Fever, Made of Honor) while dealing with an overbearing but well intentional mother Jenny Bloom wonderfully played by Chicago PD’s Amy Morton.

It Ends With Us is a beautifully crafted film which deals with subtle psychological abuse suffered by women in relationships with violent overbearing men.

While Lily’s florist thrives, conflict in her life appears when she accidentally sees her teen lover again after many years, a smouldering Atlas Corrigan superbly played by Brandon Sklenar (Midway, Vice) last seen on the small screen in the ravishing series 1923 playing a hunter Spencer Dutton in colonial Africa. It’s clear that the sparks between Atlas and Lily have not died and soon their relationship rekindles.

On every level, It Ends with Us is a beautiful romance with some skilfully interwoven themes about abuse, female empowerment and finding love. Blake Lively is sensational in this film, in every scene she looks like a supermodel. An absolutely beautiful woman to play the central character in a contested love triangle peppered with abuse, admiration and adjustment.

It Ends With Us is primarily aimed at a female audience but it was refreshing to see how full the cinema was to witness a film devoid of violence, special effects, action and gratuitous nudity. Sometimes it’s a romance that will fill the cinema seats and in this case It Ends with Us delivers on every level with some sensational lead actors.

It Ends with Us gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is highly recommended viewing for those that have read the novel and want to experience a riveting romantic drama on the big screen. See it now!

Midway

Director: Roland Emmerich

Cast: Ed Skrein, Patrick Wilson, Dennis Quaid, Woody Harrelson, Mandy Moore, Luke Evans, Luke Kleintank, Aaron Eckhart, Nick Jonas, Keean Johnson, Etushi Toyokawa, Tadanobu Asano, Darren Criss, Brandon Sklenar, Jake Manley

The Battle of Midway was the turning point in the fight between the Americans and the Japanese in the summer of 1942, which followed on from the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941.

German director Roland Emmerich who brought viewers such films as Anonymous, 2012, The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day, directs Midway with explosive special effects and excellent sound editing by Peter Bawlec.

Emmerich expertly recreates a good old fashioned war film with Midway aided by a superb ensemble cast who all play real life heroes who participated and survived the epic Battle of Midway.

This cast includes Ed Skrein (Maleficent, Mistress of Evil) who plays maverick pilot Dick Best, Mandy Moore plays his outspoken wife Ann Best, Patrick Wilson as naval intelligence officer Edwin Layton, Oscar nominee Woody Harrelson (Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri) plays Chester W. Nimitz, Welsh actor Luke Evans plays Wade McClusky, Dennis Quaid plays William Halsey and Aaron Eckhart plays Jimmy Doolittle.

There are also brief appearances by musician turned actor Nick Jonas as Bruno Gaido and American Crime Story Golden Globe winner Darren Criss as Eugene Lindsay.

What screenwriter Wes Tooke does insightfully is present the battle of Midway from both the American and the Japanese perspectives showing that in every war there are always losses on both side, while highlighting the specific historical landmarks which pinpointed Japanese aggression in the Far East and the Pacific.

The bombing of Pearl Harbour dragged America into the Second World War and caused the Pacific Theatre of War to be fraught with tragedy, aggression and strategic victories on both sides until eventually the Japanese sued for peace in 1945 after the American’s decisive and devastating atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

With spectacular visual effects, Midway is highly recommended viewing for fans of genuine historical War films which as a genre Hollywood seems to have disregarded in favour of superhero fantasy franchises.

Midway gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 is definitely worth seeing for the visual effects, the battle sequences and the portrayal of historical events during World War II which pitted two naval world powers against each other: America and the Empire of the Sun.  

Vice

Director: Adam McKay

Cast: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Sam Rockwell, Steve Carell, Alison Pill, Eddie Marsan, Justin Kirk, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Jesse Plemons, Shea Whigham, Tyler Perry, Brandon Sklenar

Thanks to a preview screening organized by United International Pictures at Suncoast Cinecentre, Durban, I was fortunate enough to see director Adam McKay’s highly anticipated biopic Vice about Republican Vice President Dick Cheney featuring an utterly unrecognizable Christian Bale as Cheney and Oscar nominee Amy Adams as his ambitious wife Lynne.

Inventively directed by Adam McKay, Vice does for Republican politics what The Big Short did so brilliantly for the 2008 Financial Meltdown on Wall Street. McKay, besides extracting superb performances out of Christian Bale and Amy Adams, also incisively cuts into the heart of Republican politics especially from George W. H. Bush’s Presidency in 2000 and right through the crucial months which followed the devastating attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York in September 2001 to the eventual invasion of Iraq in 2003.

This is 21^st century contemporary history which affected the world and writer and director McKay taps into the zeitgeist of those crucial turning points which changed American History and effectively portrays Vice President Dick Cheney to be a ruthless and opportunistic politician who believed in the executive powers theory which basically sees the President and Vice President of a country make executive decisions without any checks or balances from Congress or the U. S. House of Representatives.

Vice is an incisive look at American Politics and is much about how America got Trump into the Oval Office in 2016 as it is about any potential Republican failings in terms of U.S. foreign policy.

At the centre of this comedic biopic are two utterly transformative performances by Oscar winner Christian Bale (The Fighter) and Oscar nominee Amy Adams (The Master, Doubt, American Hustle) as this unassuming Wyoming couple who become the most powerful couple at the White House during the Bush administration from 2000-2008, always staying a step ahead of the decision curve.

Oscar winner Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri) is equally charismatic as the young George W. Bush who asks Dick Cheney to be his running mate for the 2000 elections.

Director Adam McKay also assembles an excellent supporting cast including Oscar Nominee Steve Carell (Foxcatcher) as Donald Rumsfeld and Tyler Perry as Colin Powell. 

The film’s narrative is incisively told in a cleverly constructed pastiche of dubious politics touching on some controversial subjects like torture and rendition with some extremely graphic images thrown in.  Vice is a fascinating portrait of an unassuming bureaucrat who becomes so powerful that he fabricated reasons to invade a sovereign state and start the American invasion of Iraq, a move which definitely destabilized the Middle East as a whole.

For lovers of excellent political films, then viewers have to see Vice.

It’s an incredibly well researched indictment of the Republican Party made all the more pertinent by the disruptive Trump presidency which is currently dominating global media headlines.

Adam McKay’s Vice is brilliant and thought-provoking making Christian Bale a hot contender for another Oscar win as his transformative performance dazzles in every frame much like Gary Oldman ‘s vivid portrayal of Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour.

Vice gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and accurately portrays how decisive strategic political actions by a global superpower like America can be indirectly attributed to the rise of global conflict and international terrorism in other regions of the world. Terrifying and fascinating stuff!