Reviews in a nutshell
Writer/director Jennifer Lynch’s obsession with desolate places where all kinds of ‘life’ flourish, as well as rendering a human being helpless is evident again in her latest film, Chained, starring oddball crime cracker Vincent D’Onofrio from Law & Order: Criminal Intent fame. This thriller engages, terrifies and ultimately questions: It’s a claustrophobic and highly compelling …
You don’t expect anything less rigorously researched from the engaging filmmaking pair behind the 2008 hit, The Hurt Locker, Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter/former news journalist Mark Boal. Their latest action thriller, Zero Dark Thirty does not fail to diligently lay out the facts like some on-the-scene reporter with ‘access all areas’ coverage. However, …
With the plethora of vampire films out there, it’s a brave debut director indeed to tackle one of the most well trodden genres of recent small and big screen offerings. However, Scott Leberecht’s debut feature Midnight Son toys with the genre and portrays it as an affliction or aliment in his low-budget film – and …
Writer-director Barnaby Southcombe offers up a tense, dreamlike noir that celebrates his charismatic mother, actress Charlotte Rampling, with I, Anna. This downbeat thriller that features one of London’s most imposing pieces of architecture, The Barbican, uses the sinister facades as well as retro finishes – old fashioned phones – to set a stylish murder scene. …
Never, ever underestimate the power of the open road – it does things to a person to release their inner being, good or bad. Ben Wheatley’s black comedy of hilarious proportions, Sightseers, about a couple who caravan around Northern Britain’s more unusual sights with deadly consequences is full of creepiness, delicious surprises, shocks and irony. …
Those who favour the ‘cops on camera’ TV shows can expect much the same style of ‘caught of camera’ thrills and spills from Harsh Times and Training Day director David Ayers’ gritty and affecting End Of Watch. Ironically, as well as hooking you in from the start and sparking curiosity as to where the story …
Its blood-splattered poster, complete with promises of ‘genuinely scaring the hell out of you’ depends on your previous encounters with spooky goings-on in condemned houses. Sinister by The Exorcism of Emily Rose creator Scott Derrickson, in summary, certainly puts the ‘creepy’ back into four domestic walls, but the horror tick boxes of bumps in the …
There is a real sense with the second round in Luc Besson’s father-marauding saga that both writer and cast signed up to a totally different project at the start, only for a daft decision from above to make it accessible to a wider (and younger) audience to ruin things, and hence, kill of what made …
Brad Pitt reunites again with writer-director Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) to adapt George V. Higgins’s novel, Cogan’s Trade for the big screen. It’s another successful outcome, entitled Killing Them Softly – referring to hits by strangers on strangers in the underworld. As Cogan, Pitt embodies his standard …
