Arrival (2016)
Shadows Out of Space and Time: Arrival (2016) This article originally appeared in ‘The Lovecraft eZine’ and is in fact a Lovecraftian interpretation. It contains mild spoilers. Yesterday evening – a miserable and rainy night – I bought a ticket for a film that I was seeing cold. I knew little about it other than that it starred Amy Adams and was a science-fiction film on the theme of First Contact. I’m sure that thirty minutes...
Nocturnal Animals (2016)
Glossy Surface, Little Depth: Nocturnal Animals (2016) You know, the more I think about this film, the more I dislike it. Not hate. That would be too strong for something this well made and acted. Indifferent to it, maybe? Yeah, that sounds a bit more like it. I’m a little late in getting around to seeing it, but I’m amused by the perfect timing of its release in the same week that Donald Trump snatched the American Presidency...
Doctor Strange (2016)
Mystic Master of the Fortune Cookie: Doctor Strange (2016) I don’t normally give much credence to nonsense ideas like ‘trigger warnings’. This is the phrase used by those dainty little buttercups who want them posted at the beginning of books, films and whatever you’re having yourself, as a warning that certain content contained therein might just remind you of some trauma from your past life, thus sending you screaming up...
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016) Tim Burton has put up with a lot of sniping over the last few years – and let’s face it, quite a bit has been deserved – but I’m always going to cut a lot of slack to the director who once charmed us with Beetlejuice and Big Fish, not to mention the utterly sublime Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and Sleepy Hollow. So I’d like to say that Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is...
Blair Witch (2016)
Blair Witch (2016) This is a direct sequel to The Blair Witch Project, meaning that we’re skipping right past Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 – which is good for me since I didn’t see it. And since I thought the original was one of the most over rated things I’d ever laid eyes on, I would have been giving this one a miss as well, but for two things: Adam Wingarde was directing and Simon Barrett was doing the screenplay. This...
Morgan (2016)
Actions & Consequences: Morgan (2016) Two centuries after the 19-year-old Mary Shelley conceived her immortal Frankenstein, film makers continue to find themselves being drawn back to the essential themes in that classic work: artificial creation; and at which point do we have to address the possibility of that creation being in possession of a soul? Last year Alex Garland’s Ex Machina set the bar so far up that it is...
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