m-mensah-bonsu Reviews

Ozark: All In (2020) Season 3, Episode 10

In an age of golden televison Bateman et al pitch for the crown...

[10/10 · 2 April 2020]

This is a review for Season 3 and the entire show.

Ozark is an intense incredibly written and superbly acted show. Ep10 is a brilliant finely written story and in season 3 they start setting the scene for potentially epic status.

Yes it's violent, but this is a show about grown up things and it doesn't shy away from the cold hard realities of making money from drugs. Big money rarely comes without risk or a price and the brilliant character driven dilemmas that the family finds itself in are all the more believable because there is always a reason to the 'why'.

The season finale comes at you from left and right and when it's done you realize that this show just gets better and better. I don't know if they can keep up this level of quality but I will definitely be going along for the ride.

Dragged Across Concrete (2018)

A movie watchers movie....

[9/10 · 28 January 2020]

This is a great movie - takes it's time but it's never boring - each scene is thoughtfully played out and time is spent creating each character. This basically means that when things happen it feels real.

I love a big bombastic action flick as much as any but there is something to be said for a story that builds and builds and then delivers. There is something to be said for real character decisions that remain honest to themselves and are not merely short cuts for the script. Life can be hard, brutal and tragic regardless of your background or your life choices. People make their decisions and deal with the consequences - nowhere is that more evident than here.

I honestly didn't notice the run-time - perhaps because the actors, script and the soundtrack (when it was needed for the story) where so well realized. If your looking for a top notch crime film that is happy to take time telling it's story... well then you can't do much better than this.

Bird Box (2018)

See No Evil...

[8/10 · 29 December 2018]

For a world which has become so sight-orientated there are times when the sense of dread you feel whilst watching Bird Box is almost incapacitating.

Much has been said about how this is a 'blind' version of 'A Quiet Place' - it is most definitely not. The source material 'Bird Box' written by Josh Malerman was published in 2014. In many ways this film is all the more terrifying because of society's reliance on seeing the world around them. As you watch and come to understand (although not fully) the mechanics of the horror that is the basis of this post apocalyptic tale you find yourself wondering what would you do in a world where your eyes are your greatest weakness?

Yes, perhaps more could have been done to fill out the concepts of family, parenthood, and connecting. With a run-time of just under 2 hours the film does enough and manages to intertwine these themes with the base horror and makes you care enough to take the journey through the fear with Sandra Bullock's Malorie and the rest of the cast who perform admirably. The way the film is split over different time periods is not a clever gimmick as has been the case with so much output over the last few years. It simply layers on another level of dread as the film proceeds towards it's conclusion.

As is fitting a film who's protagonists are reliant on a life without vision, it is not full of bombastic CGI action sequences and instead wraps itself in a sense of horror that I found both terrifying and refreshing.

This is an excellent film in a theater or at home, with a story that will touch at a core vulnerability that makes many of us uncomfortable. Yet as the 280 million+ people around the world who are classed as having 'low-vision' or 'blind' already know' - if you have the will there is life to be had, sighted or not.