Graduation
A rundown estate; shabby, grey blue tower blocks; a cement roadways; a patch of grass; off-screen someone digs.
We never discover who is digging or why, nor who’s responsible for the rock that flies through a living room window that same grey morning.…
Well, that wasn’t so difficult – was it?
After a series of critical misfires, it seems Warner Bros. have finally figured out what was missing from their movie-making formula: fun.
Apart from her brief but winning appearance in Batman V Superman, this marks the long-overdue cinematic debut of perhaps the most iconic female superhero (who’s not somebody’s cousin that is). …
In Episode 23 of The Electric Shadows Podcast, the generation gap rears its head.
Rob Wallis quite likes Alien: Covenant and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol.2. Rob Daniel pines for the good old days of Alien movies and reveals he spent most of Guardians playing Shag, Marry, Kill with the movie’s characters.…
Episode 22 of the Electric Shadows Podcast sees Rob Daniel & myself revving their engines as they ironically mosey through a discussion of Fast & Furious 8, and the surprisingly robust franchise as a whole.
We also dive into the insane world of Howard Hughes in Warren Beatty’s Rules Don’t Apply, and get ambivalent about the Star Wars: The Last Jedi trailer.…
Rules Don’t Apply
A long overdue return from the Hollywood legend behind Bulworth and Reds or just an over-long-gestated vanity project from the over-the-hill subject of Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain?1 Rules Don’t Apply falls, somewhat fascinatingly, occasionally gloriously, into both camps.
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Is TV as we knew it dying?
What was once a communal experience – households across the nation gathered before the glow of the cathode ray tube – has now become a more private experience.
It seems not to matter how you consume the latest episode of must-watch telly, be it Broadchurch or Bake Off, alone or in company, live or via catch-up, so long as you’re able to take part in the water-cooler discussion come Monday.…
Episode 21 of The Electric Shadows Podcast sees Rob Daniel & myself tackling the controversial live action remake of Ghost In The Shell.
We review the film’s merits and flaws, before discussing the whitewashing scandal surrounding the film and the way it is addressed within the plot.
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Ever so slightly longer ago in a galaxy pretty well-known to us at this point…
After forty years of galactic-scale family squabbles among the Skywalker clan, Disney’s latest addition to the franchise seeks to remind us that there are other families in the Star Wars universe… to a point.…
The Electric Shadows Podcast reaches Episode 20!
In this landmark episode, myself & Rob Daniel talk Kong: Skull Island – but did we go ape for it?
We also go off track into some trademark tangent undergrowth, and find time to tackle Paul Verhoeven’s controversial Elle, Anna Biller’s deeply feminist melodrama The Love Witch, plus Fassbender-Gleeson Traveler drama Trespass Against Us.
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The Love Witch
Love is a many-splendoured thing. It can also be deadly, especially when magick’s involved.
Such is the takeaway from The Love Witch, a flawless ’70s-style melodrama from writer-director/musician/editor/set-art-costume-production-designer Anna Biller.
An obvious “passion project”, in more ways than one, the film is a delicious slice of feminist theory masquerading as Technicolour confection.…