On November 6th 2016, I started my grand journey aboard The Geek Show with a review of the all-time classic Jaws. The ‘classic’ part was particularly relevant for me as I used to review films as the Classic Film Kid (those words felt nostalgic just to type), judging whether they […]
Alex Paine
The Great Escape (1963) Christmas Classics and the Issue of Historical Accuracy
The Great Escape (4K) is out now on Arrow Video Blu-Ray Alex’s Archive – The Great Escape (1963)
Night Of The Living Dead (1968) A Pioneering but Imperfect Trailblazer
At this point in time it’s fair to say that the reputation of George A Romero’s zombie trilogy is so embedded into the history of horror that no amount of criticism would be able to shift their reputation. Even me, apologetically as a first-timer to these films, knew so much […]
Megalopolis (2024) It’s A Lot, And A Lot Of It Is Not Good
At the age of 85, Francis Ford Coppola has literally nothing to prove as a director, and whatever the reception was to his small-scale films throughout the 1990s and 2000s, they managed to coast by due to the fact that the filmmaker behind them made the first two Godfather films […]
The Last Voyage of The Demeter (Frightfest 2024) Review
I feel like I’ve been chasing The Last Voyage of the Demeter for the past year, as I heard of it last summer when it played in some US cinemas and thought it sounded really interesting. I then waited for the UK release – which got cancelled, and conceded it […]
Animalia Paradoxa (Fantasia 2024) (Review)
Think of any dystopian environment you’ve either read in a book or seen on screen. How do they typically come to be that way? Usually, it’s the result of humanity sliding into autocracy, or a cataclysmic environmental event, or a rapid increase in social injustices. It’s unclear as to how […]
Risky Business (1983) An Interesting And Unusual Start To Tom Cruise’s Stardom (Review)
I think I went into Risky Business with the wrong impression. I didn’t grow up in the 1980s, I grew up in the 2010s, so my view of ’80s teen comedies has been entirely shaped by John Hughes and the Brat Pack. I think of films like Ferris Bueller’s Day […]
Blow Out 4K (1981): A Taut, Tense and Involving Thriller (Review)
The poster for Blow Out – a stark picture of John Travolta’s face screaming from within a void of blackness – has been staring at me ever since I first noticed it in my dad’s movie collection as a little kid. I never knew what it was about, who was […]
Alex’s 2024 Favourites (So Far)
I set myself a challenge at the start of 2024: see as many new films as I possibly can, whether that’s in the cinema, or any new releases in streaming services. Personally, I think I’ve done pretty well in that regard: 48 films seen in the cinema, a couple more […]
One Last Trip Inside No 9 (2024) Final Series Roundup
Binge-watching Inside No. 9 last summer is one of the best viewing decisions I’ve ever made. Within just a few days, I was three series in and the show had become one of my all-time favourites and, though some episodes are weaker than others and some of their experiments feel […]