Here we go again, Redcon-1. A thousand different websites for a thousand different zombie movies all say the same thing, this is one monster who has been exhausted way past the breaking point. In other news, rain is wet. I mock but in the past twenty years, you could probably […]
Reviews
Madame (2017) A comedy of upper-class errors (Review)
Ah, Paris: City of Romance. You can tell from the get-go that our lead couple are artsy types. He wears Truman Capote glasses and she simply must cycle through the streets of Paree, an accordion trilling in her mind. So is our introduction to Anne and Bob Fredericks (Toni Colette […]
Last Year at Marienbad (1961) … and the mystery of movie watching (Review)
Alan Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad is a film that poses many questions and offers very little answers. Having watched it, it seems only fitting therefore that I’m left with a question of my own (well two if you include ‘can I write a review about it without sounding pretentious?’) and […]
Iceman (2018) Payback in the Palaeolithic (Review)
As a child of the ‘90s, it’s great to see the media icons of my youth returning to the spotlight. After comebacks from Jeff Goldblum and Janet Jackson, it’s Ötzi the Iceman’s turn. His hollow eyes and emaciated frame were inescapable in 1991, when his five-thousand-year-old corpse was found in […]
Salvador (1986) Fear & Loathing in Central America (Review)
Between 1980 and 1992, El Salvador was ravaged by a civil war between left-wing guerrilla groups and a right-wing military administration supported by the US government of the newly elected president, Ronald Reagan. Fearful that left-wing prominence would ensure the spread of Communism into North America, Reaganite foreign policy sanctioned […]
Revenge (2017): a haunting subversion of rape-revenge tropes (Review)
Jen has gone with her very wealthy boyfriend, Richard, to his isolated retreat in the wilderness where they can enjoy a couple of days away from others – particularly his wife. On the second day there, Richard’s two friends Stan and Dimitri turn up; they are a day early for […]
Bad Samaritan (2018) and the sin of being entertaining (Review)
With the democratisation of filmmaking and the move to digital distribution, something refreshing is happening with American cinema. There has been a slow crawl away from New York and Los Angeles and out into ‘real America’. Dean Devlin in his follow up to Geostorm, Bad Samaritan sets events in Portland, Oregon. […]
I Vitelloni (1953) Early Fellini with glimmers of his magic touch (Review)
Federico Fellini’s second solo feature, I Vitelloni, is set in an Italian seaside town and delves into the lifestyles of five young men all at separate crossroads. However, and I will say this right off the bat, I Vitelloni isn’t a character study – the film studies Italian society through […]
How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2018) less “Croydon, 1977” and more “Instagram, 1977” (Review)
“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” Thus said Johnny Rotten in January, 1978 at the conclusion of the Sex Pistols’ one and only US tour. A weary, wounded rhetorical question that served as the condemnation from within of the punk movement. Three days later and the band were no more. […]
Cold War (2018) Feels like Hollywood pre-code, unapologetically entertaining (Review)
He’s a musician, or maybe a musicologist, lightly burdened by Marcello Mastroianni-style ennui, touring post-war Poland, barely introduced in an opening montage as one of two government-appointed scouts listening to a series of home-grown Polish folk music talent. Maybe he’s holding some auditions, maybe he’s learning their traditions. We see […]