“Stories are wild creatures… When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak,” the Monster says in the film adaptation of Patrick Ness’s award-winning novel, A Monster Calls. Human lives are all made up of stories – ...
Read More »Does the WWII biopic, “Hacksaw Ridge”, redeem Mel Gibson?
“While everybody else is going to be taking life, I’m going to be saving it. That’s going to be my way to serve.” That’s what Desmond Doss tells his father before enlisting in the U.S. army to fight in World ...
Read More »“Passengers” — a cosmic love story.
The poet, Emily Dickinson, wrote of loneliness “Ourself behind ourself, concealed —Should startle most —Assassin hid in our Apartment Be Horror’s least.” Loneliness is a force that confronts and unmakes the self. Humans are by and large social creatures. It ...
Read More »“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” — our (completely) spoiler-free review.
Blah, blah, blah. The alt+right hates the new Star Wars spinoff and stand-alone movie, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Because how DARE the hero be female and how dare the creators and writers ‘politicise’ the film. The lead character, Jyn ...
Read More »We review J.K. Rowling’s “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” [no spoilers].
Nearly twenty years after J.K. Rowling created the stunning and enduringly popular wizarding world of Hogwarts and Harry Potter, the British author is finally giving fans more of the same world, albeit without Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Set in 1926, ...
Read More »“Blood Father” – is this action-drama Mel Gibson’s way back to big screen glory?
Reports from international critics covering film festivals have it that award-winning actor and director, Mel Gibson, is finally on the up and up. Gibson has essentially been blacklisted for nearly a decade decade following incidents of drunken racism and anti-Semitism. ...
Read More »Is “Dr Strange” Marvel’s most original offering yet? [No spoilers!]
“Forget everything you think you know,” Baron Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a mystical warrior tells the titular character in the film Dr Strange. The same can be said for the film itself, one of Marvel’s most original and freshest big screen ...
Read More »“The Accountant” – can this action thriller/dramedy redeem Ben Affleck’s acting career (just a little)?
There is hardly a job that conjures up a more mundane and dreary image than that of the chartered accountant, and so, a film with a title like The Accountant sounds like it would be more at in an indie cinema ...
Read More »“Shepherds and Butchers” asks the viewer to see ‘monsters’ as human. But can we?
The title of acclaimed director Oliver Schmitz’s new film (based on a book of the same name) comes from a quote by that famous eighteenth century philosopher, Voltaire: “Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.” But, as the lead ...
Read More »“Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” – Tim Burton returns to his wonderful, weird self.
Not since 2005’s Corpse Bride has as story been so suited to that unique and nonpareil auteur, Tim Burton. In his latest film, the director has taken Ransom Rigg’s best-selling novel, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and stamped on ...
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