Tag: download
A man looks forward to a reunion but immediately faces crushing disappointment. He’s needlessly criticised for his choice of clothes and hairstyle, and made to feel decidedly unwelcome when all he wants on a trying day is something to eat. Then the whole thing devolves into an argument, and by the end of the night he’s eating his roast alone in the dark … To hell with Die Hard, First Blood is a real Xmas movie. More…
A rom-com fairy tale for nerds, pretty much. It’s got heart, for sure. It’s also got some suspect politics, of all kinds. More…
By failing to make hay with its premise, and being just that bit too obvious about the stuff it does explore (the flashbacks especially, coming far too early and building a backstory the viewer doesn’t really need to know), Ma slips from a potentially top-tier thriller to merely an OK one. More…
So this one completely passed me by in 1993. I guess I wasn’t the target audience, and that year was all about Jurassic Park for me, but you’d think there’d be some lingering memory of its existence, at least, not least because I do remember the mid-70s BBC adaptation being repeated on children’s TV around that same vague time period. Anyway. More…
The best Batman film, and the best TMNT movie, in quite some time. More…
Figures in a Landscape takes an escape-pursuit story filled with thrills and bravery and derring-do and turns it into intimate, avant garde theatre, landing the viewer in the company of two utter reprobates (Robert Shaw and Malcolm McDowell in an early role) as they’re menaced by a black helicopter across anonymous mountain terrain. An outstanding experience, to say the least. More…
Well, it destroyed me. In all seriousness, kudos to Karyn Kusama for this devastating revenge drama that’s really only let down by the Nicole Kidman’s uncanny valley ageing makeup, and being about half an hour longer than the story required. More…
As unnecessary as sequels get, especially one as overstuffed as this, and to a film among the best horrors of recent years. But it’s still an interesting experiment in turning a slasher film (albeit a very knowing, trope-upending one) with vague sci-fi trappings inside-out as a sci-fi adventure with occasional horror-thriller leanings. More…
Wow, they really pushed the envelope in this Silent Running remake, didn’t they? More…
It’s appropriate that I watched this one at Easter, not for the pat Messianic referencing but because it feels as hollow as a chocolate egg. Remember when eggs used to come with the treats inside them? Good times… More…
Essentially, Rocky II is the first movie rebooted for broader audience tastes. It’s no Evil Dead 2 in those stakes, mind. More…
First time watching this all the way through, and I can see why it’s so well regarded. The grit and grime feel real, and Stallone treads a fine line between mild-mannered humility and ferocious determination like he’s rarely if ever done since. Shame about the dodgy sexual politics, though; even for the era it’s pretty rough. More…
‘The Crystal Maze, but evil’ is a money concept. Treading the same beats at Cube and Saw, but with more noxious moral and ethical politics? Not so much. More…
Slighter than expected, to tell you the truth. Only Vic Morrow’s racist tirade at the very beginning packs any punch, and that perhaps has more to do with the degradation of contemporary discourse sharpening the cut of those words. More…
I’m surprised not to find a previous record of this one here, as I’m sure I’ve watched it within the last decade. But anyway, this was my first time with the Alan Smithee ‘extended cut’ and… yeah, I can see why David Lynch took his name off it. The extra hour adds nothing to improve the film, or make the story clearer. Indeed, with that hamfisted Frank Herbert voiceover intro it actively takes away from the theatrical cut’s unique ‘what the fuck is going on here’ quality. I don’t want to know about artificial intelligence or rebellions from generations before, I just want to be thrown head-first into its stately weirdness. It remains a triumph of production design, one of which everyone involved should be proud. How Lynch feels about it today is his prerogative, but it’s a shame there’s no love left there anymore. More…
Preposterous libertarian-fascist, right-wing vigilante fantasy that, given the Beijing production money, fits squarely into what I’d imagine are Chinese conceptions of American cultural imports. More…
One long screed (and boy is it long) of white racist apologia, punctuated by pointed ribbing over liberal-minded criticisms of S Craig Zahler’s previous oeuvre. And the worst case of ‘I can’t be racist, my best friend is black!’ I’ve seen in some time. More…
It’s tempting to compare Theranos to the Fyre Festival debacle, but we’re dealing with a different situation here, one where capitalist greed and general arsehole-iness doesn’t play the same kind of part. Whereas Billy McFarland was an ignorant grifter who knew his concept wouldn’t fly from the earliest stages but pursued it anyway (and the Instagram kids, being marks, fell for it), Elizabeth Holmes really does seem like she was inspired by the Edison lesson of faking it till she made it. She really did want to be a Steve Jobs-esque Silicon Valley pioneer and ‘disrupt’ the established infrastructure of blood testing. All she needed was that one breakthrough that would solve all her problems, as they continued to pile up and eventually avalanche on top of her. One can’t help but imagine that if she were a man, one who, say, blustered about fanciful transport tunnels or cave rescue robo-coffins with nowt to show for them, the big idea would still be a thing. More…
Police procedurals don’t get much bleaker than this. More…
Shit Godzilla. More…
I wasn’t expecting a Gaspar Noé film to be quite so on-the-nose. More…
Oh boy. Some people are going to absolutely hate this one. I, on the other hand, liked it a lot. Do not go into this expecting any kind of affectionate, reverential depiction of the origins of Norwegian black metal; this is very much a tragicomedy of more universal themes, taking great artistic licence with the true kvlt lives it depicts. The contrasts are jarring at first: the parodic tone of kids dressed in black, wailing in American-accented English about death (a deliberate aesthetic choice flying in the face of ‘the scene’ and its carefully cultivated self-seriousness), cut through with sudden, shocking violence in all its visceral verisimilitude. It could come off like it’s taking the piss. But if you know anything about black metal, you’ll be fully aware of its contrived artifice. It’s all kayfabe, just tag team wrestlers in facepaint. Except for the ones who believed their own hype, and took things too far. (Which is what some will accuse director Jonas Åkerlund, an original member of Bathory, of doing with this very film.) More…
Sisters are doing it for themselves, indeed. More…
The rare ‘sequel/soft reboot that’s really a greatest hits compilation’ that manages to pull it off without succumbing to post-modern ironic detachment, though that’s arguably unavoidable in an age where even Scream would be considered a vintage movie (it was made almost a quarter of a century ago, after all). More…