Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken (2023) - Movie Review

This film feels like a course correction in the worst way possible. DreamWorks Animation, who have dealt with labels of ‘Disney/Pixar rip-off’ pretty much since their inception, have recently been making films that are not only really damn good, but good in a way that sidesteps any kind of association with other studios. The Trolls movies, The Bad Guys, Captain Underpants, How To Train Your Dragon, not to mention last year’s genuine artistic triumph with Puss In Boots: The Last Wish. Their reputation in the modern day is quite secure, far as I’m concerned… which is what makes their latest release so thoroughly disappointing.

Nightmare Alley (2022) - Movie Review

Having managed to contextualise his entire career with his last film The Shape Of Water, it somewhat stands to reason that Guillermo Del Toro would then decide to stretch out into new territory with his following release. Stepping away from the more speculative genre fixtures that have populated his filmography up to this point, he’s now stepping into down-and-dirty film noir, with a sideways-remake of the 1947 Tyrone Power film of the same name (itself adapted from the William Lindsay Gresham novel of the same name). However, out of a want to keep whatever plot revelations are in this story intact so I can get the most out of them (after The Witches, I want to give Del Toro the best chance possible for a rebound), I have not watched the original nor read the source material. But even in that gap, this film has more than enough going for it to be worth recommending.

Stowaway (2021) - Movie Review

The sophomore feature from Mystery Guitar Man turned budding filmmaker Joe Penna is an amplification of everything that went into his first film Arctic. The main cast has been doubled, the dialogue has increased exponentially, and while the setting is ostensibly far more cramped than the vastness of the Arctic, it serves as ground zero for a survival narrative that delves even further into dissecting human instincts. The result of all this is a film so refined, it retroactively makes Arctic look like splashing around in a kiddie pool by comparison.

Dream Horse (2021) - Movie Review

Knowing how badly things turned out last time I highlighted a film about horse racing, scepticism feels like the right mood to enter this particular film with. Or I could expect basic sentimentality, given the median age of the cast here and the general pleasantness of the tone I got from the trailer (and, truth be told, the poster). But instead, I’m actually going into this with a certain amount of anticipation, and of course, it’s because I recognise a few of the names attached to this feature. We’ve got Toni Collette in a starring role, which is a start, but there’s also the director: Euros Lyn.

Now, depending on my reader’s familiarity with sci-fi television, that name might ring a bell, given his work on Russell T. Davies-era Doctor Who, Torchwood: Children Of Earth (low-key one of the greatest TV miniseries of the 21^st century, and possibly even further back), and the Black Mirror episode Fifteen Million Merits, the one with the exercise bikes and a version of Pop Idol that’s somehow even more depressing than the real thing. Most of his work up to this point has been in TV production, with this apparently being his first theatrical release. Well, if this is his first sprint on the big screen, it’s good knowing all that experience and skill can translate this effectively.

I'm Thinking Of Ending Things (2020) - Movie Review

Charlie Kaufman: The hopeless romantic. Emphasis on hopeless. In the midst of his invariably abstract looks at memory, self-loathing, and the capacity of media itself, his depiction of love always feels like it’s being viewed through a neurotic screen. Romantic leads who can’t allow themselves to experience love, and when they do, it only serves to rip the guts out of that feeling being real in the first place. His latest feature finds him well and truly in this mode of storytelling, going even further down the abstract path to deliver one of the single most pessimistic depictions of love I've ever sat through.