Being so wowed by the book, I was going to see this regardless of the critical concensus, but even positive reviews of this suggested that I'd need to enjoy this in spite of some heavy-handed or cheesy moments. All paranoia on that front evaporated within minutes. Yes, perhaps said moments would cause cringing when viewed in isolation on Youtube - and indeed, some user-ripped scenes are uploaded there already, since the movie has confoundingly been released on US home media,…

I came for a ghoulish fun-house ride, with a dash of adolescent sympathy. What I got was a terribly affecting, clever, and sincere look at the very sensation of fear itself. Like THE CABIN IN THE WOODS before in 2012, it paints with several time-honoured horror tropes, only to peel them back until we examine the very essence that attracted us to them in the first place. But where CABIN felt the need to create that agenda around a comfortable…

Much could be made of BOUND's significance in queer cinema history, since it arguably succeeds in normalising a same-sex relationship within observably Hollywood narratives, but it needs absolutely none of it to be considered a great film. Other gender portrayal observances to one side - tempting as they are, in light of its co-director's publicised transition - it takes the best cues on plotting and stylisation from old hands like Hitchcock and Wilder, but plays it with a bold panache…

In absorbing film criticism, one of my personal hobbies that's equally fun and frustrating is listening to Mark Kermode's long BBC 5 Live spiels and trying to sort the genuine love from the heady bluster. While his temptation to unspool a given film's thematic predecessors can get overbearing, and his propensity for railing against mainstream fare can get the better of him, he wins out with occasional moments of inspiring, laser-sharp expression. This is often the case with movies he…