It: Chapter Two (2019) - Movie Review

Following up It: Chapter One was always gonna be a tricky proposition. The most commercially-successful horror film of all time, a retelling that blew most if not all nostalgia for the 1990 mini-series out of the water, and just a brilliantly-constructed piece of cinema; how in the fuck is this meant to measure up to all that? Well, while I would argue that it doesn’t measure up in certain aspects, I would also argue that as a sequel, as a continuation and conclusion to what came before, this got most of the essential stuff damn near perfect.

Glass (2019) - Movie Review

For all of M. Night Shyamalan’s cinematic faults, from the incredibly goofy like The Happening to the phenomenally condescending like Devil to the outright banal like After Earth, there is one thing that can never be taken away from him: He knows superheroes. With Unbreakable, he established a world where superheroes and supervillains exist in a world all too similar to our own. With Split, he introduced a more forcefully psychological touch to that world, unveiling another supervillain whose entire existence is owed to the way the mind processes trauma. And with Glass, he brings both halves together to create a truly astounding piece of superhero fiction.

Sherlock Gnomes (2018) - Movie Review

Gnomeo & Juliet is an absolute mess. While aided somewhat by its genuinely solid animation and a pretty choice voice cast, it feels like a Murphy’s Law situation where literally every bad decision possible was made around them. From the insanely ill-fitted soundtrack to the egregious puns to the incredibly snide attitude it carried towards its source material, it can easily stand as one of the worst family films I’ve ever sat through, if not one of the worst full stop. Because money is the root of all things unnecessary, and the original made plenty of bank at the box office, we for some reason have been given a sequel. While I struggle to figure what precisely this film is at its core, it is still a marked improvement in all the important regards.

Atomic Blonde (2017) - Movie Review

Over the past couple years, mainly off the back of the now-legendary Mad Max: Fury Road, Charlize Theron has become the female action icon that, honestly, we need right now. I know that this might sound a bit reactionary after the pleasant success of Wonder Woman, and especially in light of certain… comments that have been made about it recently, but we don’t really have a lot of bankable female action heroes right now. Not to say that they just don’t exist (hell, I’ve been singing Scarlett Johansson’s praises for a while now) but I specify “bankable” because money talks and we’re still in this weird position of hesitance in letting these actors get their fair share. So, in light of another widely-popular action reinvention in the form of the John Wick movies, Theron tapped Wick co-director David Leitch to give her a fighting chance. Does that chance pay off?

Split (2017) - Movie Review

Whether you’re a fan of archetypal slasher films, classic gothic horror, anarchic muscle-heads beating the crap out of each other or giant green dudes fuelled by the urge to smash things, chances are that you’ve run into a depiction of a character with multiple personalities, or Dissociative Personality Disorder as it is known today. Now, even talking about this condition is a tough order because it is easily one of the most contested mental disorders in medical circles (as well as circles where people think they know medical details) and a large number of us are still sceptical that it is even real. Me personally, knowing the myriad of diagnoses I’ve been given over the years, I don’t think I’m in any kind of position to question another person’s mental state so don’t be expecting any attempts at trutherism here. Instead, we’re going to looking at the latest film which happens to revolve around this condition, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. After the success of The Visit, I’m far less shitscared of that statement than I would have been 5-10 years ago.

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) - Movie Review

With the Marvel Cinematic Universe as ubiquitous as it is, it can be easy to forget just how important the X-Men films have been for the common conception of comic book movies. At the start of the millennium, the genre was in a pretty bad state: Vanguards of the art form Superman and Batman had both fallen on legendarily bad times, the kitschy ways of the 80’s were sticking around for god knows what reason like with Captain America and the unreleased Fantastic Four film, and to make matters worse, we weren’t even getting that many of them that were worth noting. Blade was pretty much the one and only comic book superhero film that was watchable. And then noted filmmaker Bryan Singer teamed up with Solid Snake (seriously, the OG voice actor for Solid Snake wrote it) and up-and-coming actor Hugh Jackman to make history for the format. Pushing the surface badassery of Blade into mainstream-recognised maturity, it changed the landscape from then on; it set the groundwork that the MCU went on to flesh out. No question, even in the wake of negative reviews, I was looking forward to the next instalment in this legendary series, especially given how amazingly well Days Of Future Past turned out. This is X-Men: Apocalypse.

Trance (2013) - Movie Review

It’s time to continue to put further effort into these reviews than is really advisable as I look back into another director’s work who has a new release coming out soon. This time around, it’s Danny Boyle, a man is kind of frustratingly difficult to pin down in terms of an overall style. He has a very kitchen sink approach to his craft, something usually reserved for filmmakers on substantially tinier budgets: If it looks cool, use it! Not to say that he doesn’t come up with some amazing visual ideas for his films, like the absolute grime of Trainspotting, the video camera stock that almost looks like a TV news reel in 28 Days Later or even the hectic video game aesthetic adopted for certain scenes in The Beach. It’s just that the man just has so many ideas for how to present a story on film that it’s hard to pin down if he's a true original or just derivative; he’s like Ant from Atmosphere. Still, considering this is the same guy who gave us not only one of the best zombie films of all time but also easily one of the better Christian-oriented films with Millions, you’re usually gonna get quality work from the guy. Usually.