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Reviews
A Quiet Place
In space no one can hear you scream. In the cinema, they can. In A Quiet Place you don’t want anything to hear you scream. John Krasinski’s inversion of the horror formula has received a lavishing of hype and it’s entirely justified. We’re a long way from The Office here in Krasinski’s first directorial piece and he shows patience, care and a precise way with a camera. The year is 2020 and it’s taken a mere matter of months for the world to look post-apocalyptic. The reason?
Apr 25, 2018
Love, Simon
The revolution will not be televised but small steps are being made for inclusivity and progression on our screens. In the last few years projects as broad stylistically as Wonder Woman, Moonlight, Dear White People and Black Panther have smashed stereotypes whilst also breaking records. Love, Simon is a film that won’t necessarily break records, won’t necessarily be an awards favourite and isn’t about a superhero. It’s a sweet, funny, immensely likeable coming-of-age high sc
Apr 11, 2018
Ready Player One
The best films have the power to take you out of the real world for a couple of hours at a time. Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One is a film about that very feeling. This rose-tinted nostalgia-fest has received a surprisingly divisive reaction but this is startling as it’s a true ‘movie fan’s movie.' Its bombardment of references, links and Easter Eggs ready to tickle every fan’s pop culture bones. Based on Ernest Cline’s YA novel Ready Player One is set in 2045, where over
Apr 4, 2018
Isle of Dogs
The plight of the auteur can be a tricky one indeed keeping to noticeable stylistic traits whilst introducing new ideas and avoiding diminishing returns and fan pressure. Wes Anderson’s dedication to working within his set parameters is something to be truly admired. That he is yet to release anything which has fallen below his high standards and worked across genres and audiences in doing so is startling. His ninth directorial feature: Isle of Dogs returns him to the stop-mo
Mar 27, 2018
Game Night
It’d be fair to say that comedy is the most disparate genre. Easy, cynical cash-ins sit next to finely-honed scripts and box office takings tend to be fairly even regardless of quality. It’s particularly satisfying, then, when something comes along that looks for all the world like it should sit squarely in the former camp but is instead imbued with love, care and attention and leaves a lasting impression. Game Night is one such example. Taking a fairly unique premise (bizarr
Mar 23, 2018
You Were Never Really Here
The art-house take on a well-worn action, thriller or gangster trope often turns out to be one of the highlights of any given year in film. Free Fire was last year’s prime example and it seems, in recent times at least, to be a motion firmly put in place by the sublime Drive. You Were Never Really Here is Lynne Ramsay’s fourth directorial feature and comes six years after her last. This slow and methodical gap in time is an apt description of the film itself which is a haunti
Mar 16, 2018
Tomb Raider
Is it the end of the adventure film? For so long the bastion of blockbuster filmmaking and home to early classics but beaten out by its CGI-heavy relatives sci-fi, fantasy and, of course, the superhero in recent times. There’s still something nostalgic and homely about a well made action-adventure but all too often recently they’ve suffered critical malaise and dwindling box office fortunes. Last year’s Tom Cruise-led The Mummy being the latest big example (despite being a fu
Mar 15, 2018
Gringo
Cartels are still trending high with movie and TV producers at the moment and we’ve seen some great gangster shows and films based on them. They provide the backdrop to what’s sure to be one of the sleeper-hit, cult favourites of the year: Gringo. The focus here is actually on the management of a pharmaceutical company using a Mexican lab to produce medical marijuana tablets, anticipating them being made legal in the US. Hapless everyman Harold and greasy managers Richard and
Mar 12, 2018
Red Sparrow
Let’s start this review boldly and say that Red Sparrow is exponentially better than the widely-middling critical consensus. Far more of a 'European Bond' than the much-touted 'Black-Widow-in-all-but-name', Francis Lawrence’s latest is another victim of poor marketing. The combination of Francis and namesake Jennifer Lawrence (no relation) has, thus far, led to huge success in the YA waters of The Hunger Games and the widespread press for this film has posited it as the begin
Mar 9, 2018
Lady Bird
The last of the Best Picture nominations to make it to these shores (but, *spoiler alert*, didn’t win) is the much-heralded Lady Bird. Smashing Rotten Tomatoes records on release we’ve been forced to wait patiently for Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut. Lady Bird is a coming-of-age tale wrapped in a love letter to Sacramento, California. The titular Lady Bird is a self-given nom de plume of Christine, a college senior with our favourite coming-of-age hallmarks: a dysfunctional
Mar 5, 2018
Black Panther
It takes something truly special to upstage Spider-Man’s long-awaited integration into the MCU but that’s how I, and plenty of others, felt when we laid eyes on Black Panther way back when in Captain America: Civil War. The suit, the mysterious backstory and the promise of a future trip to Wakanda stood out in a film hardly short of stand-out moments. It’s been a long time coming, amid plenty of press furore, but we have the solo film we’ve been waiting for and the last piece
Feb 19, 2018
The Maze Runner: The Death Cure
We haven’t had much luck recently when it comes to Young Adult trilogy closers. Since the triumphant close to the Harry Potter series the quality has significantly dipped from The Hunger Games: Mockingjay double-bill, which just felt a little lacklustre, to the Divergent series' final film Allegiant being completely cancelled altogether. The Maze Runner has posited itself as the closest competitor to The Hunger Games in recent times but itself ran into bad luck when it came t
Feb 8, 2018
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