Avengers Endgame Arriving Earlier In UK

Every day is a day closer to the release of Avengers Endgame, the hugely-anticipated Infinity War follow-up, set to wrap up Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and propel the saga into a whole new era. In exciting news for the most eager UK marvel fans,  the UK release date appears to have shifted forward a whole 24 hours.

According to online reports  Avengers Endgame will be making its debut in UK Cinemas now on Thursday 25 April instead of Friday 26. Meaning Marvel’s momentous climax will be arriving in UK cinemas a day earlier than the US.

Till then fans have the official teaser trailer below to wet their appetite…

Vice Review

The Plot

The Big Short director Adam McKay presents a similarly cynical portrait of Dick Chenny. Charting his ruthless rise as a politician and businessman, culminating in his controversial time as a uniquely all powerful American Vice President.

The Good

Christian Bale achieves the seemingly impossible task of physically transforming himself into the stocky bulldog like Dick Cheney. It’s an astonishing achievement in method acting and make up that allows the Batman star to convincingly portray the iconic political powerhouse. He’s able to portray each step in Cheney’s unlikely journey from angry young man to calculating grey haired war monger. Bale’s polished impression of Cheney’s low growling voice and thinly veiled ruthlessness fits equally well with the well-known perceptions of the man considered to have truly pulled the strings behind the Bush presidency.

A solid supporting cast and director Adam McKay’s knack for punchy storytelling helps to keep audiences interested in Cheney’s stubborn rise to unconventional and allegedly unlimited power.  Along the way the film crafts a mostly unsympathetic portrait of Cheney that will satisfy those who gleeful regard him as the quintessential right wing political villain. The combined ensemble talents of Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell and Amy Adams also helps to make up for Cheney’s own well noted charisma vacuum. They do a good job of rehashing the history of 9/11 and the Iraq war with convincing impressions of all the key players.

The Bad

While it’s impossible to fault Bale’s transformative performance, there is still a genuine lack of charisma surrounding the character. Ironically this is precisely the point the film seeks to make, that Cheney’s drab and dreary persona allowed him to operate largely without public scrutiny and necessary oversight. Unfortunately despite the filmmaker’s best efforts the film never quite succeeds in either demonising or humanising him fully. Cheney’s famously secretive and intensely private nature makes it seemingly impossible to decipher him in any fresh or meaningful way.

Likewise the political history of the Iraq war seems both overly familiar to audiences who likely already have very firmly entrenched views on the subject and also seems somehow already far less relevant to a world currently gripped by a dramatic new landscape of global problems.

The Ugly Truth

Vice has an appealing all-star cast who manage to make relatively recent history feel fairly dramatic. An almost unrecognisable star turn from Christian Bale is undoubtedly its main attraction, aggressively reminding audiences of Dick Cheney’s discretely colossal impact on American and the world beyond.

Review by Russell Nelson

Oscar Nominations List 2019

Best picture

Black Panther
BlacKkKlansman
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Green Book
Roma
A Star is Born
Vice

Best director

Alfonso Cuarón (Roma)
Adam McKay (Vice)
Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite)
Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman)
Pawel Pawlikowski (Cold War)

Best actor

Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody)
Christian Bale (Vice)
Viggo Mortensen (Green Book)
Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born)
Willem Dafoe (At Eternity’s Gate

 

Best actress

Glenn Close (The Wife)
Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born)
Olivia Colman (The Favourite)
Melissa McCarthy (Can You Ever Forgive Me?)
Yalitza Aparicio (Roma)

Best supporting actor

Mahershala Ali (Green Book)
Richard E Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?)
Sam Elliott (A Star Is Born)
Adam Driver (BlacKkKlansman)
Sam Rockwell (Vice)

Best supporting actress

Emma Stone (The Favourite)
Rachel Weisz (The Favourite)
Amy Adams (Vice)
Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk)
Marina De Tavira (Roma)

Best adapted screenplay

If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)
A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper, Will Fetters and Eric Roth)
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty)
BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, David Rabinowitz, Charlie Wachtel and Kevin Willmott)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen)

Best original screenplay

Green Book (Brian Hayes Currie, Peter Farrelly and Nick Vallelonga)
The Favourite (Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara)
Roma (Alfonso Cuarón)
Vice (Adam McKay)
First Reformed (Paul Schrader)

