July 8, 2018

  • Review

    3.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright, 2007)

    Still funny watching a decade later.

July 7, 2018

  • Review

    3.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Northern Soul (Elaine Constantine, 2014)

    This was so much fun. Watching the boys get swept up in the passion for sweet soul music got me to reminiscing about my discovery of punk at about the same age.

  • Review

    3.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Calibre (Matt Palmer, 2018)

    “A Simple Plan” in Scotland.

     

July 6, 2018

July 4, 2018

  • Review

    3.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Ocean’s 8 (Gary Ross, 2018)

    A fun fluffy summer distraction. You definitely don’t want to think too hard about movies like this.

June 19, 2018

  • Review

    4.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    Annihilation (2018, Alex Garland)

    I had to think long and hard about how I felt about the movie adaptation of Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation which I loved. I was a big fan of Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina” too but thought the psychedelic and literary novel was going to be pretty much impossible to film without major reworking.

    Visually the movie is absolutely stunning and ultimately I feel that Garland’s decision to drop some of the more out-there stuff in the book (including some major plot elements) was probably wise.

    On first viewing (in the theatre) I couldn’t get my head around the lighthouse scene. This felt nothing like the book and looked so oddly out of keeping with the organic mutations earlier on in the film. But on second viewing I’ve decided that everything in the lighthouse is metaphorical because it is beyond our comprehension – much like the acid trip Jupiter and Beyond scene in 2001. With that in mind, I decided the film was great.

     

May 31, 2018

  • Review

    3.5 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    mother! (2017) 

    It was fun watching Jennifer Lawrence’s slow descent into madness via claustrophobic close-up as mayhem steadily increases all around her. I’m not sure if it’s about loss of control, the sacrificial role of muses, or something entirely different, but I didn’t really care in the end because it felt very fresh.

     

May 18, 2018

May 5, 2018

  • Review

    3.0 rating based on 1,234 ratings

    It’s best to think of this as a mid-level Black Mirror episode. Lots of fun stuff if you don’t think about it too hard and some nice graphic design used for the ubiquitous AR everyone in this world has embedded in their noggins.

    via LetterboxD