Pearl (2023) - Movie Review

The prequel to one of my favourite films from last year in X, Pearl serves as the origin story for that film’s surprisingly sympathetic villain of the same name. After how much X wound up impressing me, both as a straight-forward genre experience and as a multi-faceted treatise on the nature of horror, pornography, and cinema in general, I went into this excited but not necessarily knowing what I was getting myself into. And truth be told, I wound up enjoying this even more than X… but not for the reasons I was expecting.

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood (2020) - Movie Review

Much like Seberg, the main casting choice behind this feature is one that admittedly is a bit obvious, but is also what this production needed right out of the gate. When you’re dealing with a figure as nigh-on-mythical as Fred Rogers, a person that some to this day still question the authenticity of, you need someone who can sell earnestness triumphant. So with that in mind, they basically picked the closest person we have that is as unabashedly likeable as Mr. Rogers himself: Tom Hanks, someone whose sheer charm has also veered somewhat into cliché.

Knowing that a documentary about Mr. Rogers wound up becoming my favourite film of 2018, I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was at just how good Hanks is as everyone’s favourite nice guy in children’s television. The hushed tone, the endearing timbre, the gentle invitation in his voice that tells you he cares about you and wants to hear what you have to say; the moments with him on-screen genuinely come close to Would You Be My Neighbor? for sheer ugly-crying potential.

The Night Eats The World (2019) - Movie Review

I’ve gone on record a few times in previous reviews that I have a serious weakness for zombie movies. Far as I’m concerned, the weirder, the stupider, the more outright insane, the better. And yet, with how much I’ve delved into my love for this sub-genre, one question still seems to elude me: Why? Why is it this specific brand of genre cinema that sticks to my heart the easiest? I could just chalk it up to nostalgia for Planet Terror, the film that made me realise I loved film at large, let alone zombie films, but that still doesn’t seem to fit. I bring all this up because today’s entry in the genre makes for a distinct diversion from the norm… and honestly, it helped me finally pin down why I love this genre so damn much.

The Guilty (2019) - Movie Review

This is one of those ideas that, on paper, feels like the worst possible fit for a visual medium. It’s the story of a Copenhagen policeman who is on desk duty and manning the phone line. For the entirety of the film’s run time, we never leave his side; the majority of the other characters and pretty much all of the narrative is given to us through dialogue, with only background noises during the phone calls giving us a ‘picture’ of what’s going on. This isn’t the first time this has been attempted, but when your contemporaries include The Call with Halle Berry, the capacity for mediocrity is quite high. And yet, even with the lack of visual detail, this works really damn well. Namely, because it highlights what else goes into the cinematic process besides the visuals.

Book Week (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: Nick Cutler (Alan Dukes) is a struggling English teacher and even harder struggling author. However, when his latest novel catches the attention of a publisher, he sees a chance to redeem himself for the cock-up he made during the publicity for his last book. As he tries to keep himself out of trouble, rowdy students, romantic entanglements and a whole lot of booze stand in the way between him and some sense of redemption.