In a stark opening scene, composed largely from a colour palette of black, white, and tiny amounts of red – a young woman awakens. She is in a mysterious room, has crippling injuries to her legs, and is clearly shocked and confused by her predicament. As soon as she wakes up, she’s addressed by a […]
I don’t think I ever anticipated seeing the day when the release of a Steven Spielberg-directed sci-fi adventure would be greeted with such widespread disdain as we’ve seen for Ready Player One. Sure, as the king of the blockbuster, more or less responsible for inventing the format as we know it along with George Lucas, […]
In some ways it’s hard to believe it’s been a full five years since Pacific Rim. A lot’s happened in the interim, though: director Guillermo del Toro returned to his signature Gothic territory with Crimson Peak, then bagged a bunch of Oscars for The Shape of Water; and giant monster epics have returned to the […]
Nothing sells a slasher like a holiday association. You really don’t need me to do the list; if it’s been deemed a day of rest or celebration which is in some way marked annually, then it’s fertile ground in which to cultivate 80-odd minutes of hapless, sinful youngsters getting hacked up by a maniac. Small […]
The arrival of this new big screen take on the digital adventures of Lara Croft brings with it mass cries of, “will this finally break the video game movie curse?” Well, not unlike this new live action incarnation of Lara, I don’t really believe in curses. While the good is undoubtedly outweighed by the bad, […]
Depending on how closely you follow the news coming out of Hollywood, Red Sparrow is a film which is pretty much impossible to take entirely on face value. Everything from the premise, to the casting of Jennifer Lawrence, to the tag line ‘Take Back Control’ marks the film out as a thriller with a distinctly […]
Is it just me, or does the ‘found footage’ craze of the past fifteen years or so seem to have died back a little of late? This sub-genre seemed to dominate indie cinema for what seemed like forever, becoming infamous as a go-to model for those on a shoestring budget. Well, found footage films are […]
Any film that opens on a title card bearing a quote from HP Lovecraft is guaranteed to get horror fans sitting up and taking notice. Whether the subsequent hour and a half of They Remain will keep them in that upright, attentive position is another matter. Writer-director Philip Gelatt’s film strives to give us an […]
Ever wondered what Grosse Pointe Blank would have been like if, instead of the guy being a hitman, the girl was a pro-wrestler? Well, no, I can’t say that’s something I’ve ever given much thought to either. Nonetheless, that’s pretty much what we have in Chokeslam, a Canadian indie rom-com from director/co-writer Robert Cuffley. It’s […]
The very opening scenes of The Lodgers speak to the key themes of the film as a whole: a young woman, sitting alone by a lake at night, preoccupied by her thoughts, suddenly flees back to a dilapidated mansion house when she hears the clock striking midnight. This is the first, but not the last […]
Once more unto the minefield that is the indie horror scene. Director Eric Pham brings with him a degree of cult cred due to his association with Robert Rodriguez, having worked in visual effects on a number of RR movies including Sin City and Grindhouse; and his lead actor here, Elle LaMont, is also from […]