The Predator (2018)
…as bad as it gets: The Predator (2018) My dear old dad always told me not to mock the afflicted, so I’m not going to take up too much of your time in talking about fan-favourite Shane Black’s lazy and truly dreadful comedy-sequel to the great Schwarzenegger original. I mean, even that title of theirs shows how little he and so-scripter Fred Dekker could be bothered their asses. And the only reason that I’m...
The Nun (2018)
The Nun (2018) Although of course we didn’t call them that back in the day, a Cinematic Universe was what first got me interested in movies in the first place. After all, that’s what all those Universal classics of the 30s and 40s were, what with the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man and Count Dracula eventually meeting up with each other. Mind you, the less said about Universal’s attempts to recreate that magic...
Black 47 (2018)
‘…the Economics of Famine in the West of Ireland’: Black 47 (2018) I’ll be seeing that one in an Arts House cinema. Or so I thought, some months back, when I first heard of Black 47, which was being described as the first film ever made about the Irish Famine. Well, I got that one wrong, didn’t I? Instead, it has opened very big indeed; but I wonder if the quieter approach mightn’t have worked better, because I’ve...
Searching (2018)
One of the Best Films of the Year: Searching (2018) One of the many extraordinary things – and there are so many – about director Aneesh Chaganty’s unexpectedly superb Searching is that only a few decades ago this film would have been classed as hardcore science-fiction. And possibly not even particularly believable SF at that. Yet with everything here shown through the use of the internet, laptops, smartphones...
Slender Man (2018)
Slender Man (2018) For you faithful few who read these ramblings of mine and who may have feared that my absence this past while meant that I eventually creaked towards the door marked EXIT, fear not. I haven’t fallen off the twig quite yet; but I have had a pretty awful couple of months, between one thing and another. As a result of that, two movies I was particularly looking forward to – Mary Shelley and...
Hereditary (2018)
Hereditary (2018) Ten minutes into writer-director Ari Aster’s debut feature film Hereditary I found myself recalling Orson Welles’s famous statement on his first film: namely, that it was like a boy getting the world’s biggest train set to play around with. There’s just this feeling that Aster is having such a great time trying out all these tricks, bells and whistles. Those opening shots are very good indeed,...
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