Director: Steven Spielberg Stars: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn The art for Ready Player One provided a set of uneasy red flags. That poster of Tye Sheridan with disproportionate legs? How did that [Street Fighter] make it past an assumed selection of screeners for approval? It spoke of laziness not ordinarily associated with Steven Spielberg. … Continue reading Review: Ready Player One
Director: Wes Anderson Stars: Bryan Cranston, Kunichi Nomura, Koyu Rankin Four years ago, Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel consummated a two-decades long romance with the general public, catapulting the director from cult favourite to widely renowned populist. His clutch of exceedingly idiosyncratic movies now appear revered as treasures. Everyone's list of top Wes Anderson movies … Continue reading Review: Isle Of Dogs
Director: Roar Uthaug Stars: Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Walton Goggins Films adapted from video games suck. We all know this. We've all been down this road and been burned too many times before. Even the occasional arguments to the contrary - the first Silent Hill movie, for instance - are, if we're honest, only ever kinda … Continue reading Review: Tomb Raider
Director: Ruben Östlund Stars: Claes Bang, Elisabeth Moss, Terry Notary You can't remove any part of a square and have it remain a square; it becomes something other, something open and unresolved. Similarly, one suspects that removing whole parts of Ruben Östlund's Palme D'or winning film The Square would inherently change it irrevocably. It would not be what it … Continue reading Review: The Square
Director: Alex Garland Stars: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson Alex Garland's second (credited) feature as director is the first true victim of what I'm coming to think of as The Netflix Problem. Produced by Paramount, who are increasingly showing their cowardice toward new and original concepts, the film has been granted a scant … Continue reading Review: Annihilation
Director: Sebastián Lelio Stars: Daniela Vega, Francisco Reyes, Luis Gnecco Triumphant last weekend in the Best Foreign Language Feature category at the Oscars, Sebastián Lelio's A Fantastic Woman may have already topped this prestigious accolade by reopening the discussion over the Gender Identity Bill in its native Chile. The film, which makes a sensational star of … Continue reading Review: A Fantastic Woman
Director: Lynne Ramsay Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Judith Roberts, Ekaterina Samsonov "Whatever happened to the strong silent type?" Tony Soprano would bemoan defensively throughout The Sopranos, most often using Gary Cooper as an example to eschew the need for his own therapy. The truth is, Tony, that this particular trope never really went anywhere, and remains … Continue reading Review: You Were Never Really Here
Directors: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein Stars: Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Jesse Plemmons As I sit writing this, the snow from this week's weather front is thawing on the roof and cascading down the side of the house. The gutters - already a problem - are overflowing from the melt; fat, heavy droplets spattering on … Continue reading Review: Game Night
Spurred by the release of Francis Lawrence's tone-deaf spy thriller Red Sparrow, which numbly deploys sexual abuse and exploitation as just-another-plot-mechanic, it felt like time to revisit one of last year's more divisive titles, one I increasingly feel I didn't give a fair shake. A little under six months ago I gave mother! a dismissive two star … Continue reading 180: The Tenacity of mother!
Director: Francis Lawrence Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, Matthias Schoenaerts, Joel Edgerton Director Francis Lawrence and the star of his three Hunger Games features, Jennifer Lawrence, reunite for something altogether different (yet naggingly familiar) with this smooth, slick and wholly soulless spy thriller based on a book by Jason Matthews. J-Law stars as Dominika Egorova, a renowned Bolshoi … Continue reading Review: Red Sparrow
