John Connors
Brand New Day, as the title attests is a relatively fresh start. What you need to know is neatly summed up at the time you need to know it and even though most of the main characters are not new, they feel fresh again. People are saying this is the best of the current era of Spiderman films which...
S. Brady Calhoun
Years ago, I staggered1 out of Mad Max Fury Road, going, ‘How did they do that?’ I feel the same way now with The Invite. There are no flaming guitars and death-defying wire stunts here, though. Instead, it’s how did they write a script so funny and sharp and then direct the hell out of it so...
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John Connors
You never really know what you’re going to get with a Christopher Nolan film. I remember wondering before both Dunkirk how he could find a new way to present a familiar story. With Oppenheimer I imagined it wouldn’t be very exciting yet it was even though it was mostly conversational. As for...
Mr. Karswell
As promised, here comes another DC Movie Comic adaptation of a creaky, old Universal fright film classic (see our previous post for Son of Frankenstein in case you missed it!) And this time it's a spooky detective mystery set in a haunted theatre --where murder hath taken the stage! From the...
John Connors
This overlooked, light hearted film set in 1995 is about two closeted Irish teenagers, Eddie and Amber. Tired of the homophobic jibes they have to endure, they conjure up a plan to pretend to be a straight couple. While initially this eases the pressures on them and also means they are meeting...
John Connors
At the beginning of this third instalment of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ smart sister, Enola is late, a nod perhaps to the tardy arrival of the film. It’s more than three and a half years since the second in the series so you’d be forgiven for forgetting what happened. Luckily anything you...
John Connors
Superhero films are not generally a lot of fun when there’s serious world saving to be done yet Supergirl ,while it does have some darker hues to its story, is light and breezy enough to make you smile. Unlike the most recent Superman its clear his cousin takes her responsibilities a lot less...
John Connors
I suspect that if proof of aliens really was disclosed at this current febrile time the public reaction would be hysterical with calls for them to be locked up, dropped on the Moon or something similarly draconian. This is not presently a world receptive to `others` of the human variety let along...
adumbrate
John Connors
“Gee Whizz!” Big green men invade a small town in this classic sci fi film If the plot of Invaders from Mars seems familiar then that’s likely to be because it’s proven to be hugely influential on subsequent generations of filmmakers. The likes of Joe Dante and John Landis are fans while Martin...
John Connors
The Star Wars Universe has expanded massively yet despite the undoubted quality of the offshoots (notably the superb Andor) they are a fairly long way from the tone of the 1977 original. Here though is a branch of the tale that indulges in exactly the same fast paced action orientated type of...
John Connors
Fifty three years ago the events depicted in Soylent Green may have seemed far fetched yet today maybe not so much. Based loosely on Harry Harrison’s novel Make Room, Make Room (though the adaptation changes some events and has a different outcome) the 1973 film depicts population and climate...
Nicol Wistreich
Instead, is the heart of the Wenders vs Roy row not an older debate about how an artist should display their politics: on the sleeve or under the vest? Do we want the overtly political cinema of One Battle After Another, the implied, less obvious and more allegorical politics of Sinners, or the...
Nicol Wistreich
He is just finishing his fifth feature documentary – 2 in 1 – driven by his experience of stage four (aka incurable) bowel cancer. The film looks at the rapid rise in bowel cancer among young people, and while we’ve known each other since Netribution was two film-degree dropouts in a trenchcoat 25...
Adam Membrey
If you saw my Top 10 list for 2023, you’d notice it was published in July – a full 6 months after the calendar year ended. Here, I’m sliding in a week past that previous record. The reasons remain the same: work, family, and the simple fact there is so much to see and so much of it not quite...
4u
Science, Medicine and the Creation of a ‘Healthy’ Soviet Cinema (Anna Toropova) The results of a 1928 study conducted by the Department of Pedology at the Institute of Pedagogical Methodology (IMShR) indicated that cinema-going was far from an occasional treat for many Soviet young people....
Adam Membrey
I don’t usually publish my Top 10 lists until a month (or two, or three) into the new year. A lot of this is just logistics. It’s hard to catch all these great movies that come out in the last quarter of the year. It has to be spread out. Something has to give. And while I often find my favorites...
ablestmage
Just got back home from Transformers 40th anniversary movie in theatres.. and it was the worst film I have ever seen on the big screen. To my discredit, however, I went in without even having seen the trailer for it, which should have clued me in. From the title alone and banners for it, I was...
0xADADA
Denis Villeneuve, expert of visual storytelling, frequently employs the panning shot with an extensive use of the parallax effect to immerse viewers in his films, allowing them to experience a sense of place, scale, and depth like never before. He uses these teqniques most visibly in “Blade Runner...
Adam Membrey
There’s a lot of great movies I didn’t get around to this year. The time constraints of raising a toddler meant my wife and I gravitated towards the shorter episodes of a television series rather than sinking into a movie we weren’t sure we had the energy for. So there’s an awful lot of surely...
Adam Membrey
A key thing my wife and I learned this past year is that the exhausting endeavor of the toddler bedtime routine left us with just enough time, energy, and brain space for a simple episode of television. Thankfully, the Age of Streaming provided a lot of options. There may be some spoilers. Here...
Your name
I devoted a small portion of a previous post on technology and human values a while back to the science fiction drama Ex_Machina. Here I want to explore a dramatically different dimension of Ex_Machina, less concerned with the film’s treatment of existential questions – robots and the end of...
John Neel
Focus and Aperture Movements with Older Lenses Mirrorless cameras have become popular partially due to their relatively short distance from the lens mount to the imaging plane. This shortened distance has allowed for the use of a variety of vintage lenses. The distance that was reduced was made...
Tom Coates
Today’s social media controversy comes courtesy of former Doctor Who show-runner Russell T Davies who has gone on record in an interview that he believes gay roles should generally be played by gay actors. As you might expect, the response to this argument has been both immediate and strong....
John Neel
Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day 2021 Poster Each year for nearly two decades, thousands of people from around the planet have participated in the annual WPPD event. The event is meant to be fun and creative. It brings people together from nearly every nation around the globe. I see it as a tool...
David Stark
Katzenfabrik and I recently watched the 1984 film version of Dune, and attempted to follow this up with watching the 2000 miniseries. Neither of them is an entirely satisfying attempt at putting the book onto the screen, and we spent a lot of time discussing what our ideal Dune film would look...
David Stark
There's a new film out by Ridley Scott, called Prometheus. It's mostly a prequel to Alien and, as such, features an android. The android is played by Michael Fassbender and is called David, in the fine tradition of the Alien films, which assign each robot a name starting with the next letter of...
David Stark
Instead of going shopping, which is what I was planning to do today, I want to talk to you about my favourite album: Clint Mansell's soundtrack to The Fountain. Then I will proceed to meander wildly. The Fountain, in case you haven't heard of it, is a film by Darren Aronofsky, who also directed Pi...
David Stark
If at all possible, you must go and see The Seventh Seal. I saw it a few days ago, and though we entered the cinema late and missed the most iconic scene at the start, I was immediately absorbed by the film. Just a knight and his squire riding through the countryside, but the lighting and all is...