Director: Kathryn Bigelow Stars: John Boyega, Will Poulter, Algee Smith Following a vibrant if tonally skewed animated opening that cliff notes African-American history leading up to our story, Bigelow thrusts us into the first day of the 1967 race riots in Detroit, mimicking the role of documentary filmmaker, painstakingly setting the scene for the violence … Continue reading Review: Detroit
This post will contain SPOILERS throughout. As might well have been expected, there was a lot of activity this week as the show draws closer to the end (next week the final two parts will air together bringing season three to a close), but virtually (maybe even none of it) took place in the town … Continue reading Twin Peaks Season 3: Part 16
Directed by: Lucia Aniello Stars: Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Zoë Kravitz Having been denied the opportunity to check out the well-liked Girls Trip last month thanks to its selective distribution in this part of the country, I opted to take a chance on Rough Night as a sort of consolation prize, this despite the advance buzz that when … Continue reading Review: Rough Night
There will be SPOILERS throughout this post. David Lynch's love of Billy Wilder's 1950 classic Sunset Boulevard is well established. He's cited it in interviews as one of his favourite movies, and time and again its influence rears its head in his work. The road itself makes a cameo in Mulholland Drive. In INLAND EMPIRE he recreates a … Continue reading Twin Peaks Season 3: Part 15
Director: Julia Ducournau Stars: Garance Marillier, Ella Rumpf, Rabah Nait Oufella The coming of age drama is easily mutated into the horror picture as filmmakers attempt to wrestle the incredible changes that we go through in our adolescence into dynamic narrative forms. Take Ginger Snaps, for example, in which Katharine Isabelle finds herself transforming into a … Continue reading Review: Raw
There will be SPOILERS throughout this post. 253. It's a number that has a strange significance in this week's firecracker installment of Twin Peaks, pointedly appearing twice. We finally seem to have reached 'the day' as Sheriff Frank Truman (Robert Forster), Deputy Chief Hawk (Michael Horse), Deputy Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) and Deputy Andy Brennan (Harry … Continue reading Twin Peaks Season 3: Part 14
Director: David Leitch Stars: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, Sofia Boutella Mad Max: Fury Road posed a question that required an answer; why, in this day and age, aren't there more great female fronted action movies? It's not that such a thing doesn't exist (though they're scarce), its more that they're all too often bogged down … Continue reading Review: Atomic Blonde
Director: David Lowery Stars: Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Will Oldham There are five minutes in David Lowery's A Ghost Story in which you watch Rooney Mara sit on the floor eating a pie, crying. That's all that you're watching. It's just Rooney Mara sitting on the floor, eating a pie and crying. For about five minutes. … Continue reading Review: A Ghost Story
Director: David F Sandberg Stars: Talitha Bateman, Stephanie Sigman, Lulu Wilson A work colleague said something to me this week about the nature of modern horror pictures. That for a mainstream picture to be considered successful - because there's so much bad horror out there - it merely has to be average. It's a sentiment that … Continue reading Review: Annabelle: Creation
This post will contain SPOILERS throughout. This week's Twin Peaks stuck to an emerging and somewhat frustrating template as the ongoing series revealed the extent of its chronological playfulness (glass half-full) or ineptitude (glass half-empty). Back in its initial two season run, the show fell almost immediately into the one episode = one day formula. With … Continue reading Twin Peaks Season 3: Part 13
Directors: Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes, Olivia Neergaard-Holm You are witnessing a front three-quarter view of an adult sharing several tender moments. That is to say, this documentary is an access point into the creative history of master filmmaker David Lynch, but not a Pandora's box of answers to the riddles in his narratives. If you're … Continue reading Review: David Lynch The Art Life
Director: Ana Lily Amirpour Stars: Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Keanu Reeves A recurring criticism of Ana Lily Amirpour's debut A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night - and one that sticks - is its tendency for style over substance. That film, a black and white vampire tale, brought attention for how Amirpour used her camera to … Continue reading Review: The Bad Batch
Director: Luc Besson Stars: Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, Rihanna "Two hours alone with me? What a drag." "More like an eternity." I'm paraphrasing lines from Besson's script here, but they're about as close to a self-diagnosis as Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets gets. With a budget in the region of $170 million, Besson … Continue reading Review: Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets
Director: Hope Dickson Leach Stars: Ellie Kendrick, David Troughton, Jack Holden Hope Dickson Leach's sparse, emotionally intelligent feature debut features two pieces of source music, both songs taken from A Silver Mt. Zion's first album He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts Of Light Sometimes Grace The Corners Of Our Rooms. Anyone familiar with that album … Continue reading Review: The Levelling
