The Qwipster Film Review Podcast show

The Qwipster Film Review Podcast

Summary: Qwipster.net’s film critic, Vince Leo, delivers a la carte movie reviews, featuring the latest releases, covering blockbusters, independent films, foreign titles, and VOD.

Join Now to Subscribe to this Podcast
  • Visit Website
  • RSS
  • Artist: Vince Leo
  • Copyright: ©1996-2019 Vince Leo. All rights reserved.

Podcasts:

 Ghost in the Shell (2017) Scarlett Johansson – Movie Review | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Scarlett Johansson stars as Major, a law-enforcement agent whose human brain, after a terrible accident that nearly killed her, has been put into a body that's entirely synthetic -- she's essentially a robot with a human mind, and the first of her kind. She works for Section 9, a task force currently trying to take down a powerful hacker named Kuze (Pitt, Criminal) who has been using the technology that most humans have been modifying their own bodies and minds with, and controlling them to do his terrorist bidding. As Major gets closer to identifying the hacker, the more she learns of his targets of assassination, which happens to be Hanka Robotics, the very corporation that made her 'shell', or her artificial body.

 Life (2017) Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds – Movie Review | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

This one puts the action on the International Space Station, whose six-person crew have just discovered a single-cell organism, the very first evidence of life outside of Earth, within one of the soil samples they've taken from Mars. Powers that be at home want them to do some testing on Calvin, as they've dubbed it, before giving the "all clear' to bring down to a terrestrial lab. Study they do, as Calvin begins to flourish in his new environment, grown far beyond its single-cell existence. However, like the humans on board, it needs oxygen and food to survive, and to eliminate all potential threats, which means that Calvin takes a feed-and-fight approach to any other creatures that might encroach on its new home on board the space station. Meanwhile, the astronauts and scientists do everything in their power to quarantine Calvin, especially in making sure that the deadly entity does not have a chance to reach Earth.

 Beauty and the Beast (2017) Emma Watson – Movie Review | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

The story involves a lovely and fiercely independent girl named Belle, who lives with her widower inventor father in a small provincial French village. She'd rather pursue her own path, which brings consternation to the local narcissistic he-man, Gaston, who intends to marry Belle because she's the prettiest girl in town. After Maurice gets lost in the thick and ominous woods, Belle goes out to find him, discovering his whereabouts in a secluded castle run by The Beast, who has her father imprisoned for petty theft, and with whom Belle swaps places in captivity. The castle is enchanted, as evidenced by the fact that most household objects speak and talk, the victims of a curse brought upon the beast when in original human form by a sorceress who found him most unkind. Beast and company may return to their former selves, but only if he finds a love that loves him in return, and Belle may be the last option left before the curse becomes permanent.

 Donald Cried (2016) Kris Avedisian – Movie Review | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

After his grandmother passes away, late-30s New York financier Peter reluctantly returns to his home town in Warwick, Rhode Island, for the first time in about two decades, to tidy up her estate. Unfortunately, he inadvertently loses his wallet en route, causing him to seek out his old high school friend Donald for a few bucks, though he hasn't been in contact in about as long as he bailed on his past. While Peter has matured to the point where he virtually disowns the metal-head delinquent he once was, Donald has yet to move on, perpetually stuck reliving the only time in his life when he felt genuinely happy, or so he imagines. While Peter just wants to get out of town as soon as possible, getting money out of Donald proves a challenge, partially because Donald is also broke, and partially because Donald, desperately trying to connect with his old friend since they parted, wants to keep hanging out and relive glory days with the last true friend he had.

 Kong: Skull Island (2017) Brie Larson – Movie Review | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

After an introductory sequence set during World War II to introduce the massive ape, Kong, and the island he resides on, we spring ahead to 1973, where we find the United States' government, in the waning days of their involvement in Vietnam, planning an exploration of the previously uncharted island in the South Pacific perpetually under storm clouds, hoping to lay claim there before the Russians get there first. Kong is there and greets the military choppers in the manner you'd expect, i.e. he destroys them outright. Those that survive the onslaught find that the island is full of other creatures even more menacing than Kong, especially the "skullcrawlers" (as long-surviving WWII pilot Hank Marlow calls them), who lurk like carnivorous, two-legged dinosaurs around the island consuming every creature in sight.

 I Am Not Your Negro (2016) James Baldwin – Movie Review | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Raoul Peck's Academy Award-nominated documentary on famed author James Baldwin, whose unfinished manuscript for a proposed memoir on the deaths of several Civil Rights giants, tentatively entitled, "Remember This House", provides the basis for the commentary about his experiences as an African-American in a country that continuously seems to not deal with its overbearing racism head on.

 Logan (2017) Hugh Jackman – Movie Reviews | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Set in the year 2029, we find a world where there are no newly born mutants, and the ones that did exist have been all but completely wiped out. Spirit broken, body beaten and losing its ability to quickly heal, and with a sense of self-loathing to the point where suicide seems an increasingly attractive option, Logan finds himself working as a limousine driver, trying to scrape together enough funds to help nonagenarian Professor Charles Xavier, who he has stashed in an isolated facility in Mexico, away from the general population due the the fact that Professor X, without his meds to corral his psychic abilities, loses control of his mutant powers and lashes out in seismic burst from his seizures. During this time, Logan is introduced to a young girl named Laura, an escapee from a mutant-manufacturing lab who, astonishingly, seems to have identical powers to the Wolverine. Hitting the road, the trip seek to escape those who are out to take them down, while also looking for a mythical mutant sanctuary called 'Eden'.

