Festival hit The Shepherd is a drama in the art-house mould that has received critical plaudits and yet has left me leaving quite cold. I suspect The Shepherd might make for a more interesting watch in a cinema setting, but watching it at home I mostly found myself very, very bored. The titular shepherd, Anselmo […]
Rhys Darby is one of those comedy actors who, even if the name doesn’t automatically ring a bell, you’ve most likely seen in something. On the small screen, he’s surely best known for his supporting role in Flight of the Conchords as Murray, the inept manager who handles the band on the side of his […]
The daikaiju (or, if you’re a bit less ostentatious, giant monster movie) has always offered a handy, audience-friendly way for filmmakers to address big fears. As countless books on the subject will tell us, Godzilla served as a cathartic expression of post-Hiroshima/Nagasaki angst for Japan, and the ensuing franchise has addressed broader concerns about ecology, corporate […]
In honor of the newest Alien film, Alien: Covenant (read Keri’s review here), this reporter has decided to take a closer look at some of the franchise’s other pursuits, primarily comic books because comic books are rad. The Alien comic-verse has been helmed for close to 30 years by Dark Horse Comics and has become […]
There is some really wonderful horror cinema coming out of Ireland at the moment, and it’s so pleasing to see genre works getting support from its film board. From Isolation through Wake Wood, The Canal, Citadel and Without Name, the range of horror filmmaking coming from Ireland is truly impressive. I think easily my favourite […]
Negotiating the relationship between art and artist can be a tricky business at times. For many, approaching any new movie from Mel Gibson is going to be a tough pill to swallow given the man’s many public disgraces and personal views which don’t sit well with some of us. But even if we try to […]
I don’t always get on much with Ben Wheatley’s films. Though I adore Sightseers, I found both Kill List and A Field in England underwhelming, and High Rise to be a mess, albeit an enjoyable one. Approaching Free Fire, then, I had an open mind but a sense of knowing what I might expect my […]
Some mild spoilers within. I had an interesting discussion about Paul Verhoeven’s Elle with a fellow member of the cinema audience recently, and the most striking thing to me that she said – more striking than her conclusion that film was definitely misogynist – was that when she chose to come to see it […]
The Alien franchise has been around for the same amount of time as I have, and it’s fair to say that (alongside many other people roughly the same age as me, no doubt) the alien creatures of its universe still feel as ingenious and horrifying now as they ever did, having been around in our […]
When David Lynch released Mulholland Drive in 2001, he took the unusual move of releasing a list of “ten clues to unlocking this thriller”, for audiences who may have needed guidance on how to decipher what was going on in the film. These clues direct us to pay particular attention to certain objects, places and […]
The Entity is one of those wonderful films from the era of big-budget, mainstream horror filmmaking based on popular novels – following on from the venerable likes of The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, through to Demon Seed and beyond. The film in synopsis sounds, now, like that kind of film that would struggle to get […]