Tag: download
SFX guy Stephen Norrington gets in early on the ’90s cyberpunk trend with this dubious, tonally inconsistent mashup of Snow Crash, RoboCop, Aliens and Hardware but perhaps the worst of it is it’s two whole hours long and the thing that everybody’s here to see is in it for, what, five minutes tops? You’ve gotta give the people what they want, man. More…
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The Final Cut again, this time at home in 4K. I probably should have noticed before now that Leon echoes Roy Batty’s famous “Time to die” line much earlier in the film. Anyway. Still love it. Its ambiguity remains its greatest strength. I’m increasingly convinced Ridley Scott didn’t understand what he was working with. More…
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I feel this is being mis-sold as a psychological drama as it’s not nearly as harrowing as the phrase implies. Anna Kendrick’s Alice, severely stressed by her manipulative partner, is whisked away to a lakeside house for a friend’s birthday weekend that turns into an intervention of sorts to rescue Alice from her abusive relationship. Theres’s certainly verisimilitude in the choice not to make the bad guy’s behaviour cartoonishly monstrous; he’s the kind of basic controlling arsehole, with that straight-out-of-the-misogynist’s-manual negging shit, that most women lured into such situations would recognise, so I expect that to resonate. But it makes for a film with little in the way of story or drama to sustain feature length. More…
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Baby Cronenberg’s most derivative flick yet. What if Sundown were crossed with Us, with a twist of A Serbian Film? The answer is this mess, I guess. Meanwhile, Mia Goth is well on the way to overexposure à la Freddy in the ’80s. More…
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This would be a four-star movie if it had leaned right into the socio-cultural send-ups and dropped the pretensions of verisimilitude. As it is, it doesn’t quite work as either the horror or comedy part of ‘horror comedy’, so we’re left with a drama that’s more along the lines of what the kids today mean by that word. More…
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Despite what the opening on-screen text might lead you to believe, this is firmly for those who are already boned up on the story of King Crimson, its many faceted iterations and the legend of Robert Fripp. It doesn’t bother to explain such details as why KC transmogrified from flute-laden balladry to muscular hard rock to sinewy new wave to industrial-tinged metal, or extrapolate on the enmity between Fripp and the many, many other musicians who have created and performed with him under the moniker. It doesn’t tell us anything about why Fripp is so important within and without the band: there’s nothing about Bowie, Daryl Hall, Guitar Craft. But in fairness, what (former MTV Alternative Nation host) Toby Amies’ doc is about is in the title, no more and no less. More…
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This is OK, I guess, but it’s up to Brian Chase of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to point out that the scene this ostensibly surveys was bigger than The Strokes and included plenty of popular-on-Pitchfork bands like Oneida and even outliers like Sightings and Black Dice, none of whom get a look-in here beyond a name on a flyer. More…
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Netflix are making quite the name for themselves for big-name, medium-buzz winter holiday comedies that fall completely fucking flat. I have no time for tired social satire and even more so when it’s told with this kind of self-satisfied, forced whimsy. It gets two stars only because it commits to the bit, despite the bit being on the level of an average New Yorker cartoon. No I have not read the novel but I have read DeLillo and anyway the book is nearly 40 years old and when you take it out of that context without any real effort at recontextualisation, then what are we even doing here? More…
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The self-referential nod-wink side-talk comes off as kind of smug, if I’m honest. Like, we’re nine films deep now and things got sillier than ’70s Bond a long time ago; it’s too late for breaking kayfabe now. Also, Letty shouldn’t have stuck her chopsticks in her ramen like that. Just saying. More…
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It doesn’t hang around, does it? Nearly every scene has something to make you pop at either its ridiculousness or its astounding creativity. And it ends way harder than expected, to boot. I also note this was Michelle Yeoh’s third film and Cynthia Rothrock’s first yet both look like they’ve been doing it for years. Credit to all involved. More…
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This film has something interesting to say about society’s obsession with witnessing tragedy, and how we really view mental illness, beyond the platitudes and lip service, which is refreshing considering how the subject is normally treated. It’s also a story that struggles for a sensible ending, and that’s told via by-now well-worn horror mystery tropes, from the inverted aerial shots to the sympathetic cop to the copious jump scares, which I think does it a disservice, even if it evokes an effectively harrowing, skin-crawling mood. More…
