Nerve: a flashy but risk-averse techno-thriller for the Pokemon Go crowd

 

With most of the world dividing its time between Pokemon Go and sharing viral videos on Facebook, there’s never been a better time for a film like Nerve.

Based on a book by Jeanne Ryan, adapted by Jessica Sharzer of American Horror Story, and directed by Catfish’s Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman, the film quickly establishes its technological mojo.…

Steve Spielberg’s The BFG is a mid-sized disappointment

 

When perhaps the greatest living filmmaker takes on the favorite story of one of the most belovec children’s authors of the 20th Century, you hope for a truly magic adventure. Instead Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The BFG is charming but slight.

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High-Rise is the cinema of concrete and chaos

 

There’s something about the technology-driven dystopias of JG Ballard that appeal to a certain breed of director.

Steven Spielberg’s mainstream adaptation of Empire of the Sun is ironically something of an oddity of an oeuvre encapsulated by the steely paraphilia of David Cronenberg’s Crash.…

BVS: DoJ – UE & The Neon Demon (Electric Shadows podcast)

Here’s the latest installment of the Electric Shadows podcast, which is hosted by myself and the wonderful Mr. Rob Daniel. There’s a link to his site, the titular Electric Shadows, in the toolbar to the right. This week we’re discussing the unsurprising disappointment that was Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice – Ultimate Edition – the original has, in our mutual loathing of it, probably been our most discussed film this year – and our mutual, if critical, admiration for Nicholas Winding Refn’s latest, flawed masterpiece The Neon Demon.
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Star Trek Beyond gets ahead by going back to basics

 

Space is no longer the final frontier in cinema. In fact it’s a bit passé.

Where’s Kubrick’s star-child once evoked the wonder of journeying into the unknown, science fiction has since placed its emphasis more on the inherent risks of interstellar travel.…

The novelty’s vanished, but Now You See Me 2 doesn’t cheat

How many stage magic heist films do we need?

When Now You See Me was released back in 2013, the conceit at least seemed original: a quartet of Robin Hood magicians, known as the Four Horsemen, stage (literally) a series of audacious robberies targeted at the rich and unethical.…

Ghostbusters: don’t fear the reboot

 

Has any film provoked as big a backlash before its release as the new Ghostbusters?

Sure, Batman V Superman wasn’t exactly eagerly awaited  — not least on this very site (and associated podcast) — but it seemed no sooner had this film been announced than the Internet rose up and declared, “Ain’t no bitches gonna hunt no ghosts” (actual quote).…

Elvis & Nixon, if not quite kingly, certainly won’t leave you feeling crook

How do you a find a new take on not one but two of the most imitated figures in modern history?

From Forrest Gump to Bubba Ho-Tep, Secret Honour to X-Men: Days of Future Past, not to mention the cavalcade of films that bear their names, Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon are probably better known to us as personas than in person; partly by design, of course. …

Independence Day: Resurgence is a regurgitated mess of sci-fi epic

They’ve back, just when we might have dared to hope that we were safe the next wave of big-budget blockbusters with meaningless subtitles sweeps into cinemas.

Just as Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice failed to set the world alight by treating its material with undue reverence, Independence Day: Resurgence fails to set the world alight — while narratively doing exactly that — by treating its material with no reverence whatsoever.…