-
EX MACHINA (2015)
The helicopter blades whirling over greenery in the opening of Alex Garland’s Ex Machina are eerily, deliberately reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. The parallels between the two films don’t end there, with Garland’s sleek sci-fi three-hander predominantly concerned with identical themes of Spielberg’s adventure classic: humanity’s desire to create life that’s not meant to exist; the…
-
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015)
It won’t win plaudits for storytelling complexity or depth, but George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road is a stuntman’s fever-dream come to engine-roaring life. A reboot of the Australian director original trilogy (that introduced the world to Mel Gibson), it feels like Miller’s spent the past thirty years dreaming up crazy ideas to feed into Fury Road. And now…
-
Why Bunk Moreland’s the true hero of THE WIRE
When The Wire first arrived on our screens all the way back in 2002, it was obvious who the hero was. It was that charming devil, Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), with his cavalier disregard for police rules, his obsession with catching the bad guys, and his desire to see justice done regardless of method. Television…
-
HANNIBAL, 3.1 – ‘Antipasto’
“Let it be a fairy tale, then. Once upon a time…” And with that, we’re thrust back into the strange, gruesome, often beautiful world of Hannibal. What seemed on the surface to be a bad, desperate idea—a prequel series to a film franchise that had run out of steam—has proven to be the most surprising, thrilling…
-
UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT – Season One
The Office‘s Ellie Kemper is utterly fantastic in Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, playing the eponymous heroine rescued from a doomsday cult, having spent fifteen years living in an underground bunker with three other ladies, later dubbed ‘The Indiana Mole Women’ by the media. Kimmy’s an incredibly naïve but optimistic woman, with a persistently upbeat attitude and…
-
Trailer – MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION
What is this one about? The fifth entry in the 20-year-old action thriller franchise finds the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) being dissolved just as an “anti-IMF” rival organisation called The Syndicate reveal themselves. Isn’t that always the way? Who’s sitting in the director’s chair? Adding a M:I film to his resume, after Brian De Palma,…
-
Trailer – CRIMSON PEAK
What’s it about? Guillermo del Toro has so many projects stuck in the pipeline (including dozens that are swirling around his fertile imagination) that it almost feels strange when one comes to fruition. Crimson Peak is the Mexican director’s next movie; a supernatural thriller about a young author called Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) who goes to…
-
STOKER (2013)
Park Chan-wook’s Stoker is a film with a curious DNA. Directed by the man who brought South Korean cinema to the masses with his highly regarded and highly influential ‘Vengeance Trilogy’, Stoker is his first English language film. The script and story, which owe a heavy debt to Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, were it written by Wentworth Miller. Yes,…
-
Trailer – ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING
What’s it about? An ordinary school teacher Neil Clarke (Simon Pegg) is given omnipotent powers by a group of extra-terrestrials (voiced by the Monty Python troupe) planning to demolish Earth, meaning he can do “absolutely anything”. Now the fate of the world rests on Neil using his abilities responsibly. Not, um, wishing himself a more muscular physique, ordering…
-
SHERLOCK HOLMES (BBC, 1965-68)
In the pantheon of celebrated Sherlock Holmes adaptations there is one BBC television series that tends to get overlooked. In 1965 the BBC produced a series of faithful adaptations of 13 Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories starring Douglas Wilmer and Nigel Stock. The series is perhaps unfairly eclipsed by the colour series made by the…
