Subject Early on in Subject, there is a sequence that tries to decide the true aim of non-fiction and the changing landscape of the genre due to companies such as Netflix and HBO. The question being, is the real aim to tell a story that fits what the filmmaker wants or what is truthful to …
Continue reading Review: Subject (2023) – Truth or a Good Story?
Sheila Vand in A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night When I started thinking about writing this I wanted to entitle it 'A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night and a 30 Year Old Desperately Tries To Stay Awake' but for many different reasons I decided against that. For one, that title is longer than …
Teresa Mo, Tse Kwan-ho, Edan Lui and Hedwig Tam in Hong Kong Family When teenager Yeung's (Edan Lui) Chinese family gather for a winter solstice dinner everything goes disastrously wrong fracturing the family leading to eight years of estrangement and resent. However in the build-up to the winter solstice a visit from a distant cousin …
Ainet Jounou in Alcarràs There is a almost perfect simplicity to Carla Simón's Alcarràs, a film that makes a promise in its opening moments and never detours or dodges its inevitable conclusion. It's in this self assured storytelling that writers Arnau Vilaró and Simón manage to tell a story of family that feels both unique …
When the year started, we were coming out of a cinematic dead zone, one that didn't seem to be catching up to reality all that quickly. The upcoming blockbusters seemed dire and the selection for the first half of the year was few and far between. Although my top 10 includes one of the first …
Continue reading End of Year Review 2022 Part 4: The 25 Best Films (10-1)
This section of the list goes from musicals to murder mysteries to a horror film that bucks conventions. Each is on here for the way it expounds upon its genre to add something new. This includes a romance that builds upon the novel it is based on by making a romance more about social issues …
Continue reading End of Year Review 2022 Part 3: The 25 Best Films (20-11)
I recently read that while more films were released this year, the film industry won't reach the output of a pre-pandemic world until 2024 and while 2021 was one of the worst for quality cinema, 2022 has oddly found most of its successes, at least critically in the smaller films, showing that much like 2020 …
Continue reading End of Year Review 2022 Part 2: The 25 Best Films (25-21)
I remember last year when I was writing my Best and Worst film lists, I lost heart talking about the best films as they were few and far between from the bad ones I had seen that year. This year the difference is vast and the films I enjoyed felt far away from the ones …
Continue reading End of Year Review 2022 Part 1: The 10 Worst Films of 2022
Claudia Black in Deus Years back, small budget science fiction was king and finding small features like Deus was easy but those times have become a thing of the past and we now live in a world of franchise tentpoles and big budget Sci-Fi. There is something oddly refreshing about a film like Deus, despite …
Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver in Call Jane There is a timeliness to Call Jane, a feature that follows a cloistered housewife called Joy (Elizabeth Banks), who upon hearing she needs an abortion for medical reasons and is denied by the hospital board, finds herself seeking an illegal alternative while finding herself assisting women all …
The Sardonic Romantic 