Category: Review
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The Breadwinner Review – Concentrated melancholy
You expect children’s animated films to be a little sad don’t you? A little salt to balance out the sugar, enough melancholy to allow our spirits to be lifted later on. Nobody expects the death of Anna and Elsa’s parents to be the entire trade of Frozen, they’re just another dash of something in the…
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Solo: A Star Wars Story Review – A studied affair
I’m telling you, I knew that Alden Ehrenreich would be a great Han Solo from the start. Maybe I was more confident on the performance that he would turn out under the originally slated directorial duo; but I was certain that there could be no level of charm that the man who brought us Hobie…
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Deadpool 2 Review – Reference material
I’ve been struggling on the how of criticising Deadpool 2 (what no witty subtitle?) for just about a week now. Not because there’s loads to criticise, or even that I really disliked it. No, the problem lies in its relationship to itself, or more accurately Deadpool’s relationship to the entire construct that surrounds him.
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Redoubtable (Godard Mon Amour) Review – Nouvelle (but) Vague
It’s a question that we don’t really got to think about too much anymore. What if your idol turned out to be a big old shit? Like, not just gross in the egregious ways that have sprung wild into our consciousness this past year but just an all round shit. A pretentious, self-important, uncommunicative asshole.…
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How to Talk to Girls at Parties Review – Unanswered question
This movie is a mess. Seriously. It is an ugly looking, confusingly paced, poorly acted thing that follows a script which lurches drunkenly between the incomprehensible and the banal. It is confused and focusless, any scene with more than a couple of characters turns into an exercise in geographic confusion, something of an achievement considering…
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Beast Review – Just casually Gothic
You know when you’ve spent a couple of hours writing something and you’re pretty pleased with how it’s going and then your computer crashes and you lost the 800 or so words worth of work that you just spent your time on? Yeah, that happened when I was writing my review of Beast. I know,…
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The Young Karl Marx Review – Well, it’s better than that Young Morrissey joint
So, the first time we see Marx and Engels meet in The Young Karl Marx, Raoul Peck has to two of them sitting at far ends of this elaborate drawing room. Marx is trying to demand payment for his last two essays from his publisher, Engels is arrived to the man’s house as his patrician…
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Lean on Pete Review – Boy horse story
I guess after 45 Years Andrew Haigh could pretty much take on any project that he liked. It seems fitting that he’d reach for a story taking place at the other end of life. Of all the ages that the young protagonist of Lean on Pete gives the youngest is fifteen. I think that’s the…
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Tully Review – Anyone remember that Uma Thurman joint?
The twist at the end of Tully comes pretty much as expected for anyone familiar with Diablo Cody’s body of work, it plays right her preoccupations as a creator. You know how people enjoy dismissing artists work by pointing out the themes that they enjoy exploring, reciting the trivia list of their IMDb page as…
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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Review – Island something
So, as far as romantic heroes go, island pig farmer has gotta be roughly in the middle of the pack right? Like, it’s all the necessary parts of rugged and parochial but slightly elevated. Nobody wants to fall for the dullard with a field full of leeks. And a horse breeder would obviously be some…
A Grand Quiet 