Emily Blunt | the m0vie blog

New Escapist Column! On “The English” as a Love Letter to Sergio Leone…

Posted on November 8, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist yesterday. This week marks the premiere of The English, a co-production between the BBC and Amazon.

The English is effectively a spaghetti western with a very British sensibility. It is written and directed by Hugo Blick. It stars Emily Blunt, and its supporting cast is populated with British and Irish character actors like Ciarán Hinds, Toby Jones, Rafe Spall and Stephen Rea. However, it is a thoughtful exploration of the genre, and an obvious love letter to the exploitation movies of the sixties and seventies. The show is occasionally a little to reverent to its inspirations, but it is beautifully shot and deeply moving, anchored in two great central performances from Chaske Spencer and Emily Blunt.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: Amazon, bbc, Emily Blunt, hugo blick, review, Spaghetti Western, Television, the english, the escapist, the western, western | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! “Jungle Cruise – Review”

Posted on July 29, 2021 by Darren

I’m thrilled to be launching movie reviews on The Escapist. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be joining a set of contributors in adding these reviews to the channel. For the moment, I’m honoured to contribute a three-minute film review of Jungle Cruise, which is releasing theatrically and on Disney+ Premiere Access this weekend.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: 3 minute review, 3mr, Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, film, jungle cruise, Movie, raiders of the lost ark, romancing the stone, the escapist, the rock | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Jungle Cruise

Posted on July 27, 2021 by Darren

Jungle Cruise is a throwback to a throwback to a throwback.

Jungle Cruise is inspired by the eponymous theme park ride, a surprisingly common occurrence in the age of intellectual-property-derived blockbusters, and an approach that has led to films like Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl and The Haunted Mansion. However, because even narrative-driven theme park rides don’t necessarily provide enough story to sustain a feature-length film, Jungle Cruise positions itself as a very deliberate homage to movies like The Mummy, and traces that lineage back to classic eighties adventures like King Solomon’s Mines, Romancing the Stone and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Cruise Control.

There’s an undeniable charm in this. After all, that adventure movie template can trace its roots back to movies like The African Queen and even into classic screwball comedies. It is a narrative framework that lends itself to charismatic movie star performances, and so it makes sense that Jungle Cruise features two genuinely engaging movie stars at its core: Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt. Jungle Cruise is at its strongest when it is willing to trust its leads to do what they do best, to be fun and charming while having exotic adventures together.

Unfortunately, Jungle Cruise feels too beholden to the conventions of modern blockbuster storytelling to lean into its stronger elements. Instead, those aspects of the films are constantly at war with the demands and the limitations of a modern spectacle-driven blockbuster. At times, Jungle Cruise feels more like a faded map promising a path to precious treasure. The broad outline is clear, but the richer detail has been lost to time.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: adventure, Cruise, Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, film, Jaume Collet-Serra, jungle cruise, Movie, non-review review, raiders of the lost ark, review, romancing the stone, the mummy | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: A Quiet Place

Posted on March 28, 2018 by Darren

A Quiet Place is the latest entry in a string of contemporary high-concept postmodern horrors, very much of a piece with films like It Follows, Don’t Breathe or Lights Out.

These movies are largely predicated upon the internal logic of the horror movie, often incorporating and literalising fundamental parts of the horror movie experience into their conceptual frameworks. It Follows is obsessed with the rules that govern its unstoppable supernatural force, with the teen protagonists seeking to exploit and manipulate them. Lights Out focuses on a creature that can only really move when it is unseen, weaponising the audience’s impulse to look away or cover their eyes when presented with horrific images within the film.

Maize runners.

A Quiet Place builds on the same horror movie anxiety as Don’t Breath – the audience’s urge to gasp or to scream in response to the events on the screen. A Quiet Place unfolds in a world dominated by monsters that hunt based on sound, creating an environment where the human cast members have to remain as quiet as possible in order to survive. No matter what happens, the characters cannot scream. Given that they are starring in a horror movie, that is quite the challenge.

A Quiet Place is a lean and effective piece of filmmaking from director John Krasinski, who also worked on the script written by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. As one might expect given the premise, A Quiet Place is a horror movie that often feels quite minimalist; twenty minutes of set-up giving way to seventy minutes of sustained climax. The results are invigourating, a horror movie worth shouting about.

Children should be seen and not heard.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: a quiet place, Emily Blunt, film, horror, John Krasinski, Movie, non-review review, review | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Girl on the Train

Posted on October 3, 2016 by Darren

What would you get if you tried to produce Gone Girl without David Fincher?

It is a tough question to answer, given Fincher’s style is an integral part of the film. It is impossible to divorce Gone Girl from Fincher’s steady cam shots and clinical framing. However, The Girl on the Train still makes a valiant attempt to answer. Whatever about the source material, the adaptation of The Girl on the Train is monomaniacally fixated upon that pulpy breakout psychological thriller, constructing another gaslighting murder investigation in desaturated terms to an electronic score that cannot help but evoke the work of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

A pale reflection.

However, director Tate Taylor is no David Fincher. Fincher keenly understood the pulpy absurdity of his source material, playing into the ridiculousness of layered twists and double-bluffs that reimagined marriage as some sort of long-form psychological warfare. Taylor fundamentally misunderstands the tone of his film, pitching the forced coincidences and crazy revelations of The Girl on the Train as something to be taken entirely seriously. Gone is the irony that made Gone Girl so effective, replaced with an ill-advised earnestness that refuses to blink.

