PODCAST: Romero’s Second Zombie Trilogy & The Zomplosion [Electric Shadows]

In episode 62 of The Electric Shadows Podcast we reach the final part of our Night of the Living Dead trilogy.

Recorded six hours into an eight hour podcasting marathon, this episode sees our intrepid casters in pod Rob Daniel, Rob Wallis and Ian Bird ever-so slightly punchy. …

The Infiltrator doesn’t go deep enough

Bryan Cranston goes Donnie Brasco in this 80s-set crime thriller.

Bob Mazur (Cranston) is an unassuming U.S. Customs agent with wife Evelyn (Juliet Aubrey) and two kids. He’s also undercover as Bob Musella, a flash, ingratiating money launderer for the Columbian mob.…

Experimenter is a smart film about a smart guy

 

Writer-director Michael Almereyda enter public consciousness back in 2000 with his moody, ultramodern take on Hamlet — which featured Ethan Hawke as a suitably disaffected crown prince, complete with woolly Peruvian hat.

If something there got lost amidst the static and the skyscrapers, then his latest film, Experimenter — about social psychologist Stanley Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard), particularly his famed experiment into obedience to authority — is certainly more to the point.…

Rubble Kings: a Bronx story of hope amid blood and strife

 

“Warriors, come out to play-yay.”

You’ve know David Patrick Kelly’s sing-song mockery, even if you’ve never seen the film it’s in. With its gritty, lurid depiction of costumed gang warfare in ‘70s New York, The Warriors seems like a film born for cult stardom.…

American Ultra is the stoner-MK Ultra actioner we’ve all been waiting for (maybe)

 

Jesse Eisenberg, ladies and gentlemen.

He wowed us as the coolly exploitative Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network and seems likely to do the same as a more intense, somewhat less omnivorous Lex Luthor in Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice. …

John Wick burns cool and bright

 

Like Nicholas Cage or Christopher Walken, Keanu Reeves is a very particular type of actor, a specialised tool best used in a particular context.

Put him a role that requires emotional heft and he’s wooden; give him an accent to master or reams of dialogue, like in Dracula or Much Ado About Nothing, and he flounders.…

Kick-Ass 2 opens a mid-sized can of meta whoop-ass

 

Superhero sequels are all about the escalation. Spider-Man 2, X2, The Dark Knight: they all feature villains who come about as a result of the heroes’ actions in the first film.

As The Joker says to Batman, “You’ve changed things – forever”.