Knives Out (2019) - Movie Review

Films like this… intimidate me. As someone who writes about every new movie I watch, I certainly don’t make it a habit of hiding my true feelings in regards to pretty much anything I’ve written about here, whether I love it, hate it, or walked away unfathomably bored. But my come-up as part of the wider YouTube angry critic scene has definitely influenced how I approach all of those features. If something is bad, I hold no qualms in outlying every single way it has failed… but what about the opposite? What about those films that are just so engaging, so well-crafted, so endearingly good?

Surely, a film that is entirely positive is an impossible thing; no film is perfect, and even with films I love, I usually bring up even the most minor of issues to keep things balanced. Then there comes a film like Knives Out where, no matter how hard I strain my grey matter, I struggle to find fault in what it presents. I don’t know if this film is indeed perfect, but holy shit, it's so damn close that there's nary a difference.

Sorry To Bother You (2018) - Movie Review

There’s something about the outright absurd that serves as a great communicative tool. All the things that people are unwilling or unable to accept about their society or their reality; just throw in some weird shit, and suddenly, it becomes easier to swallow. The filmmaking debut of Boots Riley, renowned figurehead of the weirder side of West Coast hip-hop, follows this pattern, a depiction of modern-day race relations in a similar vein to Jordan Peele’s Get Out. Not that this is as scary as that offering (far from it, this is an actual comedy, unlike whatever the hell people thought Get Out was); rather, it uses an absurdist’s eye for science fiction to make its point. And oddly enough, it’s a fairly similar point.

The Girl In The Spider's Web (2018) - Movie Review

Ever sit down for a test, only to realise that you somehow missed two-thirds of the study material you needed to pass it? That’s what watching this film feels like. The story is all over the place on its own merits, tantalising a battle of wits between reigning badass cyber punk Lisbeth Salander (played with a continually-wavering accent by Claire Foy) and her twin sister Camilla (played adequately by Sylvia Hoeks), only we never quite get that. What we do get is a slurry of spy shenanigans, cat-and-mouse games winding around each other, and enough missed opportunities to make one slam their head against a wall in frustration.

Death Note (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: Light Turner (Nat Wolff) is just your average high school student. That is, until he discovers a notebook called the Death Note, a tool of the death gods where if a person’s name is written within, that person dies. Wanting to use this power for good, he is encouraged by the death god Ryuk (Willem Dafoe) to rid the world of crime using the Death Note, becoming known as Kira. However, as Light’s father (Shea Whigham) is called on to investigate the series of mysterious deaths, and a mysterious detective (Lakeith Stanfield) is brought in to assist, Light’s mission is about to get a whole lot tougher.