SUBSCRIBE

Tag: adventure

Film Reviews

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Friday, May 25th, 2018 Film Reviews,

If you’ve ever wondered what Han Solo did before the first Star Wars film, Solo: A Star Wars Story provides all the details. It seems he spent a lot of time flying spaceships and shooting at amazingly incompetent enemies with ray guns. Wow! That was a surprise. One never expects a Star Wars movie to […]

Film Reviews

Passengers

Friday, January 13th, 2017 Film Reviews,

Writing in the 1920s Aldous Huxley denounced the joyless “Good Time” that had made people into passive consumers of art and entertainment. Huxley regretted that the cinema had killed off amateur theatrics, while music making at home had been supplanted by the gramophone. He believed this indulgence in instant entertainment led to a crippling sense […]

Film Reviews

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Thursday, October 6th, 2016 Film Reviews,

Tim Burton is Hollywood’s greatest celebrant of non-conformity. This is partly a reflection of his own battles with studios to make the movies he wants, the way he wants. Throughout his career one can feel the ebb and flow of that drive as he wins some rounds and loses others. My favourite Burton films are […]

Film Reviews

Sausage Party

Friday, August 19th, 2016 Film Reviews,

In Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel, White Noise, two professors from a Mid-western University roam around a supermarket with their shopping trolleys. Murray, from the Department of Popular Culture, analyses the experience and decides it’s like being in a Tibetan temple. “Look how well-lighted everything is…” he says, “sealed off…timeless… Dying is an art in Tibet…Chants, […]

Film Reviews

Embrace of the Serpent

Thursday, August 4th, 2016 Film Reviews,

There can’t be many films in which the lead actor has never actually seen a movie before, let alone starred in one. This unique achievement belongs to Nilbio Torres, an Amazonian Indian who plays a lead role in Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent, the first Columbian film to have been nominated for an Academy […]

Film Reviews

X-Men Apocalypse

Thursday, May 19th, 2016 Film Reviews,

Not having bothered to watch the past seven – or is it eight? – X-Men films, I feel at a disadvantage when it comes to reviewing this latest installment in a long-running franchise. I didn’t avoid the previous films for any special reason, merely a lack of interest in the overblown superhero genre that has […]

Film Reviews

Midnight Special

Thursday, April 21st, 2016 Film Reviews,

Midnight Special begins in the middle, as if we had just loaded up episode two of a series. It’s late at night in a seedy motel room, and there is an item on the TV about the kidnapping of an eight-year-old boy named Alton Meyer. We swiftly realise that we are looking at the boy […]

Film Reviews

Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice

Thursday, March 31st, 2016 Film Reviews,

At the age of twelve I read Marvel comics with religious dedication. As a fan one made a clear choice between the Marvel universe and that of its great rival, DC comics. While DC may have had those two archetypal superheroes, Batman and Superman, Marvel had a whole raft of characters that seemed more imaginatively […]

Film Reviews

The Revenant

Thursday, January 7th, 2016 Film Reviews,

When he was receiving the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director at last year’s Academy Awards, Alejandro González Iñárritu, was already preoccupied with his next feature. He had begun planning The Revenant as early as 2011 but put it on hold when lead actor, Leonardo DiCaprio, was required for The Wolf of Wall Street. […]

Film Reviews

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Thursday, December 17th, 2015 Film Reviews,

In preparation for the new Star Wars movie I planned to work my way through the six previous installments in this never-ending saga. At the end of the of year there is virtually nothing to write about until Boxing Day brings a swag of new releases, so I had time to do my homework. It […]