“It’s going to get weirder and weirder and weirder, and finally it’s going to get so weird that people are going to have to talk about how weird it is.” -Terrence McKenna
Liar Liar
Universal Language (2024)
Rankin’s sophomore feature feels like Kaurismaki meets Kiarostami as his surreal, and at times perplexing tale brings us through a hybrid Canadian-Iranian space marked by quaint shophouses and bustling highways.
Thelma
It’s been two years since her husband passed away and Thelma Post (June Squibb) is adjusting to her new reality. She’s 93 years old and fiercely independent. While Thelma spends most of her days home alone ,she keeps in frequent contact with her grandson Daniel (Fred Hechinger) and her daughter Gail (Parker Posey). One day […]
A Real Pain “Review”
A Real Pain, directed by Jesse Eisenberg, tells the poignant story of Jewish cousins David and Benji touring Poland to honor their grandmother. The film’s beautiful piano soundtrack enhances their emotional journey, revealing old tensions and family history. Despite minor shortcomings, it offers engaging performances and is worth watching, earning a rating of 6.5/10.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024) on Amazon is a $60 million budget action-comedy film directed by Guy Ritchie which bombed at the box office but is doing rather well on streaming. The film is based on the book Churchill’s Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII by Damien […]
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
The fourth film in the franchise is set to be released in cinemas on the 14th February 2025. A full length trailer has now been released for the fourth and final chapter of the Bridget Jones film franchise, based on the books by Helen Fielding. Directed by Michael Morris (To Leslie, Better Call Saul), the […]
London Film Festival 2024: The Balconettes Review
For my next film at the London Film Festival, I decided to go with The Balconettes, mainly because, looking at the creative team, I saw that it was co-written by Celine Sciamma, who is one of my favourite directors working today, reuniting with Noemie Merlant. The general premise of the film sounded intriguing to me […]
NIGHTBITCH (2024): New Trailer From Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Zoë Chao…
Directed by Marielle Heller; Nightbitch is a new comedy/drama/horror film starring Amy Adams. With a supporting cast that includes Scoot McNairy and Zoë Chao, Adams plays a woman whose domesticity takes a surreal turn after pausing her career to become a full-time mother. Erm… So, this is very unexpected. I’m down for the humour and […]
Film Review: Emilia Pérez
A Mexican cartel leader undergoes gender-affirming surgery in Jacques Audiard’s really bad musical Emilia Pérez.
Lanthimos: Kinds of Kindness (2024)
The working title of Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindnesses was And. In some ways, that was a more apposite title, since this anthology comedy is obsessed with one of the uncanniest spectacles in a hyper-connected world: the physical spaces and silences between things. The structure of the film itself reflects that interest in connective tissue […]
10 things I hate about you: charming mix of 90s teen culture and classic romance
Gil Junger’s 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) is a charming mix of 90s teen culture and classic romance. This film adapts Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, setting it in a high school context and focusing on two sisters, Kat and Bianca Stratford. Their father has a strict rule: Bianca, the popular younger […]
Anora
Anora makes it clear why no woman — no man — should marry the son of a Russian oligarch. In Sean Baker’s comedy the title character, played by Mikey Madison, meets Vanya Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn) at a Manhattan club where she’s a sex worker and after a dizzy weekend he plays Richard Gere to her […]
AIRPORT
Burt Lancaster described his participation in what would become the first of a batch of 1970s all-star disaster epics as the worst picture he’s ever done. He declared it “the worst piece of junk ever made.” Perhaps because of this assessment we were eventually blessed with the Airplane! spoofs a decade later. Airport […]
Movie Review: Mom, Is That You?! (こんにちは、母さん)
Just like Clint Eastwood, who is still making films at 93, 92-year-old Japanese filmmaker Yoji Yamada (山田洋次) is also proving that age is just a number. The man who brought the world the beloved TORA-SAN series has recently released his 90th work, MOM, IS THAT YOU?! It’s the third film in his “Mother” series that […]
Movie Review: Successor (抓娃娃)
It’s one of the biggest domestic releases in China this year. SUCCESSOR, which debuted on July 16, is closing in on US$500 million at the box office and this is even before its roll-out to other markets. The film is opening in Hong Kong this weekend and the big question is whether local audiences here […]
Inspector Clouseau (1968)
I wasn’t even aware that Arkin took a turn at portraying the bumbling and ridiculous officer of the law, but he indeed did, and it is every bit as patently silly as any of the other famous pictures starring the late great (though famously tough to work with) Peter Sellers. Arkin, […]
Film Review – Con Job (2024)
Con Job (2024) Director – Ian Niles (Lie Hard) Cast – Ian Niles, Menuhin Hart, Dean Edwards, T.L. Flint, Aaron Berg, Julia Claire Schweitzer Plot – Selfish hustler Chris (Niles) employs the support of his best friend Angus (Hart) to try and swindle Chris’s long-term acquittance and August’s brother Tim (Edwards) out of […]
The Beta Test Review
Bursting onto the scene in 2018 with the brilliant indie film Thunder Road, Jim Cummings returns with his brand new film that he stars, writes and directs in. The Beta Test is another dark comedy that follows Jordan, a Hollywood agent that receives a mysterious letter that invites him to a hotel to participate in […]
Renfield (2023)
A wildly entertaining, gory action-horror-comedy where Nicolas Cage as Dracula is everything you could have imagined. Renfield may seem like the the latest vampire offering from Hollywood, but it’s much more than that. Showcasing a new take on the character of Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage) and his devoted assistant/familiar R. M. Renfield (Nicholas Hoult), this comedy-horror […]
Mill Valley 2024: The Book of Jobs
A coming-of-age story told through the lens of a young woman growing up in Silicon Valley, The Book of Jobs intertwines her life to the legacy of Steve Jobs. Victoria Pedretti (Netflix’s You, The Haunting of Hill House) plays the film’s author/narrator, always providing a window of insight to her character’s erratic insecurities. Back in […]