The Book of Henry – Review Phil W. Bayles June 21, 2017 Reviews Gregg Hurwitz's screenplay for The Book of Henry has been searching for a director since the late 1990s. Watching the film, it’s not difficult to see why. Tonally, it’s all over the place. It starts as...
Transformers: The Last Knight – Review Phil W. Bayles June 21, 2017 Reviews Here’s a drinking game for you: take a shot every time Optimus Prime feels the need to remind us of his name over the course of Transformers: The Last Knight. You’d think that, after five of these movies,...
Where Are They Now?: The Mummy (1999) Phil W. Bayles June 7, 2017 Features, Nostalgia, Where Are They Now? These days there is seemingly no movie that can't be shoehorned into a cinematic universe. Following the mammoth success of Marvel Studios, Universal has decided to reboot their old monster movie classics into...
Short of the Week – Strawberries Will Save The World Phil W. Bayles May 29, 2017 Features, Independent, Short of the Week https://vimeo.com/216918144 The world is a bloody scary place sometimes, and even our beloved Short of the Week section can’t escape that fact. Too often recently, our shorts have dealt with heavy...
10 of the Greatest Dogs in Cinema Phil W. Bayles May 2, 2017 Analysis, Features, Top 10 A Dog’s Purpose tells the story of Toby, a dog with the voice of the snowman from Frozen, who dies and is reincarnated four times in an attempt to reunite with his master. That’s pretty impressive loyalty,...
Second Chance: Sharlto Copley in Chappie Phil W. Bayles March 30, 2017 Features, Nostalgia, Second Chance When Neill Blomkamp burst onto the scene in 2009 with his blisteringly brilliant debut film District 9, he brought someone else with him: actor Sharlto Copley, whose entirely improvised performance as nebbish...
Short of the Week – Cracked Screen: A Snapchat Story Phil W. Bayles February 20, 2017 Features, Independent, Short of the Week https://vimeo.com/202796971 Social media and cinema have never been the cosiest of bedfellows. Most films that have directly tackled the ubiquity of things like Facebook and Twitter tend to go down the...
Ang Lee’s Hulk: The Superhero Blockbuster That Was Ahead Of Its Time Phil W. Bayles February 8, 2017 Features, Nostalgia, Second Chance 2 Comments In 2017, it’s increasingly difficult to remember a time when superhero movies weren’t one of the biggest pop-culture phenomena in history. Way back at the beginning of the millennium, however, the genre...
Short of the Week – Crack Phil W. Bayles February 6, 2017 Features, Independent, Short of the Week https://vimeo.com/111952478 From the biting political satire of Borat to the biting comedy horror of What We Do in the Shadows, the mockumentary format has endured over the years because of its...
Is La La Land Just The Artist All Over Again? Phil W. Bayles February 1, 2017 Analysis, Debate, Features Here at ORWAV, we just can't stop talking about La La Land. And with good reason - Damien Chazelle's modern take on old-school Hollywood has been nominated for an impressive 14 Academy Awards, and enchanted...
Cameraperson – Review Phil W. Bayles January 29, 2017 Reviews It’s often said that the act of observing something affects the behaviour of the thing that’s being observed, but it’s equally true that it changes the person doing the observing. In Cameraperson,...
Short of the Week – HERO Phil W. Bayles January 23, 2017 Features, Independent, Short of the Week https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQZe6y8eaDA Superheroes, like the gods and myths of old that predate them, are steeped in formula and archetypes. Dom Fera understands this, because Adam, the protagonist...
Top 20 Films of 2016: 5. The Nice Guys Phil W. Bayles December 27, 2016 Analysis, Features, Top 10 Shane Black has directed three films, and to some degree or another they’ve all poked fun at the clichés that hold the world together. His debut, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, was a whip-smart deconstruction of the...
Short of the Week – The Fly Phil W. Bayles December 5, 2016 Features, Independent, Short of the Week https://vimeo.com/139863591 Way back in 2003 director Edgar Wright shot the music video for Mint Royale's 'Blue Song', which starred Noel Fielding as a getaway driver waiting for three bank robbers...
Why Tangled Is Disney’s Most Feminist Film Phil W. Bayles November 30, 2016 Analysis, Features, Opinion It’s fair to say that Disney is on something of a roll at the moment. The House of Mouse’s output has been so consistently spectacular of late that some critics have decreed we are living in the “Second...