Matt Damon and Lilou Siauvaud in Stillwater It's hard to think back on a fish out of water story like Stillwater and not see a film with an intently American viewpoint overhanging everything that happens. Think Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, Owen Wilson in Midnight in Paris or even Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost …
Continue reading Review: Stillwater (2021) – This Isn’t Hollywood
Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman Cassie Thomas (Carey Mulligan) works in a coffee shop, but she hates it. She is in her 30s and lives with her parents (Jennifer Coolidge and Clancy Brown), who hate it. Once a promising med school student, Cassie spends her nights prowling bars, pretending to be hammered, unable to …
Continue reading Review: Promising Young Woman (2021) – A Toxic System
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 …
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 …
Continue reading Review: I Care A Lot (2021) – Going Down With The Showboat
Morena Baccarin and Gerard Butler in Greenland Up until recently the true disaster movie, the one where the whole world was in jeopardy and there was very little anyone could do about it was a series of features monopolised by filmmaker Roland Emmerich, especially in the 90s and early 2000s and while in recent years …
Rachel Brosnahan in I'm Your Woman As you might have read in my top 25 films of the year list, I'm Your Woman is a genre defying thriller that uses its noir roots to tell a female driven tale in the same style as classic detective mysteries like The Maltese Falcon and more specifically Gaslight. …
Jessica Chastain in Ava With the upcoming release of The 355, Jessica Chastain is looking to make a name for herself in action movies and more than that, she is looking to rock a male occupied genre and breath fresh life into it. Ava is not how that is done. Directed by Tate Taylor off …
Damien Bonnard, Alexis Manenti and Djebril Zonga in Les Misérables Ladj Ly's Les Misérables is a deeply personal film set in the apartment blocks of parisian suburb of Monterfermeil, Ly's own childhood home. Set over the course of two days, Les Misérables follows newly transferred police officer Stéphane Ruiz (Damien Bonnard) as he is assigned …
Tye Sheridan in The Night Clerk The Night Clerk for all its conspiracy trappings and unconventional romance motifs isn't quite the film it wants to be. Believing itself to be a fresh take on autism, a tale for those who aren't quite neurotypical, the misunderstood wallflowers resigned to sit and watch instead of getting involved. …
Continue reading Review: The Night Clerk (2020) – The Lifeguard
Russell Crowe in Unhinged Opening on a rainy night, a imposing 4x4 sits outside a house as the man inside it works up the courage to do something that deep down he knows he shouldn't but really wants to. It's all very Shawshank but instead of turning around, going home and sobering up, The Man …
Continue reading Review: Unhinged (2020) – Toxicity In My City
The Sardonic Romantic 