PODCAST: FrightFest 2019 Round-Up and London Film Festival 2019 Preview [Electric Shadows]

Episode 68 of The Electric Shadows Podcast sees Robs Daniel & Wallis look back at the Arrow Video FrightFest’s twentieth anniversary festival and run-down their top 10 films. Gems such as Rabid, The Dark Red, Ready or Not and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark all get warm words.…

PODCAST: Oscar Nominations 2019 [Electric Shadows]

Rob Daniel & Rob Wallis touch the sore tooth that is Oscar nominations 2019.

They discuss the insanity, or at least inanity, of nominating Bohemian Rhapsody for Best Picture, and how safe the Best Picture nods are in general. They’re happy Spike Lee finally has his Best Director nomination, and acknowledge a few other things the Academy got right.…

PODCAST: The Dark Knight 10th Anniversary [Electric Shadows]

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of The Dark Knight’s theatrical release, episode 47 of The Electric Shadows Podcast has gone big.

Across four hours, Robs Daniel and Wallis and Bat-expert Ian Bird discuss Nolan’s landmark trilogy. Plus, a wider discussion of the Caped Crusader in comic books and on the small screen, both animated and live action.…

Ponderous and imponderable, Knight of Cups is, like its protagonist, easily led


 

Knight of Cups is a film you could drown in – a vast thematic ocean lapping against the distant shore of some grand, obscure vision. And I don’t have any f**king trunks.

As a director-philosopher (or should that be philosopher-director?),…

The Big Short goes long on edudrama and it pays off – magnificently

You wouldn’t think the recent global financial crisis would be the stuff of comedy, but The Big Short makes it funny – and educational, and genuinely moving.

Directed and co-written by frequent Will Ferrell collaborator Adam McKay (Anchorman, Talladega Nights) and with an all-star cast, including Christian Bale, Steve Carrell, and Ryan Gosling, The Big Short makes for a highly entertaining (and instructive) study of greed, fraud, and three groups of people who sought to profit from the meltdown before it happened.…

Exodus: Gods and Kings is a Biblical epic with a humanist slant

 

Of all the obscure film genres to make a comeback in recent years, who among us expected the resurgence of the Biblical epic?

Thanks to Aronofosky’s triumphantly bats**t crazy Noah, it seems we can now expect a slew of Old Testament supermen to be battling it out with the comic book contingent for control of our screens.…

Out of the Furnace shows us the crucible of the impoverished Mid-Atlantic US

 

Above a dying mining town somewhere in the Rust Belt of the United States, one of the most talented actors of his generation, bearded and disheveled, pauses with a rifle to take a shot.

A deer is in his scopes.

American Hustle might be my favorite film of 2013

 

AKA The David O. Russell Reunion; Batman, Lois Lane, Rocket Raccoon, & Mystique: The Movie; or, Golden Globes For Everyone!

I don’t make a habit of using this space to gush over how much I love one film or another.