For all its association with high style, there’s always been a documentary element to film noir. The genre is rooted in social commentary, and took every opportunity to get off the sound stages and into the streets once camera technology became lightweight enough to do that. You can even point […]
Movies & Documentaries
Anora (2024) Best Picture Oscar Winner Joins the Criterion Collection
Sean Baker is a filmmaker who’s always interested me, but until Anora I’d never seen anything made by him. I had the chance to see it at a film festival in October 2024 – the peak of its festival buzz period, but instead chose to see The Order (2024). Fast […]
Zero (2024): Senegalese suspense from a new studio with a big mission
Asked why Superman isn’t performing as well in international markets as it is in the States, James Gunn wondered whether a hero so linked to “truth, justice and the American way” would always suffer in the current political climate. Whether you buy that as an explanation in this particular case […]
Chungking Express (1994) Wong Kar Wai’s Masterpiece Looks Glorious in 4k
When I first watched Chungking Express (1994), I didn’t enjoy it and didn’t finish the film, and even though it was my first experience of Wong Kar Wai, I was rushed so it didn’t hook me. I decided to give it another chance while going through a boxset of the […]
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 […]
Hotspring Sharkattack (2024) Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the sauna…
For all its naff reputation, maybe Deep Blue Sea said it best: sharks really are “God’s oldest killers”. Many filmmakers have taken that idea as gospel, from Spielberg to Turtletaub, Anderson (Wes) to Wheatley (Ben), taking great glee in putting their characters in harm’s way via a ginormous aquatic beastie. Yet shark […]
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 Sometimes this concern relates to outdated attitudes or forms of representation, and other times it relates to more recent discoveries about the people involved.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 […]
Narc (2002) A granite-solid crime classic, as grim and gritty as they come
Who said buddy cop movies should be fun? Shane Black has a lot to answer for when it comes to making the fuzz funny, with his distinct brand of chalk-and-cheese banter inflecting the extrajudicial antics of those who serve and protect for decades after his heyday. Echoes of that can […]
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) — A bloody masterpiece of a musical
You’ll have to pardon me if my excitement is quite noticeably more palpable than usual, but my inner 10 year old self is jumping for joy at the opportunity to rewatch and review one of my absolute favourite films of all time. Directed by Tim Burton and released in 2007, […]
The Box Man (2024): Far from Boxed-in Cinema from sporadically productive genius
Gakuryu Ishii is one of those artists like Terrence Malick, Thomas Pynchon and Daniel Day-Lewis, whose legend rests in part on their long absences. He spent a decade in the wilderness after directing his extraordinary black comedy The Crazy Family before returning with 1994’s Angel Dust, and he currently averages […]