Director: Noah Hawley Stars: Natalie Portman, Jon Hamm, Dan Stevens What do you do when your head and your heart are in vastly different orbits, out of sync and liable to collide during some future rotation, causing chaos and sending debris flying everywhere? Such a state of erratic discombobulation is rife throughout Noah Hawley's feature … Continue reading Review: Lucy In The Sky
Do not worry about that title. The Lost Highway Hotel isn't about to descend into vacuous red carpet glamour. But as the end of the decade starts appearing on the horizon (and with 100 film recommendations already live for your exploration) it felt like a neat time to celebrate the incredible acting talents that have … Continue reading Celebrity Rising: The Stars of the 2010s
Director: Brady Corbet Stars: Natalie Portman, Raffey Cassidy, Stacy Martin At the age of thirteen, Celeste is injured in a high school shooting. A bullet pierces her neck and remains lodged against a vertebrae. Appearing at a vigil for the dead, she performs a song co-written with her sister Ellie (Stacy Martin). The song goes … Continue reading Review: Vox Lux
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: Terrence Malick Stars: Rooney Mara, Ryan Gosling, Michael Fassbender Former cinematic recluse Terrence Malick has had a surge in creativity over the course of this decade unlike anything in his career previously, though the fruits of this late bloom have divided his audience; those that are charmed by his lighter-than-air touch and fondness for … Continue reading Review: Song To Song
Director: Pablo Larraín Stars: Natalie Portman, Billy Crudup, John Hurt In the last 100 years there have been a handful of moments in American history that can be argued to have brought trauma to the collective consciousness. 9/11 is one. The assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is another. And one can look broadly at … Continue reading Review: Jackie
Terrence Malick's latest film - his third in five years - continues the trend of his recent material, relying less on plot than on the notion of collage. Through the weightless, angelic camerawork of Emmanuel Lubezki (The Revenant), Malick invites his audience to participate in defining the shape and parameters of his increasingly fluid work. … Continue reading Review: Knight Of Cups
Year: 2011 Director: Ivan Reitman Stars: Natalie Portman (Emma), Ashton Kutcher (Adam), Kevin Kline (Alvin), Greta Gerwig (Patrice), Cary Elwes (Dr Metzner), Lake Bell (Lucy) Genre: Romantic Comedy And thus in one fell swoop any flickering credibility that I may have managed to muster over the last two years is instantly extinguished. Snuffed out. Just … Continue reading Why I Love… #70: No Strings Attached
There's a moment in one of the early 'Treehouse Of Horror' episodes of The Simpsons that sprang to mind while I was watching Thor: The Dark World. The Simpson family inherit an old spooky house with a host of haunted goings-on occurring within. In one room is a vortex into which Homer chucks an orange. Immediately after, … Continue reading Review: Thor: The Dark World
***originally written 28 January 2011*** The Oscars don't generally give out their major awards to horror films; the genre doesn't have nearly enough respect in those terms. So it is entirely understandable why Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan is not being marketed as a horror movie, but rather, as it's trailer insinuates, more of a sexually … Continue reading Review: Black Swan
