Geek of Oz

I can't remember the last time an anime made me cry the way The Tale of the Princess Kaguya  did. It might be unorthodox to lead with that off the bat, and while it's not strictly speaking a selling point that a movie is able to cause Kleenex share prices to skyrocket, it's nonetheless a quality with Princess Kaguya . You should know going in, especially since this is a creation from the mind of Isao Takahata - the award-winning scribe who began his career with the soul-crushing depression-fest Grave of the Fireflies  - that The Tale of the Princess Kaguya  will, unless your cardiac region has recently been removed, make you cry. But given that it's an overly-heartwarming, growth of the protagonist tale that follows the eponymous princess from her birth, what else could you expect? The movie opens with an elderly bamboo cutter discovering a tiny child, dressed like a princess, inside a strange-looking bamboo stalk. He takes the little girl home to his wife, whe...

The first two acts of Antoine Fuqua’s The Equalizer are imbued with a certain patience and solid direction, which is ultimately undone by its uninspired third act. In a similar vein to Liam Neeson’s Non-Stop earlier this year, the film gradually comes apart at the seams once the basic premise is expanded upon. Having said that, there is plenty to enjoy in this film, it was simply weighed down heavily by what I didn’t like. With dwindling returns at the box-office, it would seem that the market agrees. The Equalizer is a reimagining of an 80s television show by the same name. Denzel Washington plays Robert McCall, a mild-mannered hardware store employee who maintains an highly-regimented Spartan lifestyle. Robert’s hobbies include helping others, reading, insomnia and roaming the streets of Boston as a vigilante out for justice. Bob is drawn into the deadly world of international Russian gangsters (yes, really) when he befriends underage prostitute Teri (Chloe Grace ...