Movies

  I like to think of movie posters as the windows to a film’s soul. A well-designed poster should be a glimpse, a suggestion of what might await you, and nothing more. Truly good posters of course, like masterful trailers, don’t lay it all out on the artistic table remembering Continue Reading

  There is always a pleasing sense of nuance and sensitivity in John Turturro’s films, a sense that his characters are not simply there to provide fodder for an exploitative dramatic narrative, that they matter and he cares about them. Granted every writer harbours understandable feelings of parental concern about Continue Reading

  It is no surprise that the latest feature from British director (and one time star of quirky sitcom The IT Crowd) Richard Ayoade is a overwhelmingly grim affair. Styled as a black comedy, the screenplay for the thematically and visually dark film about a corporate drone worker Simon James Continue Reading

  SNAPSHOT Seven years on from the events of Monsters, the ‘Infected Zones’ have spread worldwide. Humans have been knocked off the top of the food chain, with disparate communities struggling for survival. American soldiers are being sent abroad to protect US interests from the Monsters, but the war is Continue Reading

  When one of the characters in a movie blithely states near the start of a blockbuster monster movie, “It’s not the end of the world”, as Elle Brody (Elizabeth Olsen) does when locked in an embrace with husband, and hero of the 2014 iteration of Godzilla, Ford (Samuel Taylor-Johnson), Continue Reading

  SNAPSHOT A growing nation of genetically evolved apes led by Caesar is threatened by a band of human survivors of the devastating virus unleashed a decade earlier. They reach a fragile peace, but it proves short-lived, as both sides are brought to the brink of a war that will Continue Reading

  There is, you may be surprised to learn, no firm definition on what a short film actually is. While there is a consensus that it is not as long as a feature film, something I would have thought would have been patently obvious if you have watched any of Continue Reading

  Dumb and Dumber is one of my favourite movies of all time. That admission might surprise people given my usual predilection for indie fare with the occasional blockbuster thrown in for good popcorn-munching measure, but it’s true, and one I have been happy to make more than once (see Continue Reading

  There is an indescribable joyfulness that permeates most frames of Chef, Jon Favreau’s new film, that takes themes we have seen a million times before in movies and gives them a zestful exuberance that cannot be denied. In raw form you would be inclined to think you have seen Continue Reading