Mystery
Annihilation
Annihilation should have been seen in cinemas. It is one of the most visually cinematic films in recent memory. But a paranoid studio head saw to it that what he considered to be an overly intellectualised piece of sci-fi would...
Mulholland Drive
It is more than a coincidence that in the year David Lynch’s Twin Peaks returns to screens we also get a spruced up 4K edition of his masterpiece Mulholland Drive. Because, back when Lynch was beavering away with Agent Cooper a...
Dark Places
Based on the book by Gone Girl’s Gillian Flynn you could be forgiven for approaching Dark Places with a sense of hope. It is, after all, a film that promises much: an unsolved murder mystery, a woman on the edge of society, a g...
Sicario
The war on drugs has long been a favourite of film. But if Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic illustrated it with a tapestry of characters and story Sicario gets into the nitty gritty. Because in the world of Sicario the emphasis is o...
The Gift
The Gift director, writer and star Joel Edgerton is one of those actors who is endlessly dependable in every film he’s appeared in. He’s rarely the headline name, arguably not a fully-fledged “star” in the sense many of the act...
The Falling
Carol Morley’s follow-up to her acclaimed, haunting doc Dreams of a Life sees her branch out into fictional territory with no less intoxicating results. 1969 and at a strict rural Girls’ School somewhere deep in the British cou...
The Loft
Remaking a foreign film can always be a tricky path to tread but when, as is the case with The Loft, you maintain the same director of the original there is always a chance. Taking the same premise from his 2008 film director E...
Inherent Vice
Inherent Vice director Paul Thomas Anderson has long cemented himself as one of cinema’s most intelligent and fascinating filmmakers. What PTA does better than most is tell interesting, deep and immersive stories through the ey...
Nymph()maniac Director’s Cut Volume I & II
It has got to be a bitch when a woman, at her sexual peak, loses the ability to reach orgasm. More so when that same someone is a self-confessed nympho, as is the protagonist in Lars Von Trier’s two part film Nymph()maniac Dire...
Predestination
Predestination marks the return of The Spierig Brothers after 2009’s solid Daybreakers. And like their skew on the vampire mythology, albeit playing on Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, this time out the Spierig Brothers are givi...
The Maze Runner
Based on James Dashner’s novel The Maze Runner is the latest addition to the seemingly unstoppable genre of Young Adult adaptations. But while the likes of The Hunger Games and Divergent go to war with evil governments The Maze...
Enemy
It seems last year was something of a doppelganger-off between Richard Ayoade’s The Double and Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy. But while The Double plumped for off-kilter quirk and a Terry Gilliam-esque aesthetic Enemy goes in a diff...
Before I Go To Sleep
The kind of film whose trailer insists on hinting at all the twists and turns you can expect Before I Go To Sleep does little you won’t predict from the outset. It’s the kind of film that wants to lure you in before pulling the...
The Keeper Of Lost Causes
Scandinavian noir has been a victim of its own success. Back in the late 2000s, a TV series called The Killing emerged from the market for DVD box sets and began turning heads. More cinematic of style and sombre of tone than it...
Open Grave
Mysteries in stories are only as interesting as their resolutions, both in terms of what the solution is and how the reveal is handled. It’s not just about showing what’s actually been going on, it’s what know...
The Truth About Emanuel
A heartfelt if slightly baggy essay on grief and the way people deal with it The Truth About Emanuel is a delicate and visually arresting drama. Writer director Francesca Gregorini allows us to dip our feet in the world of titl...
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
Believe it or not Chris Pine’s Jack Ryan is the fifth screen incarnation of Tom Clancy’s iconic CIA operative. From Alec Baldwin’s Hunt For Red October, Harrison Ford’s double wammy of Patriot Games and Clear And Present Danger...
Wish You Were Here
It is easy to think of different genres as nothing more than a set of restrictive rules but genres and the story structures that comprise them evolved out of a desire to explore particular ideas in particular ways. While this i...
Nymphomaniac Vol. I
Always a filmmaker who likes to delve into the deepest recesses of the human experience Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac Vol. I is a surprisingly light affair. That’s not to imply for a moment that it doesn’t deal with a dark sub...
Nymphomaniac Vol. II
Very much part of, rather than a sequel, to Nymphomaniac Vol. I, Nymphomaniac Vol. II is a much darker and therefore less appealing affair. Where Vol. I had a sense of playful lust about it Vol. II descends into a quagmire of ...
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