The problem is not that The Girl on the Train comes off the rails as the overly elaborate details of its storytelling world come into focus. The problem is that it doesn’t nearly enough momentum to reach its destination.

A trained observer.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: david fincher, Emily Blunt, gone girl, non-review review, review, the girl on the train | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Edge of Tomorrow

Posted on May 28, 2014 by Darren

As with Oblivion, the last “Tom Cruise in the future” blockbuster, The Edge of Tomorrow feels like a gigantic big-budget episode of The Outer Limits. It’s low on character and high in concept. The film moves fast enough to gloss over the assorted problems that come with a typical time travel narrative. The script is witty enough to keep the audience engaged, and Tom Cruise is solid enough leading man to hold it all together.

The Edge of Tomorrow is wonderfully enjoyable high-concept thrill ride, and one of the stronger offerings of the summer so far.

It’s not the end of the world…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: all you need is kill, doug liman, Emily Blunt, non-review review, reset, review, science fiction, the edge of tomorrow, tom cruise, video games | 1 Comment »

Non-Review Review: Looper

Posted on September 9, 2012 by Darren

This movie was seen as part of Movie Fest, which was as much of a joy this year as it was last year. If not moreso.

Looper is a wonderful high-concept science-fiction film that makes a shrewd decision to avoid dwelling on temporal mechanics. A “time travel” movie, Looper is far more preoccupied with fascinating metaphysical questions about cycles of violence and cause-and-effect than it is with temporal paradoxes or the butterfly effect. In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that it’s actually a lot easier to follow than director Rian Johnson’s earlier collaboration with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brick. It’s fast, it’s smart, and it’s very well put together. It’s a meticulously constructed and breathlessly engaging thriller, and one that never under-estimates its audience.

Little room for Levitt-y…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: arts, bruce willis, Emily Blunt, film, Joe, Johnson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Looper, Movie, non-review review, review, Rian Johnson, Science fiction film, time travel, Time travel in fiction | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Five-Year Engagement

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Darren

The Five-Year Engagement is the best romantic comedy of 2012 so far. Reuniting the talents of Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller, the film manages to offer a refreshingly frank and honest perspective of romantic relationships. The interactions feel more organic, the third act crisis is rooted in something more primal and relevant than some idle miscommunication and the resolution isn’t based on the notion that people can inexplicably change. Like Segel and Stoller’s superb Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Five-Year Engagement is predicated on the assumption that love must mean accepting and embracing your partner for who they are, rather than what you want them to be. It’s a little depressing that this moral feels almost subversive in this day-and-age of formulaic and generic romantic comedies, but there’s no denying that The Five-Year Engagement is head-and-shoulders above most of its competitors.

They’ll get married this year… in a pig’s eye…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Alison Brie, amy adams, Emily Blunt, film, Five Year Engagement, forgetting sarah marshall, jason segel, Judd Apatow, matt damon, mila kunis, Movie, Nicholas Stoller, non-review review, review, Romantic comedy film, Segel, The Five, Violet | Leave a comment »

Gideon’s Daughter (Review)

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Darren

The wonderful folks at the BBC have given me access to their BBC Global iPlayer for a month to give the service a go and trawl through the archives. I’ll have some thoughts on the service at the end of the month, but I thought I’d also take the opportunity to enjoy some of the fantastic content.

Stephen Poliakoff’s companion piece to Friends and Crocodiles, airing just a month after that original drama film, Gideon’s Daughter feels like it owes a lot to a bunch of fascinating central performances. While Robert Lindsay provides the only on-screen evidence of a link between the two projects, reprising his role as an embittered old writer here, Poliakoff’s two stories are thematically linked, as the author focuses a lot of his frustrations on meaningless celebrity culture. This time, however, he sets the stories in the late nineties, allowing him to explore what he undoubtedly sees as the vulgarity of the millennium celebrations and to subtly examine the national outpouring of grief offer the loss of Princess Diana, while telling a rather simple story of a father and his daughter.

All tied up...

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: Arts and Entertainment, bbc, bbc global iplayer, BBC iPlayer, bill nighy, britain, Diana Princess of Wales, Emily Blunt, Gideon, ITunes, kenneth branagh, Mark Thompson, Nighy, novel, Poliakoff, Robert Lindsay, Stephen Poliakoff | Leave a comment »

My Best of 2011: The Adjustment Bureau & True Romance

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Darren

It’s that time of the year. To celebrate 2011, and the countdown to 2012, I’m going to count down my own twelve favourite films of the year, one a day until New Year’s Eve. I’m also going to talk a bit about how or why I chose them, and perhaps what makes this list “my” best of 2011, rather than any list claiming to be objective.

The Adjustment Bureau is number nine. Check out my original review here.

I think this is probably the first truly surprising choice of my own personal countdown. After all, the film debuted to generally positive reviews, but hardly the most exceptional critical feedback. It wasn’t loved and it wasn’t hated, but it was fairly quickly forgotten. I suspect that I will be one of very few people to include the title in my end-of-year best-of list. Still, I loved The Adjustment Bureau. And I think that’s strangely appropriate, because I’d argue that The Adjustment Bureau is perhaps the purest cinematic love story that we’ve seen in quite some time.