Frame Rated: BATMAN v SUPERMAN - DAWN OF JUSTICE

Yesterday at Frame Rated, I reviewed the big superhero blockbuster BATMAN v SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE, so please click through to have a read!

There was understandable cynicism when Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was announced—born of suspicion it was a cynical way to rekindle interest in a sequel to the faltering Man of Steel, and concern that The Dark Knight trilogy had dropped the mic when it comes to modernising Batman. Continue reading...

Frame Rated: CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON - SWORD OF DESTINY (2016)

Over at Frame Rated yesterday, my review of the Netflix-distributed martial arts sequel CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON: SWORD OF DESTINY.

For all its critical and commercial success back in 2000, Ang Lee's martial arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon doesn't get talked about all that often—although it helped ease mainstream English-speaking audiences into foreign-language films. They’re not all black-and-white French dramas set inside grotty kitchens, folks. It was also, together with The Matrix the year before, responsible for a resurgence of interest in chopsocky cinema—pushing the boundaries of what could be achieved in the digital age, with computers erasing wires to allow filmmakers greater artistic freedom. Continue reading...

Frame Rated: THE FINAL GIRLS

Over at Frame Rated yesterday, I reviewed the 2015 slasher horror-comedy THE FINAL GIRLS with Taissa Farmiga and Malin Åkerman...

Forlorn teenager Max Cartwright (Taissa Farmiga) attends a special screening of Camp Bloodbath, on the third anniversary of her mother Nancy's (Malin Åkerman) death—a 'scream queen' actress who starred in the aforementioned 1986 slasher. Max goes with her best friend Gertie (Alia Shawkat), Gertie's horror-loving stepbrother Duncan (Thomas Middleditch), and handsome would-be boyfriend Chris (Alexander Ludwig), before things get awkward when Chris's beautiful ex Vicki (Nina Dobrev) joins them. To make matters worse, the cinema's soon set ablaze, Final Destination-style, forcing the friends to escape by literally ripping a hole through the movie screen... and then things get really weird. Continue reading...

Frame Rated: HOME ALONE • HOME ALONE 2: LOST IN NEW YORK

Merry Christmas! I reviewed the first two HOME ALONE movies yesterday at Frame Rated, so if you have a spare 5 minutes today maybe give it a read? Too busy playing with toys and eating turkey? OK, I understand. Bookmark for another day, it's fine! Ho-ho-ho!

Up until 1990's Home Alone, director Chris Columbus was best-known for writing two seminal adventures for kids of the '80s, Gremlins and The Goonies. We'll gloss over his directorial debut Adventures in Babysitting, which doesn’t stand up to scrutiny—but all three films exhibit an interest in stories about children without adult supervision, and the trappings of Christmas—so it's little wonder Home Alone made Columbus's career, as it combines both his fascinations.

Continue reading...

Letterboxd catching up

I used to reproduce my Letterboxd movie reviews here, but don't have the time these days. Instead, here are some links to my most recent writing there:

THE LITTLE VAMPIRE (2000)
FANTASTIC FOUR (2015)
LOCH NESS (1996)
VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN (1995)
CINDERELLA (2015)
TERMINATOR: GENISYS (2015)
THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994)
FOCUS (2015)
TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE (2004)
WYRMWOOD (2014)
IT FOLLOWS (2014)
ROBOCOP (2014)
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION (2015)
SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED (2012)
TAKEN 3 (2015)

There are lots of other reviews, too. Do follow me there. I could use the stats.

The Scary Films to Watch (And Avoid) This Halloween on British TV

Halloween isn't such a big deal in the UK, weirdly. I envy America every 31 October, although the reality of going trick-or-treating as an American probably isn't like Hocus Pocus made it seems. Or is it? Anyway, at least the British broadcasters make an effort when it comes to airing horror films on Halloween. Sort of. The lineup this year isn't exactly stellar—a mix of overexposed classics, obscure mediocrity, and cheap direct-to-video crap—but I thought I'd write a handy Halloween film guide anyway. The only rule is this: the movies listed can't be hidden behind a paywall (*ahem* Sky Movies). Onwards...

Frame Rated: 6 Horror Films Too Scary To Watch Twice

Frame Rated have a feature up for Halloween, where six of the writers chose a film that's so scary they've never been able to watch it a second time. I contributed a choice to the half-dozen, if you want to click through and read.

Frame Rated: TOMORROWLAND

I've reviewed this summer's TOMORROWLAND, from director Brad Bird, starring George Clooney, Hugh Laurie & Britt Robertson.

