When I was at college there was a girl loved by all the boys. We’ll call her Cecilia. Fortunately for said boys, she came from a strict religious household. Teenage rebellion and catholic guilt are the two greatest marshalling forces for sexual experimentation ever devised. You can tell they’re patriarchal constructs for this reason. God […]

On Hollywood’s list of unsuccessfully exploited IP, just above Manimal and T.J Hooker, sits Dungeons and Dragons, the role playing game for those with arrested development and no entanglements, that’s hitherto inspired some joyless film and TV effluent, not least the 2000 movie with Jeremy Irons – his career nadir. Yes, if “D&D” were a […]

When I was at college there was a girl loved by all the boys. We’ll call her Cecilia. Fortunately for said boys, she came from a strict religious household. Teenage rebellion and catholic guilt are the two greatest marshalling forces for sexual experimentation ever devised. You can tell they’re patriarchal constructs for this reason. God […]

On Hollywood’s list of unsuccessfully exploited IP, just above Manimal and T.J Hooker, sits Dungeons and Dragons, the role playing game for those with arrested development and no entanglements, that’s hitherto inspired some joyless film and TV effluent, not least the 2000 movie with Jeremy Irons – his career nadir. Yes, if “D&D” were a […]

The world of John Wick is a curious place indeed. It’s a world that looks very much like ours – it has all the same landmarks, but it’s a world without police, a world in which a network of underground assassins, bound by a medieval code of conduct, conduct meetings in public places, complete with […]

Standing outside the cinema, waiting to see Scream VI, a woman eyeing the film’s poster turned to me and said, “Six? Why would anyone want to see another Scream?”. That’s a good fucking question, not least because Scream V – or Scream as it was annoyingly titled, signalling its legacy sequel and franchise re-launch vehicle […]

The Rocky series may be meat and potatoes filmmaking, but it’s a hearty meal. The kind that makes you pat your stomach and fall asleep, the senses duly satisfied. Sylvester Stallone, who like his titular character, went from unknown to celebrity with the 1976 Oscar winning original, isn’t alone when he voices shock that this […]

Damien Chazelle’s had a run of lovingly made, high-quality movies – the kind of run that, historically, in what is sometimes called Michael Cimino syndrome, leads to a filmmaker’s eyes becoming larger than their stomach. It’s the road, strewn with elephant dung, that leads to hubris. The success that guarantees monumental failure. Babylon is that […]

Following the inexplicable, four quadrant success of Avatar – a movie everyone saw but nobody remembers, James Cameron has been locked away in a filmmaking lab, MacGyvering the sequel with a team of engineers, who like him, are consumed by the technology of filmmaking. Crew are supposed to be process driven of course. They operate […]

Naughty Rian Johnson – the man who devotes inordinate amounts of time formulating strategies to pull the rug from what used to be cinema audiences (now sofa sinkers), is having a second stab with Glass Onion – the follow-up to the curiously successful Knives Out. Who knew we all missed the all-star whodunnit so much? […]

Prior to watching Blonde – Andrew Dominik’s adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ imagined life of Marilyn Monroe – I had no opinions on the late Norma Jeane. After seeing it I still don’t. Her onscreen persona – tits and teeth; a pouting, breathless ingénue; male fantasy personified – always signified to me, and I suspect […]