Tag: Hollywood
Dune
Saturday, March 5th, 2022 Film Reviews,There are fans for whom Dune’s second coming has been anticipated with a kind of religious devotion. The first cinematic adaptation of Frank Herbert’s cult science fiction novel in 1984 was a film David Lynch would rather forget, so there were high hopes for Denis Villeneuve’s new version. Could they get it wrong again? Well […]
King Richard
Friday, February 25th, 2022 Film Reviews,Watching this bio pic about Richard Williams, who raised his daughters, Venus and Serena, to be tennis champions, I thought back to last year’s Netflix documentary on Naomi Osaka. That strange, vague, disconnected young woman might have benefited from a parent as dogged as Williams, although one suspects Venus and Serena succeeded almost as a […]
Nightmare Alley
Friday, January 21st, 2022 Film Reviews,Nightmare Alley reads like it was written for Guillermo del Toro. A pulp novel with literary pretentions, William Lindsay Gresham’s masterpiece was acclaimed and denounced when it appeared in 1946. The language was obscene, the sexual content too brazen, the picture of human nature it painted, too bleak and brutal. The book was intermittently banned, […]
Licorice Pizza
Thursday, January 6th, 2022 Film Reviews,There are eagerly anticipated movies that turn out to be duds, and movies such as Licorice Pizza, which are better than might ever have been suspected. The duds are far more common, so when a film of real quality turns up one feels like cheering. Many believe Paul Thomas Anderson (b.1970) to be America’s greatest […]
The Films of 2022
Wednesday, January 5th, 2022 Film Reviews,Presuming we don’t emulate success stories such as Denmark and go leaping back into the bunker, 2022 should see a greater range of movies returning to local cinemas. It remains to be seen whether the film industry has been permanently altered by the pandemic, with a large number of people now content to stick with […]
The Movies: A Boxing Day Round-Up
Saturday, December 25th, 2021 Film Reviews,For those not turned feral by the Boxing Day sales, the day after Christmas is the traditional detox after all that festive activity. Yes, it’s supposed to be joyous, but it’s also stressful when one has to work harder at a holiday than at a regular job. Hence the popularity of the Boxing Day test […]
The Last Duel
Thursday, October 21st, 2021 Film Reviews,Clang! Crunch! Swish! On leaving the cinema after seeing Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel, the sounds of battle still ring in one’s mind. Over two-and-a-half hours Scott unleashes a series of ferocious battle scenes, and a final showdown between two armoured combatants that leaves nothing to the imagination. As we remember from features such as […]
Free Guy
Thursday, August 12th, 2021 Film Reviews,If you’re not currently in lockdown there are a handful of new releases to be sampled at the cinema. This includes Disney’s latest attempt to barnstorm the box office: Free Guy. Not the worst movie you’ll see this year, it’s almost wilfully shallow. There’s no shortage of promising themes but the filmmakers seem determined to […]
Black Widow
Friday, July 30th, 2021 Film Reviews,Over the years I’ve never found it a hardship to watch a movie that stars Scarlett Johansson, but with Black Widow any lingering spark of male fantasy went under the steamroller. Every time I sit through one of these superhero flicks I find myself asking: “Is it me, or is it the rest of the […]
Promising Young Woman & Sound of Metal
Friday, April 23rd, 2021 Film Reviews,In preparation for this year’s Academy Awards I’ve already reviewed six of the eight films nominated for Best Picture. Today I’ll take a look at the two that remain. I don’t know why it’s taken so long to catch up with Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, as it’s one of the most talked-about films of […]