A spectacular miss can still be a hell of a swing. Nope is stuffed full of tantalising visual ideas. In fact, it is a bit of a technical showpiece, a filmmaking tour de force. Even the editing, pronounced though it is, has style and swagger. It is a confident picture, one which wears its biggest … Continue reading Nope (Review)
Tag: action
The Gray Man (Review)
In a perfunctory flashback that aims to give some grounding to this frictionless spy 'thriller', Ryan Gosling's protagonist (known by codename Sierra 6, or just 6) incorrectly explains the myth of Sisyphus. It is one of those portentous moments, where the story is only brought up as a thematic echo: 6 has Sisyphus' name (in … Continue reading The Gray Man (Review)
Uncharted (Review)
The appeal of the Uncharted video games was always that they were like playing a movie. It is all the spectacle of blockbuster cinema but with an added immersion that makes it transcend these trappings. The bombast, the swashbuckling, the hyperbolic action, it works because you are in it. When the Uncharted movie opens with … Continue reading Uncharted (Review)
No Time to Die (Review)
As time pushes forward, the relevance of Bond is always questioned. These are films firmly rooted in the past, with a back catalogue full of dated moments but also old fashioned charm. The Craig era of Bond (as it now truly is an era) has been a process of answering that question, of trying to … Continue reading No Time to Die (Review)
Nobody (Review)
This new entry in the John-Wick-as-a-genre canon is built upon a power fantasy, and general fantasy, that I have no interest in. This is a middle-aged dude impotence-film, in which an act of sensibility (not murdering the people who are so desperate that they take advantage of you leaving your garage door slightly open and … Continue reading Nobody (Review)
Mortal Kombat (2021) (Review)
It would not be a cynical reboot if Mortal Kombat didn't spend the whole film setting up a much more interesting sequel. This frustrating trend reaches perhaps its zenith in this non-movie that could exist as the opening act of a more interesting film, or could be ditched completely. We spend an hour and thirty-nine … Continue reading Mortal Kombat (2021) (Review)
Tenet (Review)
Christopher Nolan's latest blockbuster comes with the promise of saving cinema: an unparalleled, thought provoking spectacle that will bring back the masses (safely, of course). Few films could bear this burden and, unfortunately, to repurpose a cliché actually used in Tenet (more on the clunky dialogue later) the film arrives not with a bang but … Continue reading Tenet (Review)
The Old Guard (Review)
There are things to like in The Old Guard. First of all, it is a pleasingly diverse film in a very natural feeling way: we have two female leads; the film's major romance plot is between two men (and is achingly romantic in the way that we, sadly, too frequently see reserved for heterosexual relationships). … Continue reading The Old Guard (Review)
Extraction (Review)
About half way through Extraction, I found myself wondering if some stellar action sequences can make up for everything else in a film? And I mean everything else. At the end of the film, when I was relieved to realise that the final fifteen minutes of what I thought was a two hour film were … Continue reading Extraction (Review)
Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey (Review)
After a slew of dull - and frequently terrible - films, Birds of Prey (as it was originally called) is just what the increasingly irrelevant DC universe needs. It is certainly not without flaws but it works as a decent template for what should follow and has a clear sense of fun and energy - … Continue reading Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey (Review)
Assorted Opinions 