8.5
NowTV
Four broken people sit down together in a church basement meeting room. Two of them are the parents of a child who lost his life during a school shooting; the other two are the parents of the shooter. They all want to understand how this could have happened, to make some sort of sense of this chaos that has destroyed their lives. Maybe even to heal. Needless to say, the level of raw emotion here is almost overwhelming…
9
MUBI
I must admit that my expectations for The Souvenir Part II were not especially high, as I had found the naval-gazing, emotionally distant The Souvenir a real struggle to get through. In fact, I haven't really felt a connection with any of Joanna Hogg's previous films, aside from her wonderful feature debut Unrelated.
To my delight (and surprise), however, I was utterly enraptured by The Souvenir Part II from start to finish. Not only does it look incredible…
2
Blu Ray
Comfortably the worst 2021 release I have (yet) seen. The central idea- troubled man maroons himself on a remote island and rapidly loses his grip on reality- is thunderously unoriginal, covering ground only recently explored in 2018's The Vanishing and Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse. Add to this almost every cliché in the "it's a story about trauma and grief but explored through horror!!" A24-aping indie playbook: the droning score, the slow pace, the ominous landscapes, etc. But…
7.5
Blu Ray
Low-key loved this. True, the script is pretty trite at times, with the adults delivering pieces of folksy, diamond-in-the-rough wisdom in almost every line and the Van Morrison soundtrack telegraphing every emotion, just in case you didn't get what the film is trying to say. The storytelling is about as broad and unsubtle as it is possible to imagine (something something Community something something War Is Bad something something The Power of Cinema). And, yes, the debts…
9.5
Amazon Prime Video (Rental)
* SPOILERS *
A knowing deconstruction of the revenge thriller, as typified in recent years by the John Wick and Taken franchises (amongst many others), Pig tees up a classic genre scenario: the mysterious loner who has something precious taken from him (in this case, an adorable truffle pig named Apple) and goes on a mission to get it back. The filmmakers then go even further into this territory by casting Nicholas Cage (who as…
9.5
Blu Ray
Rewatch (2nd viewing)
What does it mean to be human? David Cronenberg's Frankenstein-esque cautionary tale stars Jeff Goldblum as a nerdy scientist who accidentally fuses his DNA with a fly, gradually becoming more and more insectile in nature until he literally falls apart.
My personal favourite Cronenberg film, this has everything: the purest expression of his obsession with the malleability and spongy, liquidy grossness, but also the beauty, of the human body; a brilliant lead performance from…
