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, […]
Whilst I have something of a handle on Japanese cinema of the 70s and 80s – well, in so far as the films have made the great leap to Western screens – I know comparatively little about Chinese cinema of the same period, and in that I have to include Hong Kong/Taiwan. I’ve seen a […]
Taken on their own, the terms ‘found footage’ and ‘home invasion’ have long been enough to send many a horror fan into shivers of despair, not so much because they suggest a truly hair-raising 90 minutes, but rather because they would seem to indicate a been-there, done-that, wasn’t-that-great-in-the-first-place routine which we’ve seen all too often […]
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 sadly missed stop-motion animation pioneer Ray Harryhausen is one of the most unique figures in film history. The attachment of his name alone tells you basically all you need to know about the film, despite the wide variety of actors and directors he collaborated with over his decades-spanning career. While special effects may have […]
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 […]