Tag: Opinion
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The Handmaiden: Lesbian movie night
The Handmaiden is like the purest film. It’s a violent, kinda screwed up, crime thriller but, underneath all that surface there it has this wonderful innocent heart. Maybe I’m saying that because it’s a costume drama about queer women, which I am all about, but equally they are women whose queerness does not express itself…
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Fast & Furious 8: I don’t care what you Americans call it.
It’s called Fast & Furious 8 here in the UK. Seems to be Fate of the Furious in other markets. Misleading; there don’t seem much fateful or furious about this joint. We open in Cuba, I guess the lifting of the embargo has made it the new hot place for films to visit. It is…
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Some Cold Takes: The Lost City of Z and Ghost in the Shell
The Lost City of Z Patriarchy’s one hell of a drug innit? Percy Fawcett can just go off to Bolivia, searching for his lost city, neglecting his wife and children who carry on in England without him. Whiteness is toxic. He tries to disrupt paternalistic eurocentrism by searching for civilisation in Southern America, yet neglects…
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Raw: I just realised, it’s probably about vegetarianism too…
Holy shit. Holy shit y’all. Holy shit. Raw is Julia Ducournau’s first feature. It’s the sort of first feature people dream of making. The sort of debut that means something. It’s a French language film the screened in the UK with the standard Universal Pictures ident at the lead, that don’t just happen here. Not…
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I Am Not Your Negro: A tonic for the blind
Most of the time I’ve spent ‘writing’ this review has actually been spent researching James Baldwin. Reading extracts from his essays, novels, plays; watching him appear on the talk shows that the film extracts from; that famous 1965 Cambridge debate with William F. Buckley Jr. to whom the film rightly does not give a voice.…
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Smurfs: The Lost Village – Some sexist narratives ain’t worth reclaiming
I learned after watching that Smurfs: The Lost Village is unrelated to those other recent Smurfs movies. I just figured it was a sequel. It feels so much like a sequel. Maybe you really need to be aware of The Smurfs as a cultural product to get the full buy in here, the film don’t…
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Going in Style: Capital idea
Going in Style is a Zach Braff joint which can mean only one thing, its stifling mediocrity. Possibly it’s just poorly timed, I mean Hell or High Water just got that best picture nom so the story of an amateur bank heist designed to retrieve funds immorally taken is already fresh in our minds. Where…
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The Boss Baby: A wee bit childish
Maybe there’s something to be said for putting a baby in a suit, if only as a critique of capitalist avarice. The Boss Baby was probably sold on its conceit, Alec Baldwin from Glengarry as a baby. It was sold to us on that premise too, there’ve gotta been trailers for this one playing for…
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Playing with my Depression: Skyrim
I ain’t been writing much the past two weeks. The words escape me. All that comes so easy to me seems lost the the void that seems to be occupying half of my head. I don’t mind my moods, I just dislike what they do to me. I’ve been playing a lot of Skyrim. Something…
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The Weekly Roundup 26/03/17
Sundays are for painting your nails while a movie plays in the background, you know they’ll start peeling in a few days but the action is therapeutic. Well, that and soaking up some delicious content, like a big sponge on an oil spill. Olivier Assayas’ Personal Shopper is never incoherent, too talented for that, but…
A Grand Quiet 