2015 is proving to be a great year for creatively named animals in cinema. First Noah Baumbach gave us the diamond idea of naming twin kittens Good Cop and Bad Cop in While We're Young, and now Abderrahmane Sissako's extraordinary Timbuktu comes armed with a cow affectionately named GPS. This whimsical affectation is surely the only connective … Continue reading Review: Timbuktu
At 32 years of age, I have fond if foggy memories of watching the cartoon series of The Moomins as a child. Full disclosure right now; I've not investigated them since. Though there have been plenty of opportunities or dalliances at which I've thought I might revisit them, something else has always managed to distract … Continue reading Review: Moomins On The Riviera
I'd like to start off today by telling you a little story from my experience of watching this film, but in order to do so you have to understand something. In the cinema I'm one of those spoilsports who can't relax unless the rules of the cinema are being obeyed. You sit in your assigned … Continue reading Review: Pitch Perfect 2
Tobe Hooper's 1982 film Poltergeist, while rarely a fixture at the top end of Best Horror lists, has earned itself a rightful position as a classic of its era, thanks in no small part to the considerable influence of Steven Spielberg. Thought of by many as a Spielberg film in all but name, Hooper's film slotted … Continue reading Review: Poltergeist (2015)
Mad Max: Fury Road features a handful of either cuts or fades to black wherein director George Miller generously allows his audiences a moment to gather their breath once more. One suspects the film was tested without these little oases of calm, these fleeting moments of dark respite, only for the studio boys to find … Continue reading Review: Mad Max: Fury Road
Nelly (Nina Hoss) is a holocaust survivor returning to Germany soon after the end of the war, brought back to the world by her friend Lene (Nina Kuzendorf). When we first meet Nelly she is wrapped in bandages from the mistreatment wrought on her in the concentration camps. More bandages replace these as, with the … Continue reading Review: Phoenix
Abandoned mental asylums have always seemed appealing to me. These vast, self-sustaining communities exiled from the rest of the world, now left to decay. Photographer Christoper Payne has a beautiful collection under the simple title Asylum; the perfect coffee table book for anyone who can see the dilapidated aesthetic wonder of such places. Marcus Nispel's new … Continue reading Review: The Asylum
Gareth Edwards' 2010 word-of-mouth success Monsters was a great little treat (one that only narrowly missed my top 50 movies of the decade so far countdown this past weekend). A love story and road movie with a supernatural life lesson thrown in for good measure, Edwards busied himself in the aftermath with his colossal, lamentable Godzilla picture. So … Continue reading Review: Monsters: Dark Continent
And so onto the top 25. My favourite films to have appeared this decade so far. A couple of these might require justification. Mostly though they ought to speak for themselves. If anything compiling this list has made me very hopeful for the five-or-so years ahead. If they provide us with this many gems we'll … Continue reading List: 50 Best Films Of The Decade So Far (25-1)
I try not to do lists too often on here, as I'm almost constantly making them in my personal life (it's an issue I'm comfortable with). They can seem like filler material, and too many posts of that ilk render all of them pointless. Last year, at my most indulgent, I attempted to compile a list of … Continue reading List: 50 Best Films Of The Decade So Far (50-26)