Best animated feature

Incredibles 2
Ralph Breaks the Internet
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Isle of Dogs
Mirai

Best documentary

Free Solo
Minding the Gap
RBG
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Of Fathers and Sons

Best foreign language film

Roma (Mexico)
Cold War (Poland)
Shoplifters (Japan)
Capernaum (Lebanon)
Never Look Away (Germany)

Best cinematography

Roma (Alfonso Cuaron)
Cold War (Lukasz Zal)
Never Look Away (Caleb Deschanel)
The Favourite (Robbie Ryan)
A Star Is Born (Matty Libatique)

Best costume design

Black Panther (Ruth E Carter)
The Favourite (Sandy Powell)
Mary Poppins Returns (Sandy Powell)
Mary Queen of Scots (Alexandra Byrne)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Mary Zophres)

Best film editing

Bohemian Rhapsody (John Ottman)
Vice (Hank Corwin)
BlacKkKlansman (Barry Alexander Brown)
The Favourite (Yorgos Mavropsaridis)
Green Book (Patrick J Don Vito)

Best makeup and hairstyling

Border
Mary Queen of Scots
Vice

Best original score

If Beale Street Could Talk (Nicholas Britell)
Mary Poppins Returns (Marc Shaiman)
Isle of Dogs (Alexandre Desplat)
BlacKkKlansman (Terence Blanchard)
Black Panther (Ludwig Goransson)

Best original song

Shallow (A Star Is Born)
All the Stars (Black Panther)
I’ll Fight (RBG)
The Place Where Lost Things Go (Mary Poppins Returns)
When a Cowboy Trades his Spurs for Wings (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs)

Best production design

The Favourite (Fiona Crombie and Alice Felton)
First Man (Nathan Crowley and Kathy Lucas)
Roma (Eugenio Caballero and Barbara Enriquez)
Mary Poppins Returns (John Myhre and Gordon Sim)
Black Panther (Hannah Beachler and Jay Hart)

Best sound editing

First Man
A Quiet Place
Bohemian Rhapsody
Black Panther
Roma

Best sound mixing

A Star Is Born
Bohemian Rhapsody
First Man
Roma
Black Panther

Best visual effects

First Man
Avengers: Infinity War
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Ready Player One
Christopher Robin

Best animated short

Animal Behaviour
Bao
Late Afternoon
One Small Step
Weekends

Best documentary short

Black Sheep
End Game
Lifeboat
A Night at the Garden
Period. End of Sentence.

Best live action short

Detainment
Fauve
Marguerite
Mother
Skin

London Film Critics Circle Awards Winners 2019

Roma continued its awards season dominance as the London Film Critics’ Circle announced its winners. A week after landing seven BAFTA nominations, Alfonso Cuarón’s Mexico City memory piece landed film of the year and director of the year honors from the group — which, its name notwithstanding, includes print, online and broadcast critics from across the U.K.

However, it was Yorgos Lanthimos’s dark historical comedy The Favourite that ended the night with the most wins: Having led the nominations this year with 10 bids, it won four, including best actress for Olivia Colman, best supporting actress for Rachel Weisz and the screenplay prize for co-writers Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara. It was also named British/Irish film of the year.

Other multiple winners included twisty indie thriller “Beast,” which won British/Irish actress of the year for rising star Jessie Buckley and the breakthrough British/Irish filmmaker award for newcomer Michael Pearce. Also taking a brace of awards was Pawel Pawlikowski’s midcentury romance “Cold War”: In addition to the foreign-language prize, it scooped the group’s technical achievement Award for Lukasz Zal’s crisp black-and-white cinematography.

Other major winners included “First Reformed” star Ethan Hawke and “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” scene-stealer Richard E. Grant — both lavishly rewarded by U.S. critics — who took lead actor and supporting actor honors respectively. Rupert Everett, nominated by the group in multiple categories for directing and starring in the fragmented Oscar Wilde biopic “The Happy Prince,” was named British/Irish actor of the year. Agnes Varda’s “Faces Places,” an Oscar nominee last year but a 2019 release in the U.K., won the documentary prize.

Roma’s wins didn’t represent the night’s only triumph for Spanish-language cinema. Veteran auteur Pedro Almodóvar, currently in post-production on his new film “Pain and Glory,” received the Circle’s annual Dilys Powell Award for contribution to cinema, following such recent winners as Kate Winslet, Isabelle Huppert and the late Nicolas Roeg.

