Thirteen Lives (2022) - Movie Review

I was initially planning to just skip this one entirely. After how badly Hillbilly Elegy turned out, I didn’t want to run the risk of Ron Howard screwing the pooch on a story that is far more important than the humble brag come-up of a venture capitalist. I even raised this same issue with fellow critic and top bloke Travis Johnson over at Celluloid & Whiskey, who understood my apprehension but suggested I still check it out. I’ve been to many a screening with this guy, and he knows his shit, so I figured it was worth giving a burl. And man, am I glad I did, because this is some of Howard’s best narrative work in ages.

Crimes Of The Future (2022) - Movie Review

Between the more feminist offerings coming out of Europe like Titane and Hatching, and heir to the throne Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor, it makes a lot of sense that King David would choose now to return to the genre that iconified him. While his recent run of more conventional, if cerebral, dramas has certainly produced some winners (A Dangerous Method took a second viewing for me to fully appreciate it, but appreciate it I do), there really is no replacing the kind of fleshy, practical effects-driven insanity he used to specialise in. As those aforementioned films have shown, there's certainly still a market for it. And even though this is the product of a script David wrote back in 2003, it’s only ‘dated’ in the sense that he is indeed returning to his glory days. His unsettling, gross, endlessly fascinating glory days.

Far From Men (2015) - Movie Review

In the world of film criticism, or at least how I perceive it, there are very few things that scream pretension as loudly to me as the phrase "French Film Festival". Sure, it may just be the still-lingering stereotype of what film snobs prefer to watch that I find myself clinging to, but there’s also the fact that I have little to no patience for pretence as my hatred for Terrence Malick and the Annie remake will show. However, there are always exceptions to arbitrarily written rules and I found myself going to a film that was screening for a French Film Festival in my area (Incidently, in the same cinema where I’ve gone to five interactive screenings of The Room). This is because I saw that Nick Cave did the soundtrack for it alongside Bad Seeds bandmate Warren Ellis. So, out of love for not only the man’s music but also 20,000 Days On Earth, I decided to give it a go.