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I appreciate the passion of a project like this, though that same passion is what persuades them to include every talking-head clip and non-sequitur anecdote they could get their hands on. I’m just saying, this could’ve been edited into a less meandering and far more engaging two hours, perhaps. More…
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It’s this close to saying something about the rot at the heart of the American dream. But it settles for being just a movie about an asshole who only looks sympathetic in light of someone far worse than him. More…
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Really enjoyed this one. It’s as uneven as any horror anthology but has a sense of fun (rather than revolting mean-spiritedness) that appeals to me. More…
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What kind of backwoods bullshit is this? Indeed. More…
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As a contemporary folk horror, it’s more effective than Alex Garland’s facile Men. But it’s still predicated on the notion of the child’s original debt to their parents. That cycle can be broken without the kind of sacrifice this story suggests. More…
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[chews and spits] “Town’s cursed.” More…
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It’s got all the issues inherent in trying to ‘elevate’ horror by trying to make it ‘about things’ in the most facile manner possible, but this Hellraiser reboot (and it is a reboot, as it reimagines enough to set it in a separate dimension from the 1987 original) has got another problem that’s more annoying to me. More…
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A boring parade of nerds, too many of whom say “vinyls” without a hint of irony. More…
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The prequel I can’t imagine anyone really wanted but is actually worth a gander, as it leans just on the right side of stupid to justify its existence. (Except for that parting shot. You know what I mean.) More…
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It’s a plastic pastiche of Romancing the Stone, weighed down by its compulsion for ironic detachment. But we knew all that. What I didn’t expect was more than one smug, vaguely mean-spirited linguistic gag, a flourish of self-satisfaction for a film that’s nowhere close to as amusing as it thinks it is. More…
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The combination of a fairly dull story, a miscast lead/sidekick pairing and that contemporary trend for wildly uncanny previz-dictated action set-pieces means this one washed right over me. More…
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Fine, but I wish it had been more of a “fucked-up horror picture”. More…
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Damn this movie, making me pop for the Akira motorbike slide. More…
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This flick was very obviously assembled in a hurry and on the cheap. More…
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First off, half a star alone for the inclusion of practical effects, which make a world of difference. This seems a lot less silly when it’s being Indiana Jones with dinosaurs. It’s much less effective when it’s James Bond with dinosaurs, or wishing it were a kaiju flick. More…
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I’m not ready to see Prey just yet; needed to ramp myself up with something I could watch on 1.33x without losing a hint of thrill, and this one fit the bill quite nicely. As for actual critical thoughts? The lopsided plot really smacks of filmmaking by committee. You can have an escape-the-volcano heart-racer or a spooky mansion jump-scare-a-thon; you can’t have both and make it work. More…
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Wes Craven wanted Short Circuit, the studio wanted Re-Animator and the MPAA balked at the basketball to the face so we got…whatever this is. More…
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The title suggests tumult when in actual fact it’s more like a soft day. Mark Cousins directs this docu based on his short time in the company of the arthouse-inclined film producer, someone he’s clearly enamoured with to the degree that he fails to get much out of him beyond confirming his own hagiographic biases. Thomas has an interesting story, and a remarkable oeuvre, yet Cousins seems more interested in inserting himself into the narrative and trying to dress it all up with an air of faux-profundity. “Pseudo-intellectual” isn’t the right term for it as Cousins knows his stuff, but the feeling that term provokes of being rubbed up the wrong way seems applicable here. More…
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The 1993 version has gone up much further in my estimation having now seen this Harry Potter-ised dreck. I mean, really. Do they think children don’t understand what metaphors are? How utterly patronising. More…
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Alex Garland’s faux folk horror fails hard at attempting to graft its unsubtle text (“This is what men are like…but not me”) onto unsettling, even stomach-churning but insubstantial imagery. More…
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In the context of such OTT action set pieces, if anything the depictions of the British establishment here are underplayed; colonialists were every bit the callous sadists they’re made out to be and then some (the irony of one of them being portrayed by an Irish woman is not lost on me). More…
