REVIEW: Mumbai Mafia – Police vs The Underworld (2023 – Documentary)

PHOTO: Netflix.

Directed by Raaghav Dar and Francis Longhurst.

To kick off the new year, you would expect that Netflix had a major 2023 film to release. Not so. Instead, their first major release of 2023, The Pale Blue Eye (review coming soon), is technically a very late 2022 film. But since they have released a new documentary straight to Netflix that I believe to be a 2023 release, I thought I would review it to get the 2023 list off and running. So, here we have Raaghav Dar and Francis Longhurst’s Mumbai Mafia: Police vs The Underworld, which, as you can probably guess, is the kind of documentary that gives the basic premise away right there in the title. 

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REVIEW: Stoker (2013)

Mia Wasikowska as India Stoker — PHOTO: Fox Searchlight.

Directed by Park Chan-wook (Oldboy; Joint Security Area) — Screenplay by Wentworth Miller.

A handful of years before he directed all episodes of the excellent and underseen adaptation of The Little Drummer Girl led by Florence Pugh and Alexander Skarsgaard, Park Chan-wook made his first film in English with the Hitchcockian thriller Stoker, based on a screenplay from Prison Break-actor Wentworth Miller (under a pen name). 

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REVIEW: Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022)

Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022). Daniel GimÈnez Cacho as Silverio. Cr. Limbo Films, S. De R.L. de C.V. / Netflix

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu — Screenplay by Alejandro González Iñárritu and Nicolás Giacobone.

Taking inspiration, whether conceptually or visually, from a lot of different filmmakers including Fellini and Malick, Alejandro González Iñárritu has gone out and made a visually eye-opening self-insert introspective dream narrative that is possibly going to be quite puzzling for most people (if, indeed, they ever choose to watch it and sit through it on Netflix). It follows a Mexican journalist and documentarian filmmaker who is trying to make sense of his dual identity during an existential crisis. That is a really short and simple way of summing up a film that tries to be so much more and which has an overwhelming runtime, but it perhaps doesn’t get to the kind of jaw-dropping visual ideas that the director throws out there. It goes places that can be tough to wrap your head around (e.g. a baby is pushed back into her mother moments after it was born), and these ambitious hallucinatory sequences may be the best thing about the film, even though it, along with the runtime, may be the very thing that discourages viewers from pressing play.

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Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance Trilogy (2002-2005) | Retro Review

Park Chan-wook, one of South Korea’s finest filmmakers, is fast becoming one of my favorite directors. I first encountered the director with his 2016 feature The Handmaiden, a stylish and precise near-masterpiece, which then made me go back and watch Oldboy, which I thought was just as brilliant. Years later, I have now reviewed his so-called vengeance trilogy, which includes the aforementioned Oldboy. In this article, you will find reviews of the three films in the thematic trilogy known as the vengeance trilogy: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003), and Lady Vengeance (2005).

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REVIEW: After Yang (2022)

(left to right) Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja, and Justin H. Min in AFTER YANG — PHOTO: A24.

Directed by Kogonada — Screenplay by Kogonada.

Kogonada’s After Yang is a science-fiction drama about a family that has lost someone. After competing in a dance competition as a family, their second-hand robotic son, Yang (played by Justin H. Min), malfunctions. Hoping to get him fixed, the family father, Jake (played by Colin Farrell), sets out to find a way to fix him, even though they are advised to simply replace him with another unit. As Jake gets access to Yang’s memory bank, he gains a new understanding of who Yang actually was.

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RETRO REVIEW: Joint Security Area (2000)

Park Chan-wook’s JSA: JOINT SECURITY AREA — PHOTO: CJ Entertainment.

Directed by Park Chan-wook (Oldboy; The Handmaiden) — Screenplay by Kim Hyun-seok, Jeong Seong-san, Lee Moo-yeong, and Park Chan-wook.

Based on Park Sang-yeon’s DMZ, Park Chan-wook’s Joint Security Area, or JSA, tells the story of an investigation into the murder of two North Korean soldiers inside a North Korean border house in the Korean Demilitarization Zone. One North Korean soldier survived. So did two South Korean soldiers on border duty, one of which fled the North Korean border house while wounded. However, the North Korean and South Korean soldiers have reported conflicting accounts of what happened, and so Swiss Army Major Sophie E. Jean (played by Lee Young-ae) is assigned by the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission to lead the investigation into what exactly transpired.

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REVIEW: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)

Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc in Rian Johnson’s GLASS ONION — PHOTO: NETFLIX.

Directed by Rian Johnson — Screenplay by Rian Johnson.

In 2019, Looper and The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson released his original ‘whodunnit’ ensemble crime mystery Knives Out. It was a huge success as it received critical acclaim and notable Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Oscar nominations. The film also helped to bring new life to the ‘whodunnit’ genre. It was so successful that this year there are several of those stories including See How They Run and the Apple-series The Afterparty. The massive success also led to a bidding war for Johnson’s Benoit Blanc-led Knives Out sequels. That bidding war was won by Netflix (they paid a whopping $469 million) and they have released its first sequel today just in time for Christmas. It brings me great joy to report that Glass Onion is almost exactly as good as the original film that preceded it, even though it no longer feels quite as fresh.

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REVIEW: Morbius (2022)

Jared Leto in Daniel Espinosa’s MORBIUS — PHOTO: Sony Pictures.

Directed by Daniel Espinosa — Screenplay by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless.

The first time I heard about ‘Morbius the living vampire’ was in an episode of the iconic 1990s Spider-Man animated series which I absolutely adored as a kid. I don’t remember too much about individual episodes nowadays, but I do remember seeing him with Blade and Spider-Man. However, due to awful word-of-mouth and a general lack of faith in Sony’s villain-led Spider-Man spin-off films (due to the release of the first Venom film), I didn’t immediately feel the urge to see this film when it was in theaters. Now I have finally had the chance to see it from the comfort of my own home, and, I’m sorry to say, it is pretty much exactly as messy as I feared it could be.

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REVIEW: X (2022)

Mia Goth’s Maxine from Ti West’s X — PHOTO: A24.

Directed by Ti West — Screenplay by Ti West.

Ti West’s X takes place in the late 1970s and follows a cast of pornographic actors — Maxine (played by Mia Goth), Bobby-Lynne (played by Brittany Snow), and Jackson (played by Scott Mescudi) — and a film crew — producer Wayne (played by Martin Henderson), ambitious amateur director R. J. (played by Owen Campbell), and R. J.’s girlfriend Lorraine (played by Jenna Ortega). They are on a road trip and are headed to a farmhouse, at which they intend to shoot their adult film. However, the owners of the house, an elderly couple, don’t know what they intend to film on their property, and the sight of Maxine awakens a disturbing lust inside the elderly woman that calls the farmhouse her home.

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REVIEW: Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Britain Dalton’s LO’AK interacts and bonds with Payakan, a whale-like creature, in AVATAR: THE WHALE OF WATER — PHOTO: 20th Century Studios / Disney.

Directed by James Cameron — Screenplay by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, and Amanda Silver.

The long-awaited sequel to Avatar that many have bemoaned was unnecessary (in spite of the original film being one of the biggest films of all time) is here. Frankly, I wasn’t sure it was ever going to come out, but, after a 13-year waiting period, it is finally here. It exists. I was 16 years old when the first film was released. Now I’m 29. The wait is over. And, hey, it’s actually an excellent improvement on the first film. Moreover, it definitely is a must-see transportive theatrical experience.

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