Review: Externo (2021) – What Is Right?

Leandro Taub in Externo When describing Externo, the debut film from Leandro and Jonathan Taub, its easy to banish it to realms of fantasy by merely calling it a stunning fever dream. That wouldn't do this modern parable justice as it looks to the larger landscape of the world by letting us behind the curtain …

Review-Lite: Life in A Year (2021)

Jaden Smith and Cara Delevingne in Life In A Year Its been close to eight years since Jaden Smith's last attempt at taking on a leading role in a feature but since then he has matured with time and a major role in Baz Luhrmann's Netflix drama The Get Down. Life In A Year, originally …

Review-Lite: SAS: Red Notice (2021)

Sam Heughan in SAS: Red Notice It doesn't take long to know that Red Notice, the latest Sky Original, mindless action feature is an emotionless, run and gun rampage of a movie. Not only is this detachment from humanity literally written into the script but even the characters that aren't emotionless killing machines fit into …

Review-Lite: Sentinelle (2021)

Olga Kurylenko in Sentinelle At a brisk eighty minutes, Julien Leclercq's Sentinelle is the bare bones story of untapped rage and paranoia made all the more visceral by some compelling fight scenes and jumpy choreography in this French language revenge thriller. However that description merely covers the second half of a film that takes its …

Review: I Care A Lot (2021) – Going Down With The Showboat

Rosamund Pike in I Care A Lot Early on in J Blakeson's I Care A Lot there is a moment of acknowledgement, where in voiceover Marla (Rosamund Pike) tells the audience that being good and adhering to societies rules is weak. It's a hot take that's for sure but mostly it sets the stage for …

Review-Lite: Penguin Bloom (2021)

Naomi Watts in Penguin Bloom There is a peaceful nature to this insulated story of family recovery, the true to life story of the Bloom family and how they move past Sam Bloom (Naomi Watts) paralysis following a fall on a holiday in Thailand with the help of a magpie they dub Penguin. Based on …

Review-Lite: Squared Love (2021)

Adrianna Chlebicka and Mateusz Banasiuk in Squared Love It might just be my choices in recent years but when it comes to Polish cinema, I can't seem to find an in road. Either they are intentionally crass (365 Dni) or trying too hard to be comic (Fierce) to be genuinely enjoyable to watch. While Squared …

Review-Lite: To All The Boys. Always and Forever (2021)

Lana Condor and Noah Centineo in To All The Boys: Always and Forever The first of two conclusions to Netflix's collection of teen romances, To All The Boys: Always and Forever ends a trilogy that unlike other teen franchise The Kissing Booth actually allowed its characters to grow and change over the course of its …

Review-Lite: The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (2021)

Kathryn Newton and Kyle Allen in The Map of Tiny Perfect Things There is nothing more timeless than the time loop movie. Be it Groundhog Day or Edge of Tomorrow (both name checked here with gleeful abandon) and honestly, considering lately, each day has the tendency to roll into the last one and so on …

Review: News of The World (2021) – O Captain, My Captain

Helena Zengel and Tom Hanks in News of the World When I envisioned another collaboration between filmmaker Paul Greengrass and Tom Hanks after their piracy true story Captain Phillips, a western seemed outside of the realms of possibility with the slow melodic musings of such a genre seeming outside of Greengrass' previous body of work. …