Sweetheart (2020) - Movie Review

Female-led survival horror flicks have been steadily making the rounds over the last handful of years. The Shallows, Crawl, both entries in the Metres Down series; I guess the recent resurgence in ‘prestige’ horror cinema combined with the attempts to bring more female lead characters to the screen have resulted in this intersection. But up until this point, these films have thrived (or floundered) based on being short but sweet genre exercises, not rising too far above the benchmark for man vs. nature yarns. And then this film came along, yet another from the industrious (industrial?) Blumhouse production line, which… basically recontextualises this entire trend.

Brooklyn (2016) - Movie Review

Along with the better appreciations for the names of directors attached to a film, which has led me to go back through their filmographies in prep for their latest as you’ve probably noticed on this blog already, I have also taken note of specific writers as well. While last year got me to really take note of Mr. Alex Garland, whom I can only hope continues his ride in the director’s chair, it also gave me my first proper exposure to that footy-loving music junkie Nick Hornby. His penned film Wild mainly made my best of the year list thanks to the amazing production qualities of the overall film, but I’d be lying if I said that this guy’s spellbindingly warm writing didn’t factor into it as well. As such, when the posters came in for his latest write-up, it became one of those situations where I knew I’d check it out regardless of my current compulsions. But, even though I fixate on the writing of films far more than I probably should if I want to keep my film buff membership ID card, I still admit that that is only one part of a larger process that is filmmaking. So, even with my affinity for the writer’s work aside, how does today’s film fare?