Category: Reviews

REVIEW: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

POSSIBLE SPOILERS THROUGH IMPLICATION

Quentin Tarantino has, perhaps, the most iconic voice in all of modern cinema – literally so.

His dialogue is slangy and irreverent, immediately quotable; loaded with pop culture references and yet oddly timeless for it. Part of that is Tarantino’s range of influences: Pulp Fiction, for instance, borrows from both the Golden Age of Hollywood – as with the briefcase inspired by Kiss Me Deadly – and the French New Wave, Mia’s “comfortable silences” bit being directly lifted wholesale from Vivre Sa Vie.…

PODCAST: Avengers: Endgame [Electric Shadows]

Episode 61 of The Electric Shadows Podcast is an epic discussion of Avengers: Endgame. But, what do the two Robs, our intrepid explorers in pod, make of the climatic instalment to the MCU as we know it?

No spoilers here, and also no spoilers for the film itself until the podcast gets into the spoiler zone.…

REVIEW: ‘Us’ (2019)

Jordan Peele might be the most interesting filmmaker working in horror today – or at least the one using horror to do the most interesting things.

Get Out was not only a smash hit, but has arguably been responsible for the critical rehabilitation of the horror genre; looked down on for decades as the province of jump scares and slasher flicks.…

2019 film in review – February (in progress)

Cold Pursuit

Released: February 22nd

Director: Hans Petter Moland

Writer: Frank Baldwin (based on Kim Fupz Aakeson’s In Order Of Disappearance)

Cast: Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Tom Bateman, Emmy Rossum, Dominic Lombardozzi, Domenick Forsythe, John Doman, Tom Jackson

Cert: 15

Duration: 118 minutes

It’s been five years since icy black Norwegian comedy In Order Of Disappearance blew through cinemas.…

REVIEW: Glass

After nearly two decades, M. Night Shyamalan has finally made a return to the superhero movie – and with an ambitious crossover event no less.

His first foray into the genre, Unbreakable, long before the birth of the comic-book franchise, was a subtle deconstruction that made a character study of comic-book archetypes.…

REVIEW: Welcome To Marwen

Early January is the time at which studios tend to release two types of films: slow-burn Oscar contenders (see: The Favourite) and misfires they’re looking to quietly bury.

Despite the best attempts of director Robert Zemeckis and star Steve Carrell, Welcome To Marwen would seem to fall into the latter camp; its conceptual oddity outweighing its Walter Mitty-esque appeal, despite its unique based-on-a-true-story credentials.…

REVIEW: Halloween (2018)

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the suburbs…

In 1978, the world was affected by a trauma so great that it still continues to resonate today.  I’m talking, of course, about John Carpenter’s original Halloween – a sui generis slasher movie  that has inspired eight sequels and a reboot (plus sequel), and now a reboot-sequel that ignores the sequels and the reboot (plus sequel).…

REVIEW: Dragged Across Concrete (LFF 2018 – Day 5)

If you’re into Dragged Across Concrete solely for the violence implied by its title, you may be disappointed.

S. Craig Zahler’s latest has nothing to match the groin ripping or face stomping of his first two films Bone Tomahawk and Brawl In Cellblock 99. …

REVIEW: The Front Runner (LFF 2018 – Day 4)

Ivan Reitman’s latest, The Front Runner, is an unexpectedly topical account about what we have the right to expect from our politicians – and perhaps what we don’t.

It’s 1988, and Colorado Senator Gary Hart (Hugh Jackman) seems like the ideal candidate for the Democratic nomination.…