The recent Hollywood Godzilla and King Kong films have been enormous, lumbering, jokey, CGI onslaughts that have offered some impressive spectacle and monster porn but (smatterings of techno jargon aside) seem to have mostly been aimed at 12-year-olds. Despite a distinct lack of cinematic nutrition, they’ve been successful enough to spawn multiple sequels and now we have the latest effort,
Read moreCivil War is the latest grim cinematic offering from British writer/ director Alex Garland who first came to our attention with the grueling zombie thriller 28 Days Later, chilled us with AI drama Ex Machina and weirded us out completely with the freaky psychological horror of Men. At times evoking Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket, Civil War is a confronting,
Read moreThe Gen X nostalgia train rolls on with latest resurrection of an 80’s favourite, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. The original Ghostbusters from 1984 was a fun mix of sci fi, supernatural spookiness and zany comedy. The film worked in part because of the concept and director Ivan Reitman’s deft orchestration of its various elements but mostly because of the cast: Bill
Read moreBritish director Jonathon Glazer likes to unsettle his audience from the get-go. The beginning of his latest film The Zone of Interest, involves five minutes of blank screen with ominous atmospheric music and ambient noise. Eventually we see a lush, verdant riverbank with people lounging in the sun as if in some vision of Eden. It soon becomes clear this
Read moreIn 2021, Denis Villeneuve’s first instalment in his cinematic version of Frank Herbert’s iconic 1965 science fiction novel Dune saw young, floppy-haired Duke, Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) battle the invading armies of the nefarious Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) before becoming a desert dwelling, giant sand worm-loving freedom fighter. It was essentially a sci fi Lawrence of Arabia. While technically impressive
Read moreDirector Andrew Haigh’s wonderful 2017 film, Lean on Pete, which told the story of a young guy (Charlie Plummer) travelling across the American West with a horse he had saved from the slaughterhouse was one of the most affecting films of recent times. Haigh’s latest film, the very moving, intimate, slow burn, All Of Us Strangers similarly draws us into
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