Category: Review
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They Shall Not Grow Old Review — The old lie…
To celebrate the centenary of the Great War, one of cinema’s great technical fabulists has attempted to change the way that we process our history. Peter Jackson has colourised, digitised and converted into 3D the cinematic and photographic documentation of the life of British soldiers on the Western Front. Of course this caused controversy in…
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Bohemian Rhapsody Review — more like a dirge
When I was a kid my dad’s favourite album was Queen: Greatest Hits. In our living room we had a fancy hi-fi which could hold 3 CDs in it at once. Well, two, considering the top spot was reserved for that record. My older brother had cassettes of pop music which he played on a…
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Skate Kitchen Review – Treading the boards
The way that Crystal Moselle shoots skateboarding feels a lot like anybody else would shoot flying. It is loose and liberating, the camera gliding alongside as they perform, humanity captured in the shared joy of movement. The drama of Skate Kitchen comes in the fact that this promise is not one held up by society.…
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Venom Review – A turd in the wind
Alright, Venom is bad. Not like interestingly bad, or creatively bad, there’s honestly very little of merit to be found in this feature. What makes it redeemable is that it is the exact sort of bad that makes it really fun to watch.
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A Star is Born Review – The depths and the shallows
In a cinemagoing landscape where the definition of spectacle has narrowed down to superhero antics — whether they be performed by Avengers, Jedi, or The Rock — A Star is Born arrives to remind us that something don’t gotta be huge to feel huge. There’s something in its two hour fifteen running time that quietly…
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A Simple Favour Review – Complicated exercise
In basically the first scene of A Simple Favour Anna Kendrick’s character explains that the sequence of events leading up to her best friend’s disappearance happened on their kids’ school’s World Food Day. We then cut to a flashback, the banner in the classroom reads Ethnic Food Day. And so it becomes clear that, even…
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King of Thieves Review – Well aged
Say what you will about Michael Caine, at eighty five he’s still plugging away. Even if nowadays people are giving him less to do, he’s still turning up when called. Steady hand on the tiller, and if the audience can overcome the accent then they follow that man anywhere. Or maybe that’s just the British.
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Climax Review – A culmination
Climax just came out in the UK and uh, yeah. It’s a lot. A whole lot. Supposedly based on a true story from the nineties when a rehearsing group of dancers found the punch bowl in their wrap party spiked with something much stronger than the alcohol they were expecting. As you would expect it…
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American Animals Review – No harm, no fowl
Bart Layton, writer and director of American Animals released his first feature in 2012 to critical acclaim. The Imposter was a true crime documentary that no doubt would have been huge if it came out a couple of years later, after the true crime documentary craze exploded. The film accounts through interview and reconstruction the…
A Grand Quiet 