One of this summer's biggest box-office disappointments was Disney's Tomorrowland, from director Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, Ratatouille). It made $208m worldwide, but cost approximately $330m to produce and market. It’s a shame whenever an original film tanks—in an age dominated by sequels, adaptations, and remakes—but it’s easy to see why Tomorrowland wasn’t embraced by the masses. It’s a difficult enough concept to describe, and the film is quite confusing for long stretches of time—so much so that you can tell the script doesn’t quite know how to begin. For awhile, we follow boy inventor Frank in 1964, who’ll grow up to become George Clooney—who doesn’t himself enter the story for an hour, unless you include the opening scene that’s a flash-forward of adult Frank making a video diary. I’ll do my best to explain the setup... Continue reading...

Frame Rated: POLTERGEIST (2015)

I've reviewed the POLTERGEIST remake for Frame Rated, ahead of its release on DVD/Blu on 26 October, just in time for Halloween. Please have a read by clicking here!

Tobe Hooper's original Poltergeist is a great film and the story of its production has become legend, so even a good remake’s doomed to sit in its shade. Apocryphal tales of producer Steven Spielberg taking the film out of Hooper's control have never been fully discredited, and don't forget how real corpses were used for the flooded pool sequence. That bad decision helped stoke rumours of a curse surrounding the Poltergeist trilogy (also, four cast members died in a relatively short space of time during its making), and thus a PG-13 ghost story is now mentioned in the same conversation as The Omen. But, besides all that nonsense, 1982's Poltergeist is just a damned good family-in-crisis scare-fest. Continue reading...

Frame Rated: JURASSIC WORLD

I've reviewed one of this year's biggest blockbusters: Colin Trevorrow's dinosaur sequel JURASSIC WORLD, starring Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D'Onofrio and lots of prehistoric beasts.

The JURASSIC PARK franchise has always been looking back 65 million years (wondering how modern man would cope with the return of prehistoric animals), but JURASSIC WORLD is a sequel with a stronger attachment to mere decades ago; when Steven Spielberg's 1993 original wowed audiences. In that respect, certainly more than the previous two sequels, enough time's passed for JW to squeeze a lot of nostalgia from audiences either weaned on Spielberg's classic or recognise it as a game-changing spectacle. I'm more in the latter camp, as JP was my first cinema trip that left an indelible impression on me as a 14-year-old. If the pioneering work of Spielberg's film made it feel like dinosaurs had truly come back to life, then how can you top that after 23 years of now-commonplace CGI? In Colin Trevorrow's sequel the answer is beautifully simple: you commit to delivering the dream Richard Attenborough’s character dared to have. Continue reading...

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FRAME RATED: w/e 31 July 2015

Below are the past seven day's posts from FRAME RATED, the new website I'm editing and writing for. I hope more of you have bookmarked the site now, remember to visit daily, and have kindly followed our Twitter so you don't miss any updates. Or subscribe to the RSS feed, of course.

Disasterpiece: WATERWORLD, by Dan Owen.
SOUTHPAW, by Jack Murray.
TRUE DETECTIVE, 2.6 - 'Church in Ruins', by Jack Murray.
HUMANS - series one, episode seven, by Alex Mullane.
HANNIBAL, 3.8 - 'The Great Red Dragon', by Andrew Bemis.

Frame Rated: Disasterpiece - WATERWORLD

Over at Frame Rated yesterday: the aquatic post-apocalypse film WATERWORLD turns 20 this week, so I took a look back at this 1995 summer movie, starring Kevin Costner, Dennis Hopper and Jeanne Tripplehorn.

Waterworld still evokes feelings of cinematic misfortune, two decades after the post-apocalyptic action film's summer release, but time’s been kind to this 1995 'flopbuster'. Indeed, despite its dismal reputation (earning itself nicknames like 'Fishtar' and 'Kevin’s Gate', alluding to fiascos Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate), there are much bigger financial and creative disasters. Continue reading...

Frame Rated: THE VOICES (2014)

A few days ago, over at Frame Rated I reviewed the 2014 dark comedy-horror THE VOICES, about a likeable factory worker (Ryan Reynolds) who's actually a mentally-unstable recluse who believes his pets are cajoling him into killing female colleagues...

Thoroughly bizarre from start to finish, The Voices is the brainchild of screenwriter Michael R. Perry (whom I’ll always respect for writing Millennium episode “The Mikado”), and Iranian-born French director Marjane Satrapi, who wrote the autobiographical comic-book Persepolis (which she later co-adapted into an Oscar-nominated animation). It stars Ryan Reynolds as Jerry Hickfang; a cheerful oddball working on a bathtub factory floor, who privately suffers from hallucinations—specifically, that his dog Bosco and cat Mr Whiskers both speak to him, and constantly belittle and manipulate his life. Like I said, bizarre.
Continue reading...

FRAME RATED (4 - 10 Jul 15)

Below is my weekly rundown of all the posts FRAME RATED published, which is a new entertainment site I'm editing and writing for. I do hope you enjoy reading the content there, and please follow @frameratedUK. We managed to break through 100 Twitter followers in our first month, which was great! If visiting a website every day feels like work, just subscribe to our RSS feed!

JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL, by Paul Whitelaw.
TERMINATOR GENISYS, by Simon Cocks.
HANNIBAL, 3.5 - 'Contorno', by Andrew Bemis.
TRUE DETECTIVE, 2.3 - 'Maybe Tomorrow', by Sarah Hughes.
HUMANS - series one, episode four, by Alex Mullane.
KNOCK KNOCK, by Simon Cocks.
ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK - Season Three, by Josh Winning.

FRAME RATED (26 Jun - 3 Jul 15)

Below is my weekly rundown of all the posts FRAME RATED published, which is a new entertainment site I'm editing and writing for. I do hope you enjoy reading the content there, and please follow @frameratedUK. If we can crack 100 followers in our first month, that would be fantastic!

SLOW WEST, by Alex Mullane
MINIONS, by Simon Cocks
HANNIBAL - 'Aperitivo', by Andrew Bemis
TRUE DETECTIVE - 'Night Finds You', by Sarah Hughes
THE AVENGERS - The Complete Series Five, by Frank Collins
HUMANS - series one, episode three, by Alex Mullane

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON (2015)

★★★☆

Warning: mild spoilers ahead, but certainly nothing too ruinous if you've yet to watch this film...

If the box-office supremacy of The Avengers can be partly attributed to the simple mathematics of four established superheroes appearing in the same film, with lashings of tongue-in-cheek humour and more digital bedlam than the team's previous solo outings combined, highly-anticipated follow-up Avengers: Age of Ultron has a far tougher job on its hands. If the original succeeded with fresh spectacle and its then-unprecedented super-team dynamics (the welcome culmination of a triumphant "Phase One" of Marvel flicks), then returning writer-director Joss Whedon has managed to improve on what came before. It's what most immediate sequels are mandated to be—bigger, darker—but also scruffier and, for the most part, better. Or more sugar-rush enjoyable, at least.

Letterboxd: BIRDMAN • LUCY • OLDBOY (2013)

★★★ (out of five)

I saw BIRDMAN the day after it won the Oscar for Best Picture, knowing that initially ecstatic reviews eventually gave way to more moderated ones. I think my own opinion falls somewhere in the middle, but I'll try not to fence-sit.

This movie has a technical prowess you can't ignore, because it's been filmed in a sequence of long takes, cleverly edited to appear like just one, so the camera floats through locations as time "magically" passes around us. It's impressive filmmaking (I don't begrudge Alejandro G. Iñárritu also winning Best Director), and the film deftly captures the feeling of being in and around a busy Broadway theatre. The atmosphere, buzz, and that indefinable gloomy oppressiveness of a live seated audience is captured brilliantly.

Letterboxd: PREDESTINATION • ANNABELLE • HOUSEBOUND

★★★½ (out of five)

A satisfying time-travel yarn that manages to weave some enjoyable knots into its narrative, although anyone au fait with this sci-fi sub-genre will almost certainly predict some of the earlier twists--particularly when the faces of characters are being intentionally hidden, and someone's revealed to be a hermaphrodite (fairly obviously).

Thankfully, PREDESTINATION does have a few other tricks up its sleeve--enough for the experience to never become wholly obvious from the get-go. At a certain point you lose the inclination to stay a few steps ahead of the script, actually, which allows its third act to sweep you along to a bonkers conclusion.

Letterboxd: DUMB & DUMBER TO • SEX TAPE • FOXCATCHER

★★½ (out of five)

Last year, the stars aligned for a tardy sequel to 1994's DUMB & DUMBER, 20 years after the original heralded the arrival of the Farrelly Brothers as a potent force in '90s comedy, and confirmed Jim Carrey as a white-hot new talent (sandwiched as it was between ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE and THE MASK that same year.)

I say the stars aligned, but truth is the Farrelly's and Carrey's stars have dimmed considerably since their mutual heydays; both suffering a fall in Hollywood stature and box-office clout after a run of flops. DUMB & DUMBER TO marks the first time the Farrelly's have returned to pick over the bones of a past glory, and it's also a rare sequel for Carrey (who's avoided the financial temptation of a cash-in since ACE VENTURA: WHEN NATURE CALLS stunk up cinemas in 1995... until now.)

Letterboxd: THE INTERVIEW • TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (2014) • THE EQUALIZER

★½ (out of five)

THE INTERVIEW has achieved an unprecedented level of controversy the material doesn't deserve, because the script is a toothless and simpleminded "attack" on North Korea's strange/terrible regime and its 'Supreme Leader' Kim Jong-un.

Seth Rogen plays Aaron Rappaport, the producer of James Franco's cheesy talk show host Dave Skylark, whose accidental 'outing' of Eminem on live TV makes him a big star, gaining the attention of Kim Jong-un--who requests an interview, with the usual caveats any journalist would refuse point-blank. However, the CIA--in the comely form of Agent Lacey (Lizzie Caplan)--seize an unexpected opportunity to have Skylark assassinate the troublesome despot.