Director: Daniel Espinosa Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson If there's an unnecessary element of modern pop cinema that has started to get my goat, it's the post-credits sting. Marvel movies use these most often, demanding that an already bum-numbed audience shuffle uncomfortably for anything up to a further ten minutes as every single … Continue reading Review: Life
Director: Bill Condon Stars: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans There seems to be an unspoken opinion in certain circles of film criticism that populist cinema is just plain bad. Bad in execution, bad even in principle. That by attempting to appeal to everyone, you implicitly censor yourself until there's nothing to say. It's a sweeping generalisation, … Continue reading Review: Beauty And The Beast (2017)
Director: Paul Verhoeven Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Laurent Lafitte, Anne Consigny This isn't going to be a very good review of Elle. I'm sat here behind the dashboard of this blog with the cursor blinking at me expectantly, still trying to shape my feelings about Paul Verhoeven's latest, but it's like trying to lay foundations for a … Continue reading Review: Elle
Director: Jordan Peele Stars: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, LilRel Howery A little over two years ago I read a very interesting article on the greatly missed beacon of film analysis The Dissolve about the sparseness of diversity in the horror genre. Matt Barone's piece, which still exists here, articulated an issue I had long felt true … Continue reading Review: Get Out
Director: Anna Biller Stars: Samantha Robinson, Gian Keys, Laura Waddell Elaine (Samantha Robinson) is young, beautiful and recently single following the collapse of her marriage under tragic circumstances. She is also a witch, and the film opens with her starting afresh in a new town, set up in a gorgeous gothic apartment building that's already kitted … Continue reading Review: The Love Witch
Director: Alice Lowe Stars: Alice Lowe, Jo Hartley, Kayvan Novak There's an excruciating disaster of a character in Alice Lowe's Prevenge named Dan played by Tom Davis. He's a portly pub DJ in a small town who lives in a sad flat with his poor ailing mother. He's the kind of aging lad's lad who would … Continue reading Review: Prevenge
Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts Stars: Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L Jackson There are movies that are greater than the sum of their parts. Movies that, in spite of inherent flaws or elements you might think would play against the whole, manage to coalesce into something better, something beautiful even. This is because a piece of … Continue reading Review: Kong Skull Island
Director: Onur Tukel Stars: Sandra Oh, Anne Heche, Alicia Silverstone Onur Tukel's comedy Catfight has a pretty strong USP. Here we have a movie in which Sandra Oh and Anne Heche, two seasoned actors with acclaimed roles in their pockets and more-or-less equal levels of celebrity, credibility and respect, beat the living crap out of each … Continue reading Review: Catfight
Director: James Mangold Stars: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen Did we realise, two years ago, that we were living in an age of superhero stagnation? Yes, probably, very much so. The glut of spandex movies has been pressing for a number of years. I can even remember talking about exhaustion on the subject way … Continue reading Review: Logan
