Book, Film & TV Reviews
Based on a true story and directed by James Mangold, Le Mans ’66 follows visionary American car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and the fearless British driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale) as they battle corporate interference and the laws of physics to build a revolutionary race car for Ford in order to defeat Ferrari at the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France.
Continue reading “Film Review: Le Mans ’66 (Ford v Ferrari)”
Directed by Ridley Scott, with screenplay by Drew Goddard and adapted from the 2011 book of the same name by Andy Weir, The Martian follows a manned mission to Mars when Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is left behind by his crew after he is presumed dead. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meagre supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. Millions of miles away, NASA, headed up by Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels), and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring “the Martian” home, while his crewmates, commanded by Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain), plot a daring rescue mission.
“If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it’s found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don’t care, but they’re massively outnumbered by the people who do.”
Directed by Ridley Scott, with screenplay by Drew Goddard and adapted from the 2011 book of the same name by Andy Weir, The Martian follows a manned mission to Mars when Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is left behind by his crew after he is presumed dead. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meagre supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. Millions of miles away, NASA, headed up by Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels), and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring “the Martian” home, while his crewmates, commanded by Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain), plot a daring rescue mission.
(Written for Filmoria)
Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain are back en route into space, so if you didn’t like Nolan’s Interstellar last year, Ridley Scott’s The Martian might just be the sci-fi for you.
Based on the novel by Andy Weir and scripted by Drew Goddard, a brand new trailer has been released today, along with two images by 20th Century Fox earlier this week.
(Written for HeyUGuys)
Eagerly ready for Christmas, We Bought A Zoo has wrapped us up a zebra in a big green bow in a new poster for Cameron Crowe‘s exotic animal-filled drama this week.
From the director of Jerry Maguire, We Bought A Zoo is based on a memoir by Benjamin Mee about how he and his family – played by Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson and Elle Fanning – used their life savings to buy Dartmoor Zoological Park in the English countryside.
From seeing Matt Damon as a father figure in last month’s Contagion, I think we can expect something really moving from his portrayal in this heart-warming story. But We Bought A Zoo is also a comedy, so it will be interesting to see how he and Johanson work that in too.
(Read this in my publication In Retrospect – Issue 3 and in my student newspaper, Flex)
Linking to my previous review for British thriller Retreat, starring Cillian Murphy, Thandie Newton and Jamie Bell which you can read here, Contagion is the second film to be released this month that explores the widespread of a killer virus. As an American take on the genre, Contagion tackles the situation in a completely different way, concluding in a seemingly more optimistic outcome and looking at the effects of a virus globally.
Contagion, directed by Steven Soderbergh, follows the rapid spread of a lethal virus caught through indirect contact. As the fast-moving pandemic grows, we see how a variety of people deal with the situation, including worldwide medical team members, Dr Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard), Dr Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) and Dr Erin Mears (Kate Winslet), journalist Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law), and parents Mitch (Matt Damon) and Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow). With a race to find a cure and to control the panic as the world turns to mayhem, we see the lengths these people go to in order to save the world whilst having to maintain their own reputations at the same time.
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