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I admit I’m inclined to give this one a favourable hearing for the inclusion of not only Full of Hell but also Asterisk* on the soundtrack. But no, this extended absurdist sketch-comedy riff on Fight Club is very much Not For Me. More…
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If you’re going to be this kind of Category-3-on-overdrive calculatedly tasteless, maybe don’t try to be so grim and self-serious, yeah? More…
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So… who else was on edge fearing she’d go Full Exene? More…
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An aggressively artificial un-spectacle, with added knob-polishing at the feet of Elon Musk and some suspiciously conspicuous product placement for that Russian anti-virus brand that was cool 20 years ago. But at least the pacing was half-decent. More…
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Ironically enough, for a meandering film with such a threadbare story, it goes deeper as an essay on social class than the shock and awe of the writer/director’s prior, much-maligned New Order. More…
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Craven remade Bergman’s The Virgin Spring as The Last House on the Left, so why not reboot Beowulf in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens… with cannibal children? Okay, I was sold on the killer-kids premise already but there really is a lot more going on here. I mean, it’s an enthusiastic yet amateurish backwoods slasher — from Troma, naturally — so I did not expect a meta-commentary on the aesthetics and function of fantastical fiction. Nor that brutally unforgiving denouement. If you go down to the woods today… actually on second thought, best not. More…
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Alternate title: All the Money in the World Part II. More…
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Do you know what an ambiguous image is? Like that picture that’s a duck one way and a rabbit the other? That’s what this is. It’s not even a movie, really, let alone a horror movie. It’s mere content contrived to appeal to both sides of a perceived binary divide. A duck or a rabbit. A rabbit or a duck. More…
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I haven’t read Murakami since 1Q84 burst that balloon, so I wasn’t familiar with the source material here. Turns out (!) the titular car is a red herring (as is the Beatles allusion, but so was Norwegian Wood). The real conceit, as embellished by Ryusuke Hamaguchi here, is a stage production of Uncle Vanya that serves as a multifaceted metaphor for all of the characters in one way or another. More…
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The germ of a good idea (‘virtual reality exorcism’ has a lot of potential) is lost within a poorly fleshed-out script and student-film, make-do execution. It’s too late now, Blomkamp, you blew it. More…
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What a mess. Some of the set pieces here betray at least the notion of enthusiasm, but at some point early on Charles Band must have got bored and settled for cobbling together a bunch of random half-assed takes till it made up a contractually obligated hour. It’s only remarkable for having an incredibly sleazy denouement, and for the soundtrack keeping that glam metal flame alive when grunge had long since conquered the industry. More…
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They kind of just threw everything at the wall with this one, didn’t they? An extended riff on the opening to Child’s Play with nods and winks aplenty to the Elm Street series, The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby… it’s a lot, and somehow a lot less than the sum of its parts. More…
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“Hey man, the script is great! A cop the size of a doll! Where does Band come up with this stuff? But, uh, it’s running a little short…”
“No problem, I’ll just copy-paste ‘fuck’ a few hundred times. That should do it.” More…
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Two things: one, I was aware of Super Dave as a bit from late-night talk shows but I did not realise until shockingly recently that he was Albert Brooks’ brother; and two, he’s legitimately funny without the unfortunate compulsion for “dialect comedy”, as its phrased so euphemistically here. More…
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I had to read about five Wikipedia articles to get a handle on the story before I could even start with this, despite having watched the original series not so long ago, so yeah, it’s one of those. More…
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There’s a glimpse of Steven McDonald in the last half hour that teases a parallel universe where there’s another version of this film but it’s about Redd Kross. More…
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It’s got the same problem as The Happening, and The Village, and most of Shyamalan’s ‘big’ movies in that an attempt at serious human drama clashes with a preposterous premise, and the results are expectedly muddled. I much prefer the fake Wikipedia plot where this turns out to be a sequel to Lady in the Water and shit gets even crazier after the credits roll. More…
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There’s so much to ridicule about this pitiful excuse for a satire, but maybe the most egregious is that no one gets cut off for swearing on TV. More…
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