Film: Jessica Kellgren-Hayes
The week in features
Most excitingly (or not, if you aren’t a fan!), this week on PostFeature Joseph and I shall be reviewing Magic In The Moonlight, the new Woody Allen film.
It stars two of my favourite people (Colin Firth and Emma Stone) – actually, lots of my favourite people!
The film looks to be a great romp, set in the ’20s and based around a stuffy Englishman’s attempts to debunk a rather charming young American ‘psychic’. Of course, we can all see where this is going… I am one of the supposed minority who finds modern Woody Allen films far more appealing than the earlier ‘classics’. Blue Jasmine (2013), Midnight In Paris (2011), Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008) and Match Point (2005) are all films that I enjoyed hugely, despite the difference in styles and humour, whilst his earlier work for me seems a little laboured, a little too focused on being deep and introspective and a little too… well, there is only so much Woody Allen one girl can take on the screen!
“The film looks to be a great romp”
The second film for this week is This Is Where I Leave You, a comedy drama based around a pugnacious family’s reunion, directed by Shawn Levy. Levy is one of the most commercially successful directors of the past decade, with films having grossed over $2 billion at the worldwide box office. His work includes Cheaper By The Dozen, Just Married, Night At The Museum and The Internship … not exactly ‘awards bait’, I’ll grant you, but they clearly do well and definitely have an audience. I am rather enamored with his 2010 film Date Night, staring Tina Fey, who I would gladly watch reading the phone book as I’m sure I would be laughing heartily along. Fey is also part of the ensemble in This Is Where I Leave You, along with Jason Bateman, Jane Fonda, Rose Bryne and Adam Driver (who is normally found in mumblecore films and the HBO series Girls, so it will be interesting to see how he fares in this).
This Sunday’s FilmFest is a special treat for anyone who is a fan of horror, gore or humour: we have an exclusive, feature length edition of the multi-award winning The Bloody Mary Show! It has previously only been shown as short ‘webisodes’, so we have pulled off quite the coup to have it on LatestTV!
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