Emma (2020) - Movie Review

There is nothing worse than writing about a film’s inefficiencies, and in the process only highlighting those same inefficiencies in your own writing. Like writing about something not being funny, while you yourself aren’t making people laugh either, or describing a dull event that itself reads like the literate version of paint drying. And as I find myself trying to muster up things to write about in regards to this movie… yeah, I am honestly worried that I’m just going to bore my dear readers to tears in trying to express how much I didn’t engage with this particular work.

Part of me just wants to write the whole thing off and just… not write about it. But that would put this film in a category outside of pretty much every other film I’ve written about on here, and while it’s not nearly that bad, it’s certainly not that special either.

Love & Friendship (2016) - Movie Review

Given my willingness to accept frankly insane and rather low-brow themes and narratives in my cinema, I might have depicted myself as a fairly low-brow critic, despite my intentions of reading into films as best I can. And no other statement I’ve made will end up lending more credence to that than this: I’m really not that big on costume dramas. Not to say that there are examples that I have come to like: Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing is one of my favourite adaptations of the Bard on screen. It’s just that the usual unmistakable stuffiness that pervades a lot of what we consider to be costume dramas never really works for me. It’s often too ingrained in a lifestyle so far removed from my own that, even for a guy who loves the fantastical, I find it hard to get invested. But hey, maybe today’s film could change that; if I’ve learnt anything this year, it’s that potential for success can exist in just about any sub-genre. But somehow, I doubt it.

Pride And Prejudice And Zombies (2016) - Movie Review

For as much as I try and deconstruct the films that I watch, with varying degrees of success, I am quickly discovering something about myself when it comes to films: I love dumb zombie movies. Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse, Cooties, Wyrmwood: Road Of The Dead; sure, these are all meant to be comedies, but even then these are incredibly silly films and more than a little wrong-headed in their own ways. And yet, as I look back on them, I still love them a hell of a lot more than I probably should, given the pseudo-intellectual air that can be felt around these parts. Hell, I’m still laughing at a bit from Cooties where a character just says “Word”. So, knowing my own weakness for the more goofy iterations of the living dead, I look at today’s film with a general idea of what I’m getting myself into. I mean, look at the bloody title; my love for all things surreal and ultimately silly can’t help but be triggered by something that gloriously inane. But, I have to maintain some level of professionalism around… here… yeah, I can’t even pretend that that’s what I do in the first place. Let’s just say that my opinion on this film may already be skewed before we even get into it proper. Anyway, time to sink our teeth into this thing.