A Grand Quiet

xXx_Th3.R3turn.0f.X4nd3r.C4ge_xXx has a title ripped straight from my MSN Messenger contact list circa 2006. it has a philosophy to match, as Sam Jackson so eloquently puts it, ‘Kick ass, get the girl, try to look dope when you do it.’ If anyone can manage that it is Mister Vincent Diesel esq. There’s always those murmurs…

Lion is about as good as its poster tells you it will be. Which is mostly very. I guess given the success of Room last year this is going to be the visual language for heartfelt drama for a while. Which I guess is okay, but then Collateral Beauty had a similar design so it’s…

Split has some great title design, created by the prolific Aaron Becker, I really like the effect they lent to the opening of this picture. Shame the rest of the flick was a garbage garbage trash heap. For some reason people are taking Shyamalan seriously again. Why? The man has done nothing to deserve it.…

Ben Affleck is a good Boston boy now isn’t he? There should be a statue of him if there isn’t already, probably in some kind of suit. Imagine by one of those big Boston landmarks, a big old grumpy faced Affleck. Or maybe there should be three: young, hot Ben; older, doughy (but still hot)…

Collateral Beauty is the year’s best comedy so far. Even when it’s not trying to be. Especially when it’s not trying to be. It’s not inept, it’s just that every aspect of the premise that it is built upon is so comically misjudged that when Will Smith is trying to be all weepy about his…

There’s not really much point in approaching a review after everything has been said. Especially when it’s been being said for a month and, in addition to having nothing new to add, its being said in a review that is unlikely to get one crucified and even more unlikely to be read. Enough of this,…

But to think, in 2012 Alex Gibney released his WikiLeaks film. It’s a good one. The one with the subtitle We Steal Secrets. Woof. That’s probably going to look more like a cruel joke upon rewatching sometime soon. It’s telling the end of a story, quite a satisfying one at that. Now Assange is back…

In 2007 the developers of Assassin’s Creed (2007) cursed themselves. The legacy of the entire series can be tracked in its attempts to escape the ramifications of a choice that probably made sense at the time. We, nine years later now, sit in a theatre watching Ubisoft’s first film, one they’re wanting to be sure is…

It’s hard for films to be about torture without fetishising it. Point, we call films torture porn because, fuck, ain’t humanity appealing enough without jamming those two words together. This becomes harder when you jam faith into the mix because cinematic discourses of violence without bringing morality into the mix. Martin Scorsese jumps into this…