REVIEW: The Killer (2023) [London Film Festival 2023]

Three years on from the roaring historical drama of Mank, David Fincher returns with The Killer, a chilly, methodical thriller very much rooted in the present.

The Killer (Michael Fassbender, coolly compelling) is a professional.

His working life is meticulous, based on a routine designed to help him perform with maximum efficiency.…

REVIEW: The Bikeriders [London Film Festival 2023]

Everyone looks cool in leathers.

This would seem to be the main ethos behind Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders.

Based loosely on Danny Lyon’s photo-book of the same name, compiled from 1963-’67, the film follows the Vandals, a fictionalized Midwest motorcycle club composed mostly, in this telling, of movie stars and characters actors.…

REVIEW: Saltburn [London Film Festival 2023]

Having thoroughly skewered the male-female power dynamic in Promising Young Woman, in Saltburn Emerald Fennell turns her withering eye on another social structure: the British class system.

Newly arrived at Oxford University, scholarship student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), bright, studious, and dressed like Harry Potter newly arrived at Hogwarts – all house scarf and specs – struggles to fit in amid the bright young things.…

REVIEW: Rise of the Footsoldier: Vengeance

The sixth film in the long-running Essex hardman franchise, Rise of the Footsoldier: Vengeance is entertaining, convoluted, and… strangely progressive?

Returning as Pat Tate, a fictionalised version of a real-life wrong’ un, Craig Fairbrass gives us a slightly cuddlier, more sympathetic version of the character than the coked-up psychopath of some previous installments.…

REVIEW: A Haunting in Venice

Given how littered it is by corpses, it’s remarkable the extent to which ghosts are absent from the murder mystery genre.

Aside from the plot ramifications – it’s tricky sustaining the whole “whodunnit” aspect when you have an incorporeal witness – it does tend to undermine the foundation of rationality on which the process of detection is built.…

REVIEW: The Equalizer 3

Nearly a decade on from the first movie, I find myself reviewing the third and reportedly final instalment of Denzel Washington-Antoine Fuqua’s Equalizer franchise.

For the conclusion of a trilogy, albeit one with no narrative through-line, The Equalizer 3 might be the most confusing blockbuster I’ve seen since Tenet.

REVIEW: Fool’s Paradise

The directorial debut of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia‘s Charlie Day, Fool’s Paradise poses the question, seems initially to pose the question, where is the line between madness and creativity?

Unfortunately, it poses many other questions and without particular clarity, wit or insight.…

REVIEW: You Hurt My Feelings

Spouses Carolyn and Jonathan (real-life married couple Amber Tamblyn and David Cross) argue about everything. The only thing they do agree on is that their longtime therapist, Don (Tobias Menzies), looks tired.

The issue of honesty is at the heart of You Hurt My Feelings, Nicole Holofcener’s casually incisive dramedy that poses the question, when does being supportive become lying?…

REVIEW: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

They say time heals all wounds, but for those who still bear the scars of the last adventure, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is just another twist of the knife.

Fifteen years have passed since Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and our intrepid, whip-cracking archaeologist is now himself a relic.…