Wildling (2018)
May01

Wildling (2018)

There is only Anna and Daddy: Wildling (2018)     …and here is a film that I’m going to be raving about for the rest of 2018.  Wildling is a startlingly assured debut from director Fritz Böhm, who also co-writes the screenplay with Florian Eder; and it is probably the most visually luscious horror film I’ve seen in years. Although beneath it all it isn’t really a horror film at all. I suppose that at some stage the tag ‘werewolf’...

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A Quiet Place (2018)
Apr04

A Quiet Place (2018)

A Quiet Place (2018)       I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction:  by the time December 31st rolls around, John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place will be on the Top Five lists of a hell of a lot of film fans. And not just horror fans, either; because this is a piece of pure cinema and a masterclass in taut, tense filmmaking. What?  You think that you’re not the type of person who could sit through a movie that stars...

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Mary Magdalene (2018)
Apr04

Mary Magdalene (2018)

Mary Magdalene (2018)     I thought that Good Friday seemed like an appropriate day to see this film for a second time.  And even with this additional viewing, I’m not sure why it both haunts and moves me so much.  Particularly since I find so much wrong with it. If Mel Gibson’s triumphant The Passion of the Christ was a bludgeoning, blood-and-guts, in-your-face experience, from which it was impossible to walk away unshaken, then...

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Game Night (2018)
Mar13

Game Night (2018)

Game Night     Written by Mark Perez and directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein, Game Night is a wonderful, fast moving and very funny dark comedy-cum-thriller.  It just sneaks up on you and offers a refreshing antidote to the overrated, pretentious Oscar-winner The Shape of Water.  In fact, it mercifully wipes out the bad taste left by that nonsense. Right from the delightful opening scenes where we see...

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The Shape of Water (2018)
Feb28

The Shape of Water (2018)

The Fish is Off: The Shape of Water (2018)     Well, I knew it was about the interspecies love between a woman and a sea creature from the South American lagoons.  And yet nothing quite prepared me for that…shall we say, interesting plot development half-way through. Nor was I ready for the way that Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) prepares herself for her day’s work as a cleaner at a *ahem* top-secret government facility in the...

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Black Panther (2018)
Feb16

Black Panther (2018)

Black Panther (2018)     If ever there was a film that was going to be as bullet-proof as the Black Panther’s suit then it was this one.  The time is as right as it ever could be for releasing the first superhero film with an African-American lead (except that it’s not really the first) and it seems to be by general consensus – even before the film’s release – that if you don’t hail Black Panther as a seminal, groundbreaking...

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