REVIEW: The Card Counter

For a film called The Card Counter, Paul Schrader’s latest has very little interest in games of chance.

William Tell (Oscar Isaac; self-contained, slicked-back hair), the eponymous card counter, is a creature of habit; in part a holdover from his time in prison.…

PODCAST: Dune [Movie Robcast]

Episode 128 of The Movie Robcast whisks you away to the faraway world of Arrakis for our review of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune.

Can Villeneuve succeed where David Lynch failed back in 1984, and land Frank Herbert’s epic novel, the Great White Whale of sci-fi literature?…

PODCAST: Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker [Electric Shadows]

The Electric Shadows Podcast reaches its three-quarters of a century mark! And in the 75th episode Robs Daniel and Wallis see just how strong The Force is with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

The film has proven as divisive (almost) as The Last Jedi, and our two intrepid casters in pod have opinions on what it does well and where it stumbles.…

REVIEW: Annihilation

CONTAINS SPOILERS

Alex Garland is one of the relatively few directors working today who truly deserves to be called a visionary.

His latest film, Annihilation,  a dreamlike adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel of the same name, is, to say the least, a smart, ambitious, multi-ethnic, female-led sci-fi.…

X-Men: Apocalypse blows through quickly and entertainingly enough

 

In the hinterland between the extreme competency of Marvel and the trainwreck-clusterfuck that is the DC Cinematic Universe there lies the X-Men.

With its respectable (but by no means perfect) batting average and increasingly dysfunctional relationship with continuity, the franchise is a fairly unique position with regards to superhero movies.…

Inside Llewyn Davis: an arsehole’s eclectic journey through the Greenwich Village scene

The Coen Brothers might have delved into spiritual music before in O Brother, Where Art Thou, their myth-inspired take on the Depression-era American Deep South, but Inside Llewyn Davis is a far more focused piece of cinema, if never quite as colorful as its predecessor.