It seems to have taken me a very long time to see Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest effort, and researching a lengthy interview I had with the man, I was forced to spoil much of the story for myself in order to discuss it in detail. Fortunately, narrative is low on the list of priorities for […] Read more »
Michael comes to visit his friend, Chris, who is holed up in a dilapidated shack in the middle of nowhere, his life gone the way of the dogs thanks to his crippling meth addiction. In an effort to get him clean, Michael takes him prisoner, only to discover that there are other forces at work […] Read more »
Futuristic Disney adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel has some interesting concepts smuggled in between servicing the source material. The alien designs are particularly good, and the action scenes are mostly well directed, but throughout the film I couldn’t help but feel the two concepts never quite married together harmoniously and that what I […] Read more »
Gearing up to go and see the sequel to this amusing if somewhat forgettable animated action comedy, I suddenly discovered that my girlfriend hadn’t seen it. So we sat down the evening before, rented it off iTunes, and discovered it to be much funnier than I had remembered. Steve Carell rather clumsily voices Gru, a […] Read more »
Harmony Korine’s spring break helldrive finally arrives (albeit via iTunes) after a healthy festival tour that whipped up some sterling word of mouth, not least for James Franco’s chameleonic turn as a vile gangsta who takes a band of rebellion-charged college girls on the ride of their lives. Read my full review here Read more »
It came as quite a shock to discover that Spring Breakers is the first Harmony Korine film I’ve ever seen. I’ve been aware of the man’s work since way back when Larry Clark’s Kids was unleashed upon the world, and I have vivid memories of Gummo coming to cinemas, as well as everything the former […] Read more »
I remember catching this on TV very late one night, as a young impressionable teen. At the time, the sight of a scantily glad Amanda Donohoe was enough to set my pulse racing, but revisited a good 20 years later there’s not much real excitement here. Despite the film’s good pedigree – directed by Ken […] Read more »
A rather baffling melange of horror, science-fiction and comedy that screams out to be embraced as a late night cult classic in the vein of Repo Man or director Don Coscarelli’s own Bubba Ho-Tep, but never quite finds its groove. It’s filled with ghoulish demons from other dimensions, wise-cracking slacker heroes and potent, power-giving soy […] Read more »
For what is purported to be his final theatrical release, director Steven Soderbergh goes for a pulpy trashy thriller rather than anything too highbrow. Rooney Mara plays a troubled young wife whose dependancy on prescription medication has increasingly violent consequences. Channing Tatum plays her recently released husband, whose white collar crimes saw him incarcerated. Jude […] Read more »
Toymaker LEGO has been steadily expanding beyond the simple bricks many of us remember from our childhoods. These days the sets are dazzling, in their detail and range and represent many imaginary universes, rooted in popular films, stories and also worlds LEGO themselves have created. To support this, LEGO moved some time ago in video […] Read more »
Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Aaron Paul are both excellent in this low budget comedy drama from director James Ponsoldt. They play a young couple, very much in love, who both spend an incredible amount of their time together getting really drunk. When a series of bad experiences cause Kate (Winstead) to quit drinking, it inevitably […] Read more »
This second dose of first person found footage horror antics from seven vivacious young filmmakers from around the world proves far too similar an experience as the first film did. It’s shorter, and contains one excellent short, but it still lacks the true originality that its hard-worked premise suggests. Read my full review here Read more »
I wasn’t overly enamoured by last year’s V/H/S but nevertheless I was looking forward to the follow-up, especially after early reports out of Sundance promised a leaner, more lighthearted affair second time round. I have never been much of a fan of found footage films – or POV films as I understand they would like […] Read more »
I only heard about this film from the special features on Arrow’s excellent Zombie Flesh Eaters disc, and it seemed the perfect late-night splatter flick. For large parts, Contamination seems to blend that earlier Ian McCulloch venture into Italian schlock with Ridley Scott’s Alien, which opened the previous year. In turn, Luigi Cozzi’s film seems […] Read more »
Melissa McCarthy continues her meteoric rise into the Hollywood comedy A-list, this time opposite perennial straight man Jason Bateman, as a habitual con artist who steals the identity of Sandy Patterson and goes on a spending spree. Due to some incredibly convoluted plot machinations, Sandy stands to lose his job, house and who knows what […] Read more »
As much as anything I selected this title purely for some brainless, Sunday afternoon fun. I understand that it basically lifts its storyline from a recent computer game – Lex Luthor and The Joker team up to wreak havoc on Gotham City with the aid of a huge gun powered by kryptonite. Batman reluctantly joins […] Read more »
I managed to miss this at a couple of different festivals last year, before finally catching up with it this week on iTunes. The feature debut from Eron Sheean stars Michael Eklund as Geoff, a troubled geneticist called to Dresden to help a team of research students. There he discovers old flame and former student […] Read more »
Chilean director Nicolas Lopez teams up with Eli Roth for a sadistic horror-disaster movie hybrid that follows a group of tourists through the rubble and chaos that follows a spectacular earthquake. Read more »
Chilean filmmaker Nicolas Lopez teams up with actor-writer-producer Eli Roth for a horror-disaster movie hybrid that sees a dispirate group of tourists and revellers battle to survive after a massive earthquake hits Chile. Roth has explored similar territory before with his Hostel films, in which he introduces audiences to a bunch of loathsome Westerners whom […] Read more »
First-time Canadian filmmaker Brandon Cronenberg proves himself to be every bit his father’s son in this darkly satirical sci-fi thriller, where celebrity has reached such extremes that fans will pay top dollar to contract their idols’ ailments and diseases. Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) is a top executive at the Lucas Clinic, but is secretly […] Read more »