Film

Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) has forsaken her family fortune to become a London bicycle courier and amateur MMA fighter. After receiving an item from her missing (presumed dead) father, Lara goes in search of a cursed island in Japan carrying ancient treasure and an awful secret. After many of years in need of a revival, a new Tomb Raider game was launched in 2013, taking us to the origins of this pistol wielding archaeologist/thief. Jokes about DD pixels became obsolete;...

Alex Garland’s seat at the directors table is one that he has worked for.  Before he cut his teeth behind the camera with the superbly crafted sci-fi techno thriller, Ex Machina, Garland penned novels and screenplays, the likes of which, The Beach and 28 Days Later, have cemented themselves as cult classics.  With his sophomore feature, Annihilation, Garland swings for the fences and knocks a curve ball out of the park.  It is as ambitious in its mediations as it...

Sometimes Hollywood accidentally makes the same film twice in a very short space of time. Notable 90s examples include Armageddon and Deep Impact, Volcano and Dante’s Peak. CB4 came to US cinemas just a couple of months after Rusty Cundieff’s Fear of a Black Hat, another rap spoof featuring a documentarian telling the story of an NWA like group, played at Sundance 1993. That film would open in June 1994, but I’ll be referencing it here because the similarities and...

There is something of a throwback feel to Gringo that brings to mind the madcap crime capers of the 1990s. Former Ewan McGregor stunt double, Nash Edgerton returns to the director’s chair for the second time with an action comedy that owes a debt to the early work of Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers. The film follows Harold (David Oyelowo), a middle management office employee who works for Cannabax, a company developing the first medical marijuana pill. He travels...

At the age of 82, Woody Allen is still showing no signs of slowing down. Year after year, the legendary director keeps on coming up with the good and remains unperturbed by the controversies surrounding him, and year after year hordes of young and not so young actors still line up to work with him on various projects. In his latest film Wonder Wheel, which also happens to be the director’s 49th feature, Allen transports us back to 1950s Coney...

The 2018 Award Season is finally over and after all of the vast number of differing ceremonies and awards that have been given out, I have a few thoughts on 2018’s major winners. I could have chosen any number of awards ceremonies, but it seems fitting to take the Academy Awards, Golden Globes and the BAFTAs into consideration. One constant through all of the three ceremonies was Coco’s success for Best Animated Film, with Pixar striding comfortably home when pitted...

Warwick Thornton’s feature debut, Samson and Delilah, a sensitive, sad tale of two Aboriginal lovers living in Alice Springs, took home the Camera d’Or at Cannes and introduced an emerging talent to the stable of promising Australian directors.  The 47-year-old cinematic jack of all trades, often serving as both Director and cinematographer on his films, working from a script by Steven McGregor and David Tranter, delivers in Sweet Country a beautifully poetic, brutally raw Australian Western that explores the intersection, connection and overlap of White and...

Nicholas Cage does a good line in B-movie flicks, they’re often quite bad but well loved because of the manic, hyper-real performances Cage gives and Mom and Dad is no different. In a typical American suburb tensions smolder below the surface in this horror-action-(unintentional?) comedy. The premise is that a bizarre event causes parents to turn on their children, filling them with murderous rage, completely disconnected from their usual loving faculties. Nicolas Cage’s character has moments of The Shining inflected...

After a frustratingly long period of absence, Lynne Ramsey (We Need To Talk About Kevin, 2011) is back with an equally gut-wrenching tale of crime and retribution which is set to thrill the Scottish director’s growing army fans. Based on Jonathan Ames’ novel of the same name, You Were Never Really Here offers an uncompromisingly gory and deliberately unsettling narrative packed full of dark and disturbing imagery, which is definitely not for the faint-hearted. Joaquin Phoenix is Joe (think Taxi...