 Get Out (2017) Jordan Peele – Horror-Comedy Movie Review | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Daniel Kaluuya stars as photographer Chris Washington, a young African-American involved in a close relationship with the white Rose Armitage, so close that it's time for Chris to meet Rose's parents. Chris is nervous about their weekend retreat to Rose's family lake house because Rose hasn't told them that he's black because it doesn't matter to her, and her liberal parents should be all for it, she gathers. While seemingly fine, Chris undergoes a share of microagressions, assumptions, and patronizations because he is a black man, and things only get worse when he's involuntarily hypnotized by Rose's mother, Missy, a hypnotherapist out to cure him of his smoking habit. From there, more of Rose's family gathers for an annual party at the estate, further compounding his issues in being slighted due to his race, while the black hired help around the house seem to adopt an aggressive stance toward him and his relationship with Rose.

 Elle (2016) Isabelle Huppert, Paul Verhoeven – Movie Review | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Isabelle Huppert stars as Michele Leblanc, the manager of a video-game company. Michelle is raped by a masked man in her own home. Because of her checkered past, she decides to not report it to the police, and is reticent to tell friends right away. The perpetrator continues to stalk Michele, causing her to seek measures to protect herself, yet she is also conflicted by her fantasies, both terrifying and exhilarating, of what might happen should she be found in that position again.

 Fifty Shades Darker (2017) Dakota Johnson – Movie Review | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

In this follow-up to the wildly popular kinky romance drama Fifty Shades of Grey, we find perpetually blushing publishing-house editorial assistant Anastasia Steele making it through life without the help or attention of controlling Seattle-based mega-billionaire Christian Grey, mostly due to the fact that he couldn't open himself up to her much beyond his taste for sado-masochistic sexual acts. While Grey tries to move on, he can't 'quit' Ana, forging is way back into her life romantically (on condition that their relationship stay 'vanilla'), as well as in an attempt to take over ownership of the company that employs her.

 The LEGO Batman Movie (2017) Will Arnett – Movie Reviews | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

The Joker here is a bit more of a softie -- still a madman, but one that knows the bond of hatred between himself and the Batman needs to be reciprocal so that he can be the yin to his yang. To cement himself as #1 on Batman's hate list, Joker and a host of other baddies of assorted popularity are out to destroy Gotham City. Batman catches Joker in the act, but still sees him as just another perp to thwart, hatching bigger and bolder ideas to come from the clown madman in trying to assure arch-nemesis status, starting with springing the worst of them from the dreaded Phantom Zone.

 John Wick Chapter 2 (2017) Keanu Reeves – Movie Review | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

John Wick tries to go back into retirement after getting his revenge from those who've done him wrong. It would work, except that one particular party, an Italian crime boss named Santino D'Antonio, means to cash in on a marker, a favor he did for Wick some time back, that must be repaid, pulling him in to do another job in the form of an assassination of his sister so that he can take her place in the super-secret organization. Alas, the further Wick gets in, the more enemies out to snuff him out, to the point where they are like the proverbial hydra, sprouting two new enemies for every one he takes down.

 Paterson (2016) Jim Jarmusch – Movie Review | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Adam Driver stars as Paterson, who coincidentally shares the same name as his town in New Jersey. We follow Paterson over the course of a week in his life, his routines, his conversations with his aspiring baker/singer girlfriend Laura, the conversations he eavesdrops on with the passengers in the city bus he drives, and his interactions with the inhabitants of the local bar he goes to when he takes his English Bulldog Marvin for a walk at night. We also get to follow along as he writes poems every day in his writing notebook, inspired by the writings of famed Paterson poet William Carlos Williams.

 The Girl with All the Gifts (2016) Movie Reviews | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

The story is set in England at an unspecified time in the future, where we find that Earth may have all but been completely dominated by some sort of invasive fungus that can latch itself and grow inside humans within seconds, turning them into Hungries, aka zombies who seek out non-infected humans and other forms of life in order to sate their thirst for flesh and blood. Within a heavily guarded military base, Earth uninfected soldiers, scientists and civilians are working diligently on finding a way to cure the virus, experimenting primarily on a group of young boys and girls born infected but have capacity learning. i.e. they are cannibals, but far from mindless.

 The Founder (2016) Michael Keaton – Movie Review | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: Unknown

Set primarily in the 1950s, we find Ray Kroc is a struggling traveling salesman trying to peddle an electric milkshake mixer that promises to spark sales by increasing the supply by shortening the wait time involved with having to churn out one milkshake at a time. Sales are not going well, until he receives one big order from someone he hasn't spoken to directly. Sensing an opportunity for more business with this mysterious buyer, Kroc travels out to the source of the order in San Bernardino, California, where he meets Dick and Mac McDonald, the owners of a bustling burger joint called McDonald's, which prides itself on offering a great product at a low price served hot and fast in an assembly-line process that recalls the innovation of Henry Ford. When Kroc sees the setup, he can't help but think they couldn't make money hand over fist by franchising restaurants just like it from coast to coast.

Comments

Login or signup comment.