Director: S. Craig Zahler Starring: Mel Gibson, Vince Vaughn, Tory Kittles After three feature films we can now safely say that S. Craig Zahler’s ‘Zahlerness’ is not a fluke. An uncompromising and unapologetic vision reveals the stamp of an auteur throughout Bone Tomahawk (2015), Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017) and Dragged Across Concrete (2018). Zahler himself is a multidisciplinarian who has written, directed […]
movies
Black Mirror (Season 5)
In the hit and miss genre of anthology television, Black Mirror has always stood out as being more hit than miss. While the same could be said for the latest trio of offerings, one episode in particular is easily the weakest to date. Black Mirror has always been at its best as an exploration of well-drawn […]
Narrative Ambiguity
“Show don’t tell” is a well worn instruction in literary teaching and “Dramatise, don’t surmonize” is a version of the instruction, which has been issued to aspiring filmmakers who wish to convey a moral message. but some films choose to neither show nor tell but rather to allow an audience to drawn their own conclusions. Let’s call […]
Sorry to Bother You (2018)
Rapper / Producer Boots Riley’s directorial debut is evidence of a singular vision, years in the making which is completely unique in style. Ostensibly a Comedy about the moral dangers of greed, Sorry To Bother You sets out its stall early as a kind of dream-like hyper-reality which becomes increasingly twisted. “From the sublime to the ridiculous” may […]
Money Monster (2016)
Money Monster has an interesting premise. The arrogant, show-off Anchor of a popular Financial TV show is taken hostage live on air by a viewer who followed the advice of the show to a ruinous end. Initially it seems there’s a chance to see something different here. Chiefly, Clooney playing an unlikeable character. Very soon however, the promise of […]
Oscars 2019 – It’s time for change
With the 2019 Oscars on the horizon, it’s time to discuss a shameful bias which persists in the film industry. To illustrate the point, the Oscars have been running since 1929 and in that entire time, there has been only one. Yes, you read that correctly – “One!”. Worthy talents have been overlooked time after time and it’s […]
Glass (2019)
What happens when a criminal mastermind, an indestructible hero and a man with 24 distinct personalities are captured and locked in a facility together? What happens when the director who gave us ‘The Sixth Sense’ is on the verge of his own cinematic universe? The answer to both is very little. Glassis largely a talkfest of ‘on […]
Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)
With Velvet Buzzsaw, Dan Gilroy succeeds in simultaneously subverting melodrama and slasher film as devious and deluded characters are slowly consumed by the art around which their world revolves. While installations, paintings and ghastly portraits pervade both scene and story, Gilroy’s double helix of character arcs, drawn from a clique for whom Art is a […]
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