Creating story to a set structure is nothing to sniff at. After all, it’s worked for Bernard Cornwell all these years. But after the fresh of breath air that was Skyfall, the familiar ground covered in Spectre tastes stale. There ...
Read More »Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel
Welcome to Night Vale surprised almost everyone when it topped the podcast chart in the US. Since then, it has developed a loyal, cult following. And there’s no surprise in that. The podcast is creepy, sometimes terrifying, weird, surreal, and ...
Read More »Crimson Peak: Ghosts are not to be taken lightly
Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) is a bookish American belle, the daughter of a self-made steel magnate in Buffalo, New York. Her doting friend Dr Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam) has returned from travels in Europe but at the same time the ...
Read More »Suffragette: Votes for Women!
I feel in many ways 2015 is a fortuitous year for feminist cinema. We have finally got a major release with mass appeal that has no qualms about showing its support for female liberation and equality which also stands as ...
Read More »The Lobster: That would be absurd
David’s wife has left him so, as you would expect, he has to be shipped off to the hotel where he has 45 days to find a partner or he will be turned into an animal of his choice. Of ...
Read More »Pan: Bad Form
This might be incredibly bad form for a critic, but I’d be lying if I claimed that unlike everyone else, I could enter a film without some preconception of its quality and content. Of course, the ideal is to go ...
Read More »Sicario: You saw things you shouldn’t have seen
The war on drugs comes to the big screen in a very visceral rendition with Sicario. If not wholly successful as a film, it certainly has merit as an aesthetic and thematic exercise. Plot and character work made seem crucial areas to ...
Read More »The Importance of Being Earnest
I have declared my support for transmissions of theatre productions before. No, they don’t have the immediacy, intimacy or ephemerality of a live staging, but it is a good opportunity to allow people to see some form of a production ...
Read More »Macbeth: Sound and fury
Oh, Shakespeare film adaptations: my forte! This is a fierce and muscular spin on Macbeth. Director Justin Kurzel takes full advantage of the rugged Scottish landscape (and fairly rugged cast members with the likes of Michael Fassbender being the foremost) ...
Read More »Con Man: Because convention man doesn’t sound as cool
Those of us who attend conventions aren’t as scary or weird as we’re often made out to be – though that’s not to say there aren’t plenty of scary weirdos (or terrifying people in Alien costumes that like to sneak ...
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