FULL LIST OF WINNERS BELOW:

Film of the Year: “Roma”

Foreign Language Film of the Year: “Cold War”

Documentary of the Year: “Faces Places”

British/Irish Film of the Year: “The Favourite”

Director of the Year: Alfonso Cuarón, “Roma”

Screenwriter of the Year: Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, “The Favourite”

Actress of the Year: Olivia Colman, “The Favourite”

Actor of the Year: Ethan Hawke, “First Reformed”

Supporting Actress of the Year: Rachel Weisz, “The Favourite”

Supporting Actor of the Year: Richard E. Grant, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”

British/Irish Actress of the Year: Jessie Buckley, “Beast”

British/Irish Actor of the Year: Rupert Everett, “The Happy Prince”

Young British/Irish Performer of the Year: Molly Wright, “Apostasy”

Breakthrough British/Irish Filmmaker of the Year: Michael Pearce, “Beast”

BAFTA Film Awards Nominations List 2019

Best film

BlacKkKlansman
The Favourite
Green Book
Roma
A Star Is Born

Outstanding British film

Beast
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
McQueen
Stan & Ollie
You Were Never Really Here

Outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer

Apostasy – Daniel Kokotajlo (writer/director)
Beast – Michael Pearce (writer/director), Lauren Dark (producer)
A Cambodian Spring – Chris Kelly (writer/director/producer),
Pili – Leanne Welham (writer/director), Sophie Harman (producer)
Ray & Liz – Richard Billingham (writer/director), Jacqui Davies (producer)

Best film not in the English language

Capernaum
Cold War
Dogman
Roma
Shoplifters

Best documentary

Free Solo
McQueen
RBG
They Shall Not Grow Old
Three Identical Strangers

Best animated film

Incredibles 2
Isle of Dogs
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Best director

BlacKkKlansman – Spike Lee
Cold War – Paweł Pawlikowski
The Favourite – Yorgos Lanthimos
Roma – Alfonso Cuarón
A Star Is Born – Bradley Cooper

Best original screenplay

Cold War – Janusz Głowacki, Paweł Pawlikowski
The Favourite – Deborah Davis, Tony McNamara
Green Book – Brian Currie, Peter Farrelly, Nick Vallelonga
Roma – Alfonso Cuarón
Vice – Adam McKay

Best adapted screenplay

BlacKkKlansman – Spike Lee, David Rabinowitz, Charlie Wachtel, Kevin Willmott
Can You Ever Forgive Me? – Nicole Holofcener, Jeff Whitty
First Man – Josh Singer
If Beale Street Could Talk – Barry Jenkins
A Star Is Born – Bradley Cooper, Will Fetters, Eric Roth

Best actress

Glenn Close – The Wife
Lady Gaga – A Star Is Born
Melissa McCarthy – Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Olivia Colman – The Favourite
Viola Davis – Widows

Best actor

Bradley Cooper – A Star Is Born
Christian Bale – Vice
Rami Malek – Bohemian Rhapsody
Steve Coogan – Stan & Ollie
Viggo Mortensen – Green Book

Best supporting actress

Amy Adams – Vice
Claire Foy – First Man
Emma Stone – The Favourite
Margot Robbie – Mary Queen of Scots
Rachel Weisz – The Favourite

Best supporting actor

Adam Driver – BlacKkKlansman
Mahershala Ali – Green Book
Richard E Grant – Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Sam Rockwell – Vice
Timothée Chalamet – Beautiful Boy

Best original music

BlacKkKlansman
If Beale Street Could Talk
Isle of Dogs
Mary Poppins Returns
A Star Is Born

Best cinematography

Bohemian Rhapsody
Cold War
The Favourite
First Man
Roma

Best editing

Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
First Man
Roma
Vice

Best production design

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
The Favourite
First Man
Mary Poppins Returns
Roma

Best costume design

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Mary Poppins Returns
Mary Queen of Scots

Best make up & hair

Bohemian Rhapsody
The Favourite
Mary Queen of Scots
Stan & Ollie
Vice

Best sound

Bohemian Rhapsody
First Man
Mission: Impossible – Fallout
A Quiet Place
A Star Is Born

Best special visual effects

Avengers: Infinity War
Black Panther
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
First Man
Ready Player One