Profound, unflinching and brutally honest, Minding the Gap is a million miles from the skateboarding documentary you think you are settling in to watch. Delivering a narrative that explores not only what it means to come of age long before you are due, whilst set against the backdrop of a poverty-stricken city, the film is …
Crawl
After a middling summer, where a fair amount of franchise films either failed to justify their existence or struggled to make a lasting impression beyond their opening weekend, Crawl arrives looking to inspire those willing to take a punt on something fresh. Presenting a question you may not have known you needed answering, Crawl simply …
The Boys
Attempting to strike whilst the iron is still hot, Amazon Studio’s take on the superhero genre arrives looking to stir the pot, offering a somewhat fresh take on what has become an increasingly oversaturated market. The Boys, an adaptation of a comic series, therefore has a lot of groundwork to lay if it hopes to …
Vox Lux
If films were rated based solely on their first acts, Vox Lux would likely be a contender for my top ten of the year come December. A punch to the gut in terms of suspense and horror, it is pure cinema in every sense of the word – beautifully capturing the moment of being caught …
The Lion King – The Uncanny Valley of Storytelling
In 1997, director Gus Van Sant was the hot ticket in Hollywood. His most recent film, Good Will Hunting had nabbed itself nine Oscar nominations and now all the major studios wanted a piece. Offers were flooding in left, right and centre, but it was Universal Studios that presented the director with an opportunity that …
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Christopher Robin
On paper it must have seemed so appealing; the tale of a boy growing up and forgetting the joy he once found in his imaginary friends, now trapped in a thankless job and in dire need of rescue. Now insert the whimsy and beloved characters of A.A Milne’s timeless fables as said rescuers, including the likes of Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet …
Calibre
Not since two backpacking American’s walked into ‘The Slaughtered Lamb’ in John Landis’s An American Werewolf in London, have two out-of-towners ended up feeling quite so unwelcome and out of their depth in the Netflix distributed film, Calibre, directed by Matt Palmer. Part homage to the 80’s horror classic with echoes of Deliverance for good …
The Meg
Based on its marketing material alone, The Meg promised so much; a delicious blend of tongue in cheek humour, mixed with a healthy dose of horror and punch the air with glee thrills. Sadly, the film is anything but that, with not even the sight of Jason Statham squaring up against eighty-foot prehistoric shark enough to save this soggy attempt of a b-movie. The …
Psycho II
There are few genres outside of horror that will spawn sequels into the well is dry, and yet whilst some manage to remain enjoyable and pleasing to their most loyal fans, rarely are they able to recapture the essence of what made their predecessors so effective and unique. There are many reasons for this, most …
Kill, Baby… Kill! An Introduction to Giallo
Thanks to the efforts of restoration and film distributors like Arrow Video, an expansive back catalogue of cult and classic films are gradually finding their way back into the market, providing film fans such as myself with the opportunity to discover titles that up to now were perhaps harder to track down. Horror has always …
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