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SPOTLIGHT (2015)
Tom McCarthy’s sober, clear-eyed take on the Boston Catholic Church child abuse scandal, and how the Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigative team uncovered the story, is a throwback to the sort of films they don’t really make any more. A serious, densely-written look at a very important issue, it tells its story with a straight bat…
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THE X-FILES – ‘My Struggle’ • ‘Founder’s Mutation’
For any millennials reading, it must be hard to appreciate just how much of a phenomenon The X-Files was in the 1990s. Here was a television show with a beautifully simple concept (two FBI agents—one a sceptic, one a believer—investigate the paranormal) that worked for mass audiences and geeks alike. It paved the way for…
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THE FINAL GIRLS (2015)
Forlorn teenager Max Cartwright (Taissa Farmiga) attends a special screening of Camp Bloodbath, on the third anniversary of her mother Nancy’s (Malin Åkerman) death—a ‘scream queen’ actress who starred in the aforementioned 1986 slasher. Max goes with her best friend Gertie (Alia Shawkat), Gertie’s horror-loving stepbrother Duncan (Thomas Middleditch), and handsome would-be boyfriend Chris (Alexander Ludwig), before things…
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THE BIG SHORT (2015)
There’s a point early on in The Big Short, Adam McKay’s adaptation of Michael Lewis’s best-selling book about the financial crisis, where a voiceover announces: “and now here’s actress Margot Robbie in a bubble bath with a glass of champagne to explain sub prime loans…” How you feel about this scene will influence your view…
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THE X-FILES (1998) • THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE (2008)
He’s the obsessed FBI agent who desperately wants to believe. She’s the cynical FBI agent who wears a cross around her neck and can never escape the lure of the paranormal. 1990s TV icons Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are back this Sunday for a six-part ‘event series’ in the U.S,…
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THE VISIT (2015)
A found footage thriller directed by M. Night Shyamalan may not be the most appealing prospect given the director’s recent filmography. While movies like The Happening and After Earth certainly have their share of interesting moments, as a whole they’re surprisingly disjointed and tonally incoherent given how their director’s strongest suits, in his earlier films, were his…
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ROOM (2015)
Fans of Emma Donoghue’s achingly beautiful novel Room can breathe a sigh of relief; the critical buzz, four Oscar nominations (including Best Picture, Best Lead Actress, and Best Director) and all the other awards already won by this adaptation of her best-selling book are more than deserved. Behind the accomplishment is filmmaker Lenny Abrahamson, who…
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THE REVENANT (2015)
Revenge is one of cinema’s most enduring themes, and with good reason. There’s something enormously satisfying about not only the payoff to a good vengeance story, but the journey a character goes through as they walk a path of retribution. In Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant, that revenge tale is intertwined with a story of survival on the frontier…
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Cracked Actor: Bowie on Screen
I don’t think we’ll ever see someone like David Bowie again, who died last Sunday at the age of 69. He was a transformer, a cultural icon, and a creative artist working in a media-saturated era where such laudable qualities have gradually been devalued in favour of faux celebrity and stardom. A startling career in…
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AMERICAN HORROR STORY: HOTEL – ‘Be Our Guest’
While the penultimate episode of American Horror Story: Hotel wrapped up a few of the show’s plotlines, there were still enough loose ends—Sally’s (Sarah Paulson) murderous scorn towards John (Wes Bentley), the detective’s tentative reunion with his family, the question of what would happen to the Countess’s (Lady Gaga) vampire baby—to set the stage for…
