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movie review
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Brad’s Status
10 Jan 2018 by SPLING / No Comments
The title Brad’s Status is a clever play on words that references today’s social media-driven society and the notion of keeping up with the Jones’s. The story follows, Brad, a father who feels inferior about his life’s choices after reconnecting with some old friends on a college tour with his son. This is a self-reflective […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Thor – Ragnarok
01 Nov 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
Taika Waititi is the director who brought us Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a charming and spirited comedy adventure from New Zealand. Hilarious, enjoyable and even touching, the independent film demonstrated Waititi’s knack for high-spirited, entertaining and funny filmmaking. Drawing experience from Flight of the Conchords and What We Do in the Shadows, he was well […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: The Last Word
25 Oct 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
Shirley MacLaine is a plucky and fiery actor, who tends to play the sort of obnoxious and wilful characters you love to hate. She’s led an illustrious film career with several Oscar nominations and a Best Actress win for Terms of Endearment. MacLaine’s mother enrolled her for ballet at the age of 3 in a […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: The Mountain Between Us
18 Oct 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
The Mountain Between Us is a survival action adventure and romance drama starring Idris Elba and Kate Winslet. Directed by Hany Abu-Assad, and based on the novel by Charles Martin, we journey with two strangers who form a connection after a tragic light aircraft crash leaves them stranded in a snowy mountainous region. The Mountain […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Blade Runner 2049
11 Oct 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
Blade Runner 2049 is a sequel to Blade Runner, based on the Philip K. Dick science fiction novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The original film, starring Harrison Ford, was a box office failure, which redeemed itself over time as the slow-burning dark horse sci-fi saga recovered as a rental and developed a cult […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: An Inconvenient Sequel – Truth to Power
05 Oct 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
An Inconvenient Truth brought climate change into the public arena when Davis Guggenheim made a documentary about former presidential candidate, Al Gore’s campaigning around environmental issues such as global warming. While the film won two Oscars, it also garnered much criticism from an already divided camp with some jokingly referring to it as “An Irritating […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Stronger
20 Sep 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
The 2013 Boston Marathon bombing was a devastating blow to the city and its close-knit community when an insidious terrorist attack left three people dead and hundreds injured, sixteen of whom lost a limb. While the two home-made bombs that detonated near the finish line of the Boston Marathon disrupted the race and caused widespread panic […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: It
13 Sep 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
Coulrophobia is the fear of clowns and one of the biggest influences of this condition among children and adults over the last four decades must be Stephen King’s It. Stephen King’s bestselling horror novel has been described as a landmark in American literature. Published in the ’80s and clocking in at over 1000 pages, the […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: American Made
30 Aug 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
American Made is a biographical crime thriller directed by Doug Liman and starring Tom Cruise, who team up again after a successful director-producer-actor partnership in Edge of Tomorrow. Having directed The Bourne Identity, Mr and Mrs Smith and Fair Game, Liman was a good choice to direct American Made, which blends action and comedy elements […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Krotoa
23 Aug 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
One of the most written about women in South African history, Krotoa has become the subject of a documentary, a play, a poem and now a film by Roberta Durrant. Krotoa is a South African historical drama based on a young Khoi woman, who was removed from her tribe to serve Jan van Riebeeck and […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: The Hitman’s Bodyguard
16 Aug 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
The Hitman’s Bodyguard is a buddy movie from Patrick Hughes, the director who brought us Red Hill and The Expendables 3. Loosely based on the same dynamic as Midnight Run, we are introduced to prolific hitman, Darius Kincaid, who is paired with an elite bodyguard, Michael Bryce, commissioned to get his new client to a […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Dunkirk
02 Aug 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
Christopher Nolan’s trademark style is brooding, clinical, dark, heavy, elegant and powerful. The acclaimed filmmaker has become a household name, adding a crest of brilliant films to his credit over the last two decades. A visionary director, he’s become respected not only for his output but his method, getting the most from his cast and […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Van Der Merwe
26 Jul 2017 by SPLING / 3 Comments
Van der Merwe is a common Afrikaans surname that has become synonymous with a stereotypical Afrikaans character, usually a farmer named Koos, who has become the butt of a lineage of South African jokes dating back over 50 years. Decidedly “doff” and larger-than-life, van der Merwe jokes essentially took a similar stance to dumb blonde […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets
19 Jul 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a fun-filled and eye-popping sci-fi comedy action adventure that recalls the quirky, comic spirit of Besson’s previous sci-fi extravaganza The Fifth Element, the CGI dimension of James Cameron’s Avatar and the technologically imaginative and bizarre world of David Cronenberg’s existenZ. Based on the influential comic book […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: War For The Planet Of The Apes
