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Reviews
Bill & Ted Face the Music
“Be excellent to each other” is quite the bodacious credo and should be adorning plenty more t-shirts. Despite this, does 2020 need a Bill & Ted remake/sequel? Probably not, but in this most strange of years a 29-years-later(!) sequel to a cult stoner film hardly registers as a footnote. All these 'super sequels' tend to do is make people feel old but, for a slacker comedy, Bill & Ted always had a very clear central message that music, and being kind to our fellow humans, cou
Oct 1, 2020
Every Pop Culture Reference in the Lyrics of Arctic Monkeys
This article is a tribute to Alex Turner and the Arctic Monkeys who have a predilection to pepper their lyrics with delicious little pop...
Sep 25, 2020
Tenet
In case you were wondering, a 'tenet' is actually defined as: "an opinion or principle held by a group or organisation, a creed." In Christopher Nolan’s long-awaited blockbuster the title Tenet actually is a sort of palindrome, referring to time moving forward and backwards by ten minutes, as it does in one of its major sequences. If you’ve just seen one of Nolan’s films, or even had one described to you, you’ll know that time is his muse. He pushes the boundaries of what’s p
Aug 27, 2020
An American Pickle
The Brighton Film Club finally returns to the cinema and a quick word for the good people of Cineworld, Brighton who’ve not only given the place a funky refurb’ (tippy chairs!) but have also worked mighty hard to reopen and put suitable safety measures in place for those punters who just had to get back in front of a giant screen despite the blissful weather. A huge thank you from me. Release schedules are all over the place at the moment but, hopefully, bums on seats will en
Aug 12, 2020
The King of Staten Island
Being without the cinema has been difficult for The Brighton Film Club. The buzz of seeing a new film amongst fellow fans is a feeling that I can’t wait to have back in a few weeks’ time as those theatre doors swing open again. In the meantime, it’s been fun to post the 'Isolation Inspiration' recommendations on Instagram and I've also been diving into some ‘best movies ever’ lists to try and broaden my own watched list ever further. The announcement that the cinemas are reop
Jun 22, 2020
Onward
Breaking records with Star Wars and the MCU, continuing success with their live-action remakes and less than a month before the launch of the Disney+ streaming service, the Disney train keeps on a-rolling. Their commitment to continuing quality and original content has been key to this inexorable rise, the critical jewels in the crown amongst the sequels and blockbusters. A lot of these gems have come from the Mouse House’s most critically adored wing: Pixar who, despite the
Mar 3, 2020
Sonic the Hedgehog
The Brighton Film Club has spoken a lot about videogame movies in the past. There are notoriously bad examples of the form but the general consensus is that they’re improving. I’m not sure that’s true. The turn towards po-faced, self-serious CGI-fests has given us some terrible ports which, whilst pretty, are far too cliched (think Warcraft, Assassin’s Creed, Need for Speed and Tomb Raider for some recent examples.) Having said that, the same problem occurs when you make a ti
Feb 26, 2020
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) has had to be renamed Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey in the States to get more bums on cinema seats. Is this the first shoots of audience fatigue creeping into the superhero market after the finality of Avengers: Endgame? Only time will tell on this front and this year is still to give us Black Widow, The Eternals, The New Mutants and Wonder Woman 1984 so Marvel and DC will certainly hope this isn’t the case. W
Feb 13, 2020
Parasite
It’d be fantastic if the awards-buzz and critical hype surrounding Parasite got people into the cinema and watching a foreign language film. The tired rhetoric of ‘not wanting to read subtitles’ means so many miss out on incredible movies and whilst some remakes are good (Let Me In, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo et al, not as good as the originals though) the less said about anything dubbed into English the better. Parasite would be a great place to start for the uninitiate
Jan 28, 2020
1917
There can only be one thing to start with when talking about 1917 and it’s important to note that the ‘one-shot’ style is not something brand new (Hitchcock's Rope was the first in this style back in 1948) but, equally, this is certainly not a gimmick. Other films have even done it better (Birdman and the quite remarkable, actually-shot-in-one-take Victoria.) What Sam Mendes has given us here though is an experience, an ordeal, an exercise in human spirit and resolve and a fi
Jan 21, 2020
Jumanji: The Next Level
Because 2017’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was [gasp] an actually good remake a sequel was absolutely inevitable. We live in an age where you can definitely have too much of a good thing. Impressively retaining and, actually, improving the original cast Jumanji: The Next Level escapes with a fair amount of credit. It’s in fairly uncharted waters as a good sequel to a good remake. These films work by knowing exactly what they are and having a darn good time doing it. The vi
Jan 20, 2020
The Gentlemen
Sound the alarm and get ready with the expletive bleeper, Guy Ritchie is back with a 'propa' London gangster film, the first since RocknRolla back in 2008. The Gentlemen makes a few concessions to the fact that it’s 2020 but otherwise drops us back into a world of dapper gangsters, boxing gyms and liberal use of the 'c' word. Ritchie is let loose here after the too-tame Aladdin, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, the underrated The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Sherlock Holmes reboo
Jan 10, 2020
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