Potwash, the latest film by East Anglian based filmmaker Josh Trett, is a portrait of initially familiar tropes, that receive an intriguing treatment. The titular Potwash, Isaac (Kyle Malan), is a shy pub kitchen worker. His employment and work colleagues occupy most of his time, and the film embraces this […]
Vincent Gaine
Redux Redux (Imagine Film Festival 2025)
WARNING! This a film worth going into blind. While this review does not contain spoilers, it does outline the premise that it might be more fun to discover for yourself. Still here? Well then, let’s proceed. Revenge is a dish best served cold, or in the case of Redux Redux, […]
Horror in the Andes: Ayacuchean Cinema in the Making (Imagine 2025)
Academic analyses of film can sometimes be esoteric and alienating. References to theorists and terms like ‘mise-en-scene’, ‘postcolonialism’ and ‘intersectional understanding’ might cause readers to lose interest, and in some cases, annoy filmmakers. The documentary Horror in the Andes: Ayacuchean Cinema in the Making indicates such annoyance with its opening […]
Derelict (2024) Grimly realistic Franco-British Revenge Thriller and the Grief of Vengeance
Derelict is a curious combination of gritty social realism and arthouse stylistics, the former coming from the locations, characters and narrative. Set, and largely filmed, in the English Midlands (but including Hereford, Manchester and London), we’re introduced (via the title card), to Abigail (Suzanne Fulton), who lives in a small […]
The Haunting at Jack the Ripper’s House (Frightfest 2025)
“Screen life” or “livestream” films have become prominent in contemporary horror, and from Unfriended to Deathstream to Dashcam, this concept has many of the same ideas as found footage. Viewers are vicariously put in the position of the characters, and therefore experience a sense of immediacy – the trend reflecting […]
Five (Frightfest 2025)
Hallmark films have a reputation for being obvious, laboured, schmaltzy and (perhaps impressively), both cheesy and corny, which makes them a fairly soft target for humour, and one that gets skewered in Five – a comedy horror from writer, director, and actor Dani Barker. The story follows the (mis)fortunes of […]
Witness (1985) Harrison Ford’s Finest Hour
Upon first glance, Peter Weir’s Witness appears as a straightforward detective thriller with some romance and fish out of water comedy. An Amish mother and son, Rachel (Kelly McGillis) and Samuel (Lukas Haas) are involved in a murder investigation once Samuel witnesses a murder in Philadelphia. A homicide detective, John […]
Superman (2025) Rebooting for a more colourful universe
Is it a bird! Is it a plane! No, it’s James Gunn – the strange filmmaker with a Troma background who’s come to DC Studios from another comic book franchise, and as the writer-director of Superman, he’s rebooting the DC Extended Universe (DCEU), into the new DC Universe (DCU), for […]
Cobra (1986) Stallone’s Clunky Hard Body Classic Shows it Age
Somewhere between Dirty Harry and Lethal Weapon is a man called Marion Cobretti, aka Cobra. Released in 1986, at the height of Hollywood hard bodies action cinema, Cobra re-teams writer-star Sylvester Stallone with Rambo: First Blood Part Two director George P. Cosmatos. Like that film, Cobra features much violence, one […]
Lethal Weapon (1987) Melancholia, Balance & Brotherhood in this 1980s Cop Action Classic
When approaching movies from prior decades, there is always the question of whether they will hold up. Sometimes this concern relates to outdated attitudes or forms of representation, and other times it relates to more recent discoveries about the people involved. In the case of Lethal Weapon, there is a […]