Soderbergh answered the question literally nobody was asking: how does it feels to play
L.A. Noire high on Xanax?
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No Sudden Move 2021
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Black Widow 2021
A begrudging obligation of a film that gives a listless shrug as it gorps aloofly at an audience just as resigned to spend their time and money watching it as the corporate committees are to make it. They say vote with your wallet, but time can be even more precious than money. Whilst many regard MCU instalments like these as perfectly pleasant or even excellent, I am beginning to feel malnourished.
Less rollercoaster rides than fast food filmmaking. The appeal…
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Spice World 1997
Too spectacularly silly to denigrate, too frenzied to pin down, and far too fun to hate on ✌🏼🇬🇧
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Everybody's Talking About Jamie 2021
Where many musicals falter, this adaptation thrives by honing its sense of place and character. My former home county of Yorkshire rarely gets the balanced portrayal lent by native director Jonathan Butterall to this film. It avoids both reductive caricatures and wince-worthy Hollywood sanitisation of Sheffield.
What struck me most about this tale was that it didn't feel obliged to situate society in some unrecognisably archaic environment for the sake of dramatic tension. Jamie is openly gay and proud, his…
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Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace 1999
"I may have gone too far in a few places."
Those infamous words of George Lucas sting like the tragic utterance of Alec Guinness's colonel at the climax of The Bridge on the River Kwai. "What have I done?" says Colonel Nicholson as the enormity of his errors dawns on him after so much havoc has been wrought. Whilst the colonel had time to rectify his misguided wrong-doings, Lucas believed he was too far down the road to turn back.…
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Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings 2021
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
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The Umbrellas of Cherbourg 1964
With news of Nino Castelnuovo’s passing breaking today, just days after Jean-Paul Belmondo’s, it felt only right to revisit this classic of French cinema which sits firmly in my favourite films of all time.
I could gush about the wonders of this film for eternity, but I’ll hone my praise to just a few of my most cherished elements. The colour palette encapsulates all the kaleidoscopic tones of Technicolor 60s cinema. Red never seemed redder, yellow waterproofs never looked so…
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Annette 2021
Never has there ever been, nor ever will there be again, anything quite like Annette. A pure singularity of cinematic strangeness with boundless operatic electricity. Unafraid to be disarmingly and alarmingly odd all whilst being so elementally entertaining. Shades of Greek tragedy and Brechtian theatre blend so seamlessly with the vivacious quirk of the Sparks Brothers. The marriage between sound and sight never seemed quite so unfathomably suitable. Many will be alienated by the wild choices at play, but the audience it retains will be all the more awestruck. With wide eyes and mouth agape, I found myself truly smitten by this ludicrous, mesmeric, ambitious, radical nightnare.
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Holy Motors 2012
“I have a plan to go mad.”
Trapped in my room, watching this at 6am, was perhaps the only way it could ever have been experienced. Held hostage, I watched. My captivity slowly dissolving into rapture.Leos Carax is an artist who paints in dazzling, contradictory strokes. He situated the surreal in mundanity. Fluidity in incongruity. Beauty at peace in squalor. A compelling puzzle begins to form with every…