Category Archives: Film Reviews

There seems to be an influx at the moment onto streaming services of really interesting genre inflected movies, that start out as one thing and go to very different places as they go on, and I seem to be reviewing them all. It started out with Netflix’s ‘Horse Girl’, continued with Shudder’s ‘Bliss’, and isContinue reading “The Girl on the Third Floor – or, How Toxic Masculinity Haunts Capitalism”

Every now and then you have to ask yourself: “is this the hill I’m willing to die on?”. For me, whenever the topic of Kathryn Bigelow comes up, the hill I’m very happy to die on, is that she is one of the greatest action movie directors out there. Between this film, the underrated StrangeContinue reading “Point Break (1991), and the Subversion of Surfing.”

I wanted to love this film. I really did. Ever since the first trailer dropped, I was intrigued; the clearly pro-woman/feminist narrative intrigued me, and the topic of the controversial 1970 Miss World contest seemed like a perfect moment in recent history to explore through a modern-day lens. But unfortunately when it came to it,Continue reading “Misbehaviour (2020), a Toothless Retelling of a Historic Moment”

Adapting The Invisible Man was always going to be a difficult job, despite the success of the original 1933 film and H.G. Wells’s story: typically there’s less room in modern cinema for “Monster” films in the same way there was in Universal’s heyday. I know that this film started as a planned part of Universal’sContinue reading “The Invisible Man (2020), Re-Inventing a Cultural Icon”

“Ralph Bakshi is an artist who I have grown to adore and respect when it comes to the medium of animation. His blend of stylish character designs, inventive use of both painted and live-action backgrounds, and a wicked sense of humor has made his films both definers of eras in which they are made and simultaneously timeless. Of all the films he has made, the one picture that sticks out in my mind the most has to be his 1981 effort, American Pop.”

Abel Ferrara’s exploitation, arthouse, trash masterpiece, ‘The Diller Killer’, starts with the title card; “THIS FILM SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD”. The film goes on to match up to this promise, telling the story of a man driven insane by his artistic inertia and the punk-metal band playing in the flat beneath his until he startsContinue reading “Bliss – A Delirious & Original Vision”

Despite not exactly being a household name outside of most film circles and cinephiles and a relatively small body of work, the Australian film director George Miller has proven to be one of the most influential directors, not just in film but in culture in general. Let’s face it, the only reason post-apocalyptic costumes andContinue reading “George Miller: The Mad Max Films”

I knew from the opening moments that I loved ‘Little Joe’, that it had its hooks in me. We see these strange blue plants through this kaleidoscopically moving observation camera that calls to mind Gaspar Noe on Xanax. That kind of bold but restrained filmmaking will go on to define what works quite so exceptionallyContinue reading “Little Joe – An Electrifying Sci-Fi Thriller”

‘Horse Girl’ is such a strange beast, (ha). It begins as something quite straightforward, a story of a strange girl living a desperately normal life. Early montages show with beautiful observation the bland charm of a hundred midwestern small talks. Alison Brie co-writes and stars as Sarah, a salesman at a crafts store who hasContinue reading “Horse Girl – Slightly Less Than The Fascinating Sum Of Its Parts”

Roughly two years ago, I was doing a marathon of Spike Lee films in preparation for BlacKkKlansman, and one of the films of his I had available through my library was his remake of Oldboy. I fortunately decided to do the smart thing and watched Park Chan-wook’s original film from 2003, and it truly fuckedContinue reading “Memories of Murder (2003): Bong Joon-Ho’s Serial Killer Masterpiece”