A Grand Quiet

You’ve probably heard the criticism of Silicon Valley, ‘the only problems they’re interested in solving are their own.’ Like, each new startup and app and service there is is there to cater to the needs of a affluent young professional working in San Francisco (and successful expansion is only ever achieved by trampling workers rights.) The robot pizza van company can get millions of dollars in…

Half Nelson, the first Anna Boden/Ryan Fleck film, is conceptually sound, has some great ideas and performances, but ended up not totally working for me.

I’ve lost count of the amount of times that I’ve said it, ‘I can be saved.’ I hope it’s human nature, why so many of us turn to religion, that need to be redeemed. That’s like the Christian thing isn’t it? Low effort absolution, I’d write it off if i hadn’t tried for most of my life and found it so so hard. Eventually I decided that a God who would reveal themselves to just about everyone I knew…

Some brief thoughts on Michael Mann’s ‘Ali’ (2001)

I guess I probably had the same arc with Ali that most probably did. The first half hour got me thinking that damn, I should retrospectively downgrade my opinion on Mann’s other work given that we see what he’s doing here. From after that, the whole second half of the film, my opinion of it slowly diminished.

I mean, that opening sequence fucking soars, it’s incredible. Everything up and through…

Ya girl managed to catch a preview of Avengers: Endgame so the review's up early. You'd be insane to read it before watching the film though.

For better or worse, Marvel are never going to make a movie this big ever again.

Like, we can feel the movie straining under the weight of its nightmare logistics production process. The narrative burden they’ve inherited stacked so heavy it’s basically impossible to know where to start. When the film makes the eternally…

Lucky 13 is the next short in Netflix's Love, Death & Robots. It has real actors but unfortunately not a script with any real people. Read my review here:

I’m not sure why the relationship between a space fighter pilot and her craft exudes a strong sapphic energy but it totally does. I mean, maybe because Samira Wiley (who lends her face and voice to a mocapped performance) is openly queer. Or because my twitter feed the past month has been a constant stream of Carol Danvers fanart. Or because people give their vehicles female names and pronouns.

L…

Love, Death & Robots: ‘Fish Night’ Review

I don’t think many of these films have great titles, but Fish Night may be the most blandly descriptive of the bunch. Fitting for a idea that comprises a lovely visual concept with very little to back it up and honestly, lines as ham-fisted as ‘Dead as our sales were last week.’ ensure that the visual splendour is all that it’s got going for it.

Two men break down in the middle of the desert,…

#InstantFamily just like slyly crept up on me and all of a sudden I was crying. Did not expect it from the director of Daddy's Home 2. Read my review here:

Dammit I was not expecting to cry during this movie. Wahlberg reuniting with the director of Daddy’s Home 2 does not sound like the setup for a emotional rollercoaster. The bland, gauzy cinematography with which these people’s airy, open plan homes are shot should deaden one’s senses. Everything about it seems like it packs the punch of a half tablet of asprin, but god damn if by the ending I…

Time for another go, catch my weekly roundup here, with topical #E3 chat!

I hadn’t realised that this was E3 week. It’s strange. I definitely watched it last year, and the year before that. The year before that one all my housemates stayed up together until 4am getting blazed and watching the press conferences. I think one of them had just brought an xbox one and we had this gay couple who were squatting in our living room so there was always money around for weed and…

It's useless criticising Deadpool 2, it's posturing self awareness belies how little it actually has.

I’ve been struggling on the how of criticising Deadpool 2(what no witty subtitle?) for just about a week now. Not because there’s loads to criticise, or even that I really disliked it. No, the problem lies in its relationship to itself, or more accurately Deadpool’s relationship to the entire construct that surrounds him. I suppose that’s what I’ve settled on really, the only way to properly look…

How to Talk to Girls at Parties Review is a toxic garbage mess, only redeemed by the fact that it really means to be.

This movie is a mess.

Seriously. It is an ugly looking, confusingly paced, poorly acted thing that follows a script which lurches drunkenly between the incomprehensible and the banal. It is confused and focusless, any scene with more than a couple of characters turns into an exercise in geographic confusion, something of an…

The Weekly Roundup: Happy Mothers’ Day edition

It’s not Mothers’ Day over here in the UK, we get that outta the way back in March. It’s always a notable time of year here because all of a sudden all of the podcast hosts turn to hawking flowers and chocolates and I always turn to the calendar paranoid. Hell, at least in the run up they might actually be advertising something that could be useful to somebody.

This is gonna be a very specific…

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Review – Island something

So, as far as romantic heroes go, island pig farmer has gotta be roughly in the middle of the pack right? Like, it’s all the necessary parts of rugged and parochial but slightly elevated. Nobody wants to fall for the dullard with a field full of leeks. And a horse breeder would obviously be some sort of unbearable in the other direction. Nah, this is a man who can look after livestock, whose…

Truth or Dare Review – Spook or scare?

We had the premier of our play. I fucked up just about every sound cue and felt awful. I suppose that’s the great thing about theatre, every evening is a new do-over. My mum’s coming to see it this evening, I hope she likes it.  I ain’t sure if anyone even remembers this Truth or Dare flick, I sure don’t.

I heard stories that Jason Blum gave this project the greenlight based purely on the…

Rampage is a fun, functional movie that showcases all the flaws in capitalist art.

Hiya, sorry I haven’t posted in the last week. The new play I’ve directed is premiering today so my schedule has been packed completely full of rehearsals, now at least I only have to turn up to the theatre at 5, my days can be my own. Imma write about the experience to go up this weekend but for now there’ll be some shorter reviews for the past two weeks new releases that I missed out on. Thanks…

Pacific Rim: Uprising sadly fails to fill the giant robot shoes left for it.

You know what? The robots in this film are BIG. I don’t quite know what it is, they certainly aren’t better realised or animated than megastructures in other films. I weren’t even watching it in 3D, lol who even does that anymore, but however it is that you generate that elusive concept of bigness, Steven S. DeKnight pumps that through every frame. Like, the ‘exterior’ scenes are often pretty…

I've had a busy week but it's one that has driven and challenged me. Check this shit out.

Sorry I ain’t managed to get many reviews up this week. All my commitments seemed to land at once and it’s Saturday evening right now, the only chance I’ve had to write since like Tuesday. At least I caught Unsanethe one evening I spent without commitments, I think I love it more than the four stars I gave it, it got a slow start but everything that happens once the stalker turns up had  me in…

Early Man is a mostly unconsidered film that is really worth considering.

See, I have friends who didn’t like Early Manbecause it’s all about football. I get it, the early ad campaigns sorta downplayed that aspect, but coming up on release the signs were definitely there. I hold no great love for football, it were always the boy sport growing up and I had neither the talent nor interest to care. For some reason as a kid I said I supported Chelsea. I think it was one of…