Film Review: Yesterday

I believe in Yesterday: It’s a must-see

Newly minted rock star Jack (Himesh Patel) isn’t sure what to make of the marketing campaign for his album.

The “alternate fiction” genre has grown in popularity in recent years, with books, movies, and TV shows positing questions like, “What if Hitler had never been born?” or “What if JFK hadn’t been shot?” as starting points for fresh and creative stories. Director Danny Boyle and screenwriters Jack Barth and Richard Curtis throw their hat into the ring with Yesterday, a movie that asks, “What if only one person on earth knew who the Beatles were?” The filmmakers have great fun answering the question, but, make no mistake: this is no sci-fi film. What Boyle has given us here is an old-fashioned romantic comedy — and an exceptionally charming one at that — just wrapped in a unique narrative package.

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Film Review: T2 Trainspotting

This movie shouldn’t exist. It shouldn’t work. It’s great.

                         Exciting jolts of visual flair abound in Danny Boyle’s new film.

 

There’s a type of movie that internet film nerds refer to as a “legacyquel”. This term applies to a sequel that is released many years after the original, in which the original actors play their original roles. When this idea fails, like the recent Independence Day movie, which brought back a dead character with a flimsy explanation, it can fail spectacularly, but when it succeeds, like Star Wars: The Force Awakens does, we can celebrate the return of our favorite characters in an entirely new story line. T2: Trainspotting is one of the latter instances.

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Film Review: Steve Jobs

Sorkin, Boyle get the Job(s) done with fast-paced drama

Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) argues with his daughter Lisa (Perla Haney-Jardine) just before the iMac launch…

Perhaps no picture has been more anticipated here in the tech capital of the Bay Area than the Aaron Sorkin-penned and Danny Boyle-directed biopic of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, based on Walter Isaacson’s best-selling 2011 biography of the same name. Sorkin and Boyle, with their similar frenetic writing and directing styles (think The Social Network meets Slumdog Millionaire) prove to be the ideal team to dramatize the life of the Peninsula-raised inventor, entrepreneur, original tech titan, and icon. Indeed, their picture lives up to expectations, succeeding as both a fascinating character study, and as a historical dramatization of seminal events that took place here in the Bay Area, but ultimately touched the entire world.

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