Director: Tim Burton Stars: Danny DeVito, Michael Keaton, Eva Green "This is a disaster," exclaims Alan Arkin's character during the climactic scenes of Tim Burton's live action Dumbo remake, and given the savaging the film has received from most quarters of the UK press, one might assume that this line will live to take on a … Continue reading Review: Dumbo (2019)
Director: Alice Rohrwacher Stars: Adriano Tardiolo, Alba Rohrwacher, Luca Chikovani This review contains some mild spoilers. I've tried to keep it vague, but I really couldn't help it if we're to talk about the movie in any meaningful way. There's a flavour of 70's Italian rebel Pasolini about Alice Rohrwacher's Happy As Lazzaro; a singularly … Continue reading Review: Happy As Lazzaro
Director: Jordan Peele Stars: Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph Dating back to the 16th century, the psychomanteum was a tool used for channeling spirits from the beyond or other realms of being; a room in which the focal point is a mirror, reflecting only darkness. In modern times, in which filmed storytelling is … Continue reading Review: Us
It's pretty much a note of permanent record on this little site of mine that, in spite of the blog's ill-thought-out name, my favourite David Lynch film (and favourite film of all time) is Mulholland Drive. It's the film that got my obsessing over film. It changed my perspective. Obsession is accurate, as every little detail … Continue reading Minutiae: The Use of Coca-Cola in Mulholland Drive
Director: David Robert Mitchell Stars: Riley Keough, Andrew Garfield, Callie Hernandez David Robert Mitchell's Under The Silver Lake is a woozy, rambling, blissed-out epic, the kind seen before when Hollywood tries (and fails) to swallow up a new and interesting voice from the indie stratosphere. Mitchell hit paydirt in 2014 with his word-of-mouth horror gem It Follows. … Continue reading Review: Under The Silver Lake
Year: 1985 Director: Donna Deitch Stars: Helen Shaver, Patricia Charbonneau, Audra Lindley Gay cinema has become pleasingly normalised in contemporary filmmaking. Indeed, most of the very best modern romance films centre on same-sex couples. Though the movies have opened up, the world still holds its prejudices, and it is perhaps this ongoing idea of the … Continue reading Why I Love… #103: Desert Hearts
Directors: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck Stars: Brie Larson, Samuel L Jackson, Clark Gregg That the Marvel machine has taken 11 years and 20-ish films to get to a female-centric superhero movie is such a glaring and conspicuous oversight that Captain Marvel arrives with a hideously unenviable burden. It has to mean something. It has to be … Continue reading Review: Captain Marvel
Director: Steven Knight Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Rafael Sayegh Steven Knight has some strange credits behind him. Sure, his last directorial feature was the all-in-a-car character piece Locke (pretty good), and he's made a name for himself writing and directing for shows like Peaky Blinders and Taboo (also critically acclaimed)... but he's also the creator of TV … Continue reading Review: Serenity (2019)
Director: Todd Strauss-Schulson Stars: Rebel Wilson, Liam Hemsworth, Priyanka Chopra Having already lovingly lampooned the slasher movie with The Final Girls, Todd Strauss-Schulson now takes similar aim at the rom-com with Isn't It Romantic, which has dropped suddenly onto Netflix. With Rebel Wilson starring, this seems a little surprising to have bypassed multiplexes, but that's just … Continue reading Review: Isn’t It Romantic
Director: Abbas Kiarostami 'I always wonder to what extent the artist aims to depict the reality of a scene. Painters capture only one frame of reality and nothing before or after it. For "24 Frames" I started with famous paintings but then switched to photos I had taken through the years. I included about four and … Continue reading Review: 24 Frames
