Thriller
Honest Thief
In a year packed with surprises, one of the biggest shocks yet comes in the form of Mark Williams’ action thriller Honest Thief. Starring Liam Neeson in the titular criminal role, the film may appear on the surface to be just a...
The Trial of the Chicago 7
Based on the 1968 trial of a group of men accused of inciting violence in protesting the Vietnam War during the Democratic Party Convention, this courtroom drama feels more relevant now than it did then. At one point set to be...
Pet Sematary
There are two ways a film with such an outrageous plot as Pet Sematary could have been made. The first is as a campy ‘B movie’ fully aware of how ridiculous the idea of family pets rising from the dead is. The secon...
Everybody Knows
Everybody Knows is your average ‘missing child’ thriller film that heavily relies on one thing: the chemistry between real life married couple Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem. To the film’s credit this is quite easily the most ...
Cold Pursuit
In light of Liam Neeson’s well documented remarks about wanting to exact revenge on any black man he could find after hearing his friend had been attacked by a man of the same skin colour, there’s a certain uncomfortable irony ...
Den of Thieves
You may be able to take the boy out of Paisley, but taking Paisley out of the boy proves harder. So it’s refreshing to see Gerard Butler back to his badass best as a swaggering douchebag cop taking the fight to a gang of swagge...
Sorcerer
How is a film judged as a success? Box office return? Critical acclaim? Sorcerer, at its time of release in 1977 had neither. Off the back of success with The French Connection and The Exorcist director William Friedkin was Hol...
Blade Runner 2049
Within a matter of minutes of the opening of Blade Runner 2049 you sense this film has captured the essence of the original film. From the close-up of an eye, a vast, sprawling vista of a dystopian future and a world seeped in ...
Dunkirk
Christopher Nolan‘s gripping, gruelling war epic is his finest film yet. An exhausting, often overwhelming experience, it’s essentially a single, ever-intensifying set-piece that plunges you into the nightmarish cha...
Baby Driver
When you think of Baby Driver director Edgar Wright you probably think of comedy. It probably stars Simon Pegg, probably has an editing style that will make your head spin and almost certainly has action sequences synchronized ...
Get Out
What is a horror film supposed to do? Scare you? Thrill you? Chill you? All of the above? Probably, but what you rarely expect a horror film to do is question your own outlook on the world. It is therefore with great delight th...
Elle
Paul Verhoeven – he of Total Recall, Basic Instinct and, of course, Showgirls – is back with Elle, an audacious, genre-bending bang, conjuring forth a blackly comic masterpiece that contains enough material to make ...
John Wick: Chapter 2
Uber-violent, hyper-real and stunningly-stylised, John Wick: Chapter 2 picks up where the first film left off in more ways than one. Keanu Reeves reprises the titular role with enough dash and swagger to carry the film through ...
Nocturnal Animals
After the success of his gorgeous debut film A Single Man you would imagine designer Tom Ford would have been in high demand in Hollywood. But he’s taken his time with his sophomore effort, keeping us waiting to see if his firs...
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back suggests quite the foreboding outing for the one man army that is Jack. It also echoes a sentiment of star and producer Tom Cruise. Because over the course of his long and illustrious career Cruise h...
Deepwater Horizon
Last time director Peter Berg and star Mark Wahlberg teamed up they gave us the visceral experience that was Lone Survivor. Spoilerific title aside Survivor told a relentless story of survival. There was unquestionably a desire...
The Girl With All The Gifts
It’s telling that in a time of social and political upheaval superheroes have taken centre stage, or at least centre box office. Because we need something to give us hope, something to suggest a rescuer is on the horizon, a her...
Don’t Breathe
Given his debut feature was the quite literally blood-soaked Evil Dead remake those of a squeamish nature would be right in entering Fede Alvarez’s Don’t Breathe with a sense of trepidation. But while the claret doesn’t flow, a...
Morgan
There must have been something in the water at the Scott household at some point in time. Because Morgan is the debut feature of Luke Scott, son of Ridley, nephew to sadly departed uncle Tony, brother to Plunket & Macleane’...
The Shallows
If you go into The Shallows expecting anything less than bikini vs big fish stop reading now. Seriously, if you’re after high-art go and read some James Joyce or watch a Terence Davies film. Because this is a full-blown B-Movie...
