Directors: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead Stars: Anthony Mackie, Jamie Dornan, Ally Ioannides No one could accuse Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead of lacking ambition. Over the course of their low-budget features Resolution, Spring and The Endless, the idiosyncratic creative duo have navigated time loops, metaphysical horror monsters, cultists, the mandates of storytelling itself and inter-species romance (of a … Continue reading Review: Synchronic
Director: Gavin Rothery Stars: Stacy Martin, Theo James, Rhona Mitra For Gavin Rothery, the future is monochrome. His debut feature - a reasonably scaled sci-fi piece reminiscent of opening salvos from the likes of Duncan Jones and Alex Garland - takes place seventeen years from now. At a remote Japanese facility owned by a corporation … Continue reading Review: Archive
Director: Brandon Cronenberg Stars: Angela Riseborough, Christopher Abbott, Tuppence Middleton Living and working in the shadow of David Cronenberg might well be a particularly daunting thing, but son Brandon is gamely stepping up to the task and if the world wasn't won over by his suitably vile debut Antiviral back in 2012, it certainly seems more … Continue reading Review: Possessor
Director: Lorcan Finnegan Stars: Imogen Poots, Jessie Eisenberg, Eanna Hardwicke Vivarium might appear shrewdly, even cruelly timed; arriving on streaming platforms in the midst of a pandemic that has restricted whole nations to their homes. For here we have an elusive and intriguing domestic nightmare about a young couple trapped at home... seemingly forever. However, … Continue reading Review: Vivarium
Director: Jessica Hausner Stars: Emily Beecham, Ben Wishaw, Kit Connor In both Don Siegel and Philip Kaufman's famous iterations of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the titular floral menace crashes to Earth from outer space. It is an interloper from elsewhere and so, in a real sense, an agent of chaos out of our control. … Continue reading Review: Little Joe
Director: Tim Miller Stars: Mackenzie Davis, Linda Hamilton, Natalia Reyes In hindsight, perhaps we ought to be thankful for just how dire Terminator Genisys turned out to be. That movie - which pissed all over a pretty well sodden franchise - ended with the threat of further sequels. Fortunately, those plans have been terminated (ha!). Dark Fate … Continue reading Review: Terminator Dark Fate
Director: James Gray Stars: Brad Pitt, Ruth Negga, Donald Sutherland We all live, for the most part, on the surface. We deal with what's in front of us and we get through the day and we enjoy the people we decide to share our time with. There's a world underneath that, though. That inner place, … Continue reading Review: Ad Astra
Director: Claire Denis Stars: Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Jessie Ross Robert Pattinson is the new Batman (*cough* best choice since Michael Keaton *cough*) and here he is in a new sci-fi film. Are his days in the wilds doing small pictures for indie darlings a thing of the past? Fuck no, they're not. High Life is … Continue reading Review: High Life
Director: Gerard McMurray Stars: Lex Scott Davis, Y'lan Noel, Jovian Wade The quality of the movies in the Purge franchise ricochets unevenly from film to film, and its tough to cite any entry as the series' defining statement thus far, yet the political capital of the series has managed to increase every time. What started out … Continue reading Review: The First Purge
Directors: Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson Stars: Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson, Callie Hernandez Sometimes an idea just won't let you alone. For filmmaking duo Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, new doors were opened following the critical acclaim for their second feature Spring, and while the future will likely see them step through those doors, a notion from … Continue reading Review: The Endless
Director: Ron Howard Stars: Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke "Everybody stick to the plan. Do not improvise." So says Woody Harrelson's smuggler Tobias Beckett (the least Star Wars-y named character to appear in Star Wars yet), and its a line that rings with considerable pathos for what might've been. It's no secret that Solo originally fell into … Continue reading Review: Solo – A Star Wars Story
Director: Julius Onah Stars: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Oyelowo, Daniel Brühl If there's one thing guaranteed to piss off the critics, it's getting excluded from the established pattern of pre-release screeners. Take a peek at 'Film Twitter' immediately after the surprise Super Bowl announcement that The Cloverfield Paradox would be available to stream on Netflix after the … Continue reading Review: The Cloverfield Paradox
Director: Denis Villeneuve Stars: Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas, Harrison Ford While it took some tweaking in the editing room to secure its legacy, Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner was about as influential a piece of science fiction cinema as the decade would ultimately see. With his team of designers, Scott - ever the … Continue reading Review: Blade Runner 2049
Director: Amat Escalante Stars: Ruth Ramos, Simone Bucio, Jesús Meza The strange mysteries and preoccupations of our biology as human beings are investigated through this striking familial drama from Mexican director Amat Escalante; a film which has gained a level of notoriety for how this is achieved by integrating an unusual and perverse alien influence … Continue reading Review: The Untamed
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
