BONES AND ALL Review: A Mesmerizing Piece Of Acting

Luca Guadagnino's follow-up to Call Me By Your Name and Suspiria is a love story about cannibals, which is an odd choice considering his collaboration with Armie Hammer in the past with Call Me By Your Name (I had to mention it). All jokes aside I was a big fan of his previous two films, his choice to go with a totally different style and to remake a horror classic with Suspiria is something I admire and I think he nailed the task, so I was curious to see is new film Bones And All, starring and produced by Timothée Chalamet.

Synopsis: "The story follows a pair of young cannibalistic lovers who flee together on a road trip across the country."

Bones And All is quite the bloody experience and not for the faint of heart, it features dedicated performances from everyone involved and Luca Guadagnino's vision is the main driver with the actors: terrific editing, solid music and atmosphere, I was mesmerized for 2 hours. It has its moments of shock and gore, but it's all complemented with a sophisticated artistic vision, I never felt like it was distasteful. I think the writing really stand out as well, the story doesn't exactly have a conventional three-act structure but I was always invested.

Taylor Russell is absolutely phenomenal in this but I also want to highlight everyone's work: Mark Rylance & Timothée Chalamet are both standouts but you also get a few surprise appearances in the cast and everyone delivers. Taylor Russell brings so much humanity to this role and make us empathize about cannibals who are actually eating and killing people. Despite the gruesome nature of the story, there's something beautiful about those 2 lovers connecting and bonding over something they share.

The movie really shines because of its early 1980's setting in small American towns with two lovers on the road visiting different states and different people. They have to stick with each other to overcome their cannibalism or maybe learn how to live with it, one could almost say it has a "Easy Rider" vibe to it. It's not an easy watch but for some reasons I was captivated with the story & the characters. It works mostly because of the directing and the acting, you can take Mark Rylance's performance as Sully for example, he makes your skin crawl and his presence in the film is golden. A great Friday night watch.

Initial Score: 8.5/10

Bones And All is now playing in theaters.

ECHO 3 Premiere Review: A Gripping War Drama with Highs and Lows

Echo 3 is a new series released by AppleTV+ that I had no idea was coming out until not too long ago, the main draw for me here is the creator/writer Mark Boal who is responsible for great screenplays like Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker and Detroit. Because of his résumé, I was interested to see what could be done here considering Mark Boal is excellent with this genre and Luke Evans is also an underrated talent in Hollywood. This is going to be a review of the first three episodes with no spoilers, maybe minor plot details but that's it.

Synopsis: "When Amber Chesborough goes missing along the Colombia-Venezuela border, her brother and her husband struggle to find her against the backdrop of a secret war."

I'm going to start with the positives here, the action is excellent and every episode that I saw has at least one thrilling action sequence that's worth watching. Luke Evans is playing a very serious role here and I think he's the star of the show, he makes a solid pairing with Michiel Huisman as two co-workers with a family bond. The show starts with Huisman's character (Prince) marrying Luke Evans' (Bambi) sister played by Amber Chesborough, they are both black ops working together. They get a call to jump on a mission, and things goes south from there.

The sequence in the snow had me on the edge of my seat and I was on board for a great show, the sound design is really on-point and I always think it's bonus point when it's shot on location, which they do a lot here. This leads me to some of the issues I have with the series so far, keeping in mind that I've only seen three episodes. Everything else surrounding those action sequences can be lackluster in parts, it's a very cold series and not all characters are likeable which makes it tough sometimes to be attached emotionally. It has some strong moments but not all of it is working, it's at its best during the action sequences.

The story involves a lot of characters because of the political intrigue and I don't think everyone gets their moments to shine so when the action kicks in, there's a certain lack of emotional connection to the spectacle unfolding. Despite some solid acting & directing, I can't help but feel like this is not reaching its full potential, yet. I feel like it's not hitting the target with its political commentary. After 3 episodes, I still want to see where this is going and even if the only reason I'm still on board is because of the impressive action sequences, that's enough for me to stick around a little bit more because they hit with a bang.

Initial Score: 6.5/10

The first three episodes of Echo 3 will start streaming on November 23rd on AppleTV+