CinemaShafiq

  I am glad that I have finally watched this film after holding it on my to-watch-list for so long. A good directing debut from Aaron Sorkin and while I was watching it I can't help but feeling that it was like a blend of Gone Girl (cinematography and vibes), The Wolf of Wall Street (a biopic film of a hustler narrated from start to finish) and Casino (a narrated film on gambling and card games); and I meant this in a good way. I think this was Jessica Chastain's best performance so far, she played the character very well and tbh her physical attractiveness add a lot to the role. 8/10 

  I watched Bird Box the other day and many reviews said that it's reminiscent of  The Happening. I watched it and oh man I hate this movie to the core. It's so terrible, there's no aspect in which this film was redeemable and even Mark Wahlberg himself hated it. Shyamalan has no right to cover his failure by saying that he intended to make it as a high-budgeted B-movie. Nope. Bird Box was better than this. 3/10 

  A film that was not only a good thriller that kept you on edge, but also a film that would inspire a whole new subgenre (computer screen film).  More John Cho in Hollywood, please. He's a good actor and probably the only reason for me to watch Netflix's Cowboy Bebop. 8/10

  A fresh, intense and well-written series. It's been a while since I watched a series that got me real hooked and just makes me binge-watching it till the end.  There's some comments saying that this series was not original and it was ripping off The Hunger Games, Battle Royale or Alice in Borderland. In my opinion, it's common for a modern film/series to be inspired from other works, just as long as it didn't rip it off 100%.  Squid Game also had a very fresh & unique set and costume design as well as good scores. The characters were also well written, and you'll be hooked to 1 or 2 of them, and this depends on each viewer.  It seems like just as Netflix were doing great original Hollywood contents back in 2015 (Daredevil, Stranger Things), now they're doing the same thing with the Korean market (Squid Game, Kingdom). This is great and hopefully there'll be more coming from Netflix Korea. 8/10 

  A masterpiece by Bong Joon-Ho. He brilliantly crafted a thriller/drama film that has some dark comedy bits and most importantly a deep social satire at its core.  The social commentary was a reality check and gut-wrenching; and is very relevant for 2019. Well-casted and visually beautiful with brilliant cinematography that brought its smart screenplay to life. Definitely one of my top 5 films of 2019, and one of top films of the decade. 9/10

A haunting and intense recount of the Chernobyl incident in 1986. Craig Mazin successfully made a grim, haunting, suspenseful recollection of the incident based on the actual facts and persons involved. Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgaard and Emily Watson's acting were excellent in portraying conflicted important personas in the 80s Soviet. There were comments criticising that the one bothering thing about the series was that the fact that all the casts were using English, and not Russian, but to me, that didn't even matter as biopics not using the original language is pretty common and the series actings, story and other technical aspects was too damn good to consider such small issue. The music, composed by the brilliant Hildur Gudnadottir and the costume department, covering makeups and attires of the casts add to the haunting elements of Chernobyl, and Craig Mazin got the environment of the 80s Soviets perfectly, even to the tiniest details such as the color of th...

I'm a big fan of Jake Gyllenhaal and I've been hearing a lot about this film and finally I decided to watch it. Wow I would say I am very impressed.  Richard Kelly managed to make a film made up of different genres in it - thriller, sci-fi, coming-of-age, as well as a bit of satire. The best part of  Donnie Darko  was definitely in it's last act, and this was accomplished by Richard Kelly succeeding in subverting the audience's expectations while opening up to the audiences to make up for what they are watching.  Definitely, I got several theories of what does the ending means, and I can see that I'm going to spend my time googling on the theories of  Donnie Darko 's ending. 8/10