12 Jul 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
Andy Serkis is the ringmaster in the reboot series of The Planet of the Apes. A pioneer of iconic digital characters, having played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, he’s done it again with Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and now War […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Toni Erdmann
07 Jun 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
Toni Erdmann is an unconventional comedy drama written and directed by Maren Ade, portraying a father desperately trying to patch things up with his estranged daughter. A practical joker with a fake teeth and wig disguise that recalls early Leon Schuster pranks, Winfried tries to reconnect with his hard-working daughter, Ines, by resorting to his […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: The Founder
24 May 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
The Founder is something of a biographical docudrama, telling the story of Ray Kroc, the man who founded McDonald’s as we know it today. The golden arches have become embedded in popular culture as the McDonald’s empire has supplanted itself in countries around the world. Adapting its menu to suit its market, the Big Mac […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: 20th Century Women
10 May 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
20th Century Women is the story of a teenage boy and the three women who help raise him, set in Southern California in 1979. The comedy drama comes to us from the mind of writer-director Mike Mills, best known for Beginners and Thumbsucker, and plays out like an adaptation of an essay on gender history. […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Beyond the River
26 Apr 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
South Africa needs Beyond the River, an uplifting sports drama based on a true story. At this point in time, our country’s politics is still divided along racial lines, or rather that’s what some parties would have you believe. We’ve come a long way since our rainbow nation was inaugurated in 1994 under the guidance […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Alison
12 Apr 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
Alison is the powerful true story of a South African woman, who reclaimed her life after being raped, disemboweled, nearly decapitated and left for dead. Directed by Uga Carlini, this part documentary, part docudrama and has been treated like a fairy tale, getting the inside story from various interviewees, who helped Alison along her journey. […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Ghost in the Shell
29 Mar 2017 by SPLING / No Comments
Ghost in the Shell is based on a manga series, which was later adapted into an animated feature in 1995. Partly inspired by Arthur Koestler’s The Ghost in the Machine and partly an inspiration for The Matrix, this much-loved Japanese series continues to inspire. Now unveiling its latest iteration, an almost inevitable live-action adaptation, starring […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Mandela’s Gun
02 Nov 2016 by SPLING / No Comments
Nelson Mandela has become immortalised as an international icon for peace and transformation. Many know the story of the wise man and freedom fighter, who led a country through a turbulent time in South Africa’s history as newly elected President, after being incarcerated as a political prisoner on Robben Island for almost three decades. This […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: The Accountant
26 Oct 2016 by SPLING / No Comments
As a movie title, The Accountant conjures up images of office paper, photocopiers, spreadsheets and responsible haircuts. Luckily the movie poster went for something less sensible: Ben Affleck kitted out like he was going to audit an “entrepreneur” in the slums of Rio. The stark contrast creates a series of nagging questions and presents much […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Hands of Stone
19 Oct 2016 by SPLING / No Comments
Robert De Niro is a luminary of the sports genre, having starred in the black-and-white Scorsese classic, ‘Raging Bull’ and more recently, ‘Grudge Match’.
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Chocolat
05 Oct 2016 by SPLING / No Comments
Most people may associate Chocolat with the quaint Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp romance drama released at the turn of the 21st-century about a chocolate shop in a small French village. However, the original “Chocolat” became famous for clowning in Paris at the turn of the 20th-century. Rafael “Chocolat” Padilla became the first black circus […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
28 Sep 2016 by SPLING / No Comments
The Magnificent Seven is a revisionist Western remake of a classic Western, which was based on a Japanese film called The Seven Samurai. The story of heroes vs. cowards, little man vs. big man, defending your fortress and fighting for freedom from tyranny and persecution has remained timeless. The altruism at the heart of The […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Blair Witch
21 Sep 2016 by SPLING / No Comments
Blair Witch is comparable with Evil Dead 2 in as much as it’s delivering what the first one did, with less novelty and more finesse. The original The Blair Witch Project was one of the first found footage horror films to emerge and while the hype exceeded delivery, managed to carve out a new genre […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Ben-Hur
14 Sep 2016 by SPLING / No Comments
The Ben-Hur of 1959 starring Charlton Heston is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. A remake of a silent movie, the production took six months to film and six months of post-production to complete at a cost of just under $15 million. Massive sets, thousands of costumes and long days, […]
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Sully
07 Sep 2016 by SPLING / No Comments
Chelsey “Sully” Sullenberger will be remembered for his heroic efforts, making an emergency landing on the Hudson River in New York.
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SPL!NG Movie Review: Noem My Skollie
31 Aug 2016 by SPLING / No Comments
Noem my Skollie or Call Me Thief is the story of Abraham and the Young Ones, a small-time gang that were separated for two years by a dangerous stint in Pollsmoor prison. The film is loosely based on the life of screenwriter, John W. Fredericks, marks a debut for director Daryne Joshua with Dann Jaques […]
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