Director Matt Sukkar is probably best known for the acclaimed documentary short, Durango, but he has recently turned his eye to features. In Sukkar‘s debut, The Deputy, viewers follow Toby, a very unprepared small-town lawman. Over the course of an endless night that starts with a missing dead body, he …
“You see how this looks, right?” rehearses Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson), as he’s set to trap and apprehend a sexual predator who has been talking to a decoy for what will become the hit NBC television series To Catch a Predator. Throughout Lance Oppenheim’s depiction of the controversial “investigative journalist” …
Father Joe is dumber than a box of rocks and more entertaining than a box of frogs. There is nothing to recommend Father Joe except for its commitment to being the stupidest possible piece of action entertainment. Luc Besson, who wrote and produced the film for director Barthélémy Grossmann, clearly …
As the strongest season of Reacher wraps up the formula feels in place for the future series. A lady cop, a dweeb and our favourite human kaiju team up against some preposterously evil villains, which can only be defeated through incredible hand-to-hand violence and the knowledge that right is on …
Thanks to Elspeth (Kathleen Richardson) and her henchman Springfield (Aaron Poole), Reacher (Alan Ritchson) and Tamara (Sydelle Noel) live another afternoon. This is good, because Reacher’s concern for manners and proper behaviour is such that he is willing to break every finger belonging to pharmaceutical billionaire Ahlquist (Shawn Doyle) to …
For a show so keen to avoid spoilers, they might have come up with a different title for this episode! That said, “Plum Out of Luck” begins with a bang thanks to the fight in the abandoned restaurant. The smoke of the flash grenades is a very clever way to …
Well, this day had to come eventually: Reacher (Alan Ritchson) made a mistake, and as a result a lot of people are dead. This is hard to take, not just because it means the plot can no longer be discussed without spoilers, but also because there’s an unpleasant subtext kicking …
A karambit is a little knife curved like a claw. It was invented in Indonesia, which is where Lila (Agnez Mo) and her mother Amisha (Anggun) are from. Its unpleasant appearance in this episode means the enemy has a much yuckier appetite for destruction than Reacher (Alan Ritchson) and the …
There’s another content warning for suicide at the start of “One Small Step,” which is the kind of consideration for viewers that some tough guys think isn’t necessary. Considering how much violence takes place in the average episode of Reacher, it’s kind of sweet that here is the one thing …
Alan Ritchson’s gift for stillness and subtle facial expressions is put to exceptional use in “Cage Fight.” There is also some audience pandering – screengrabs of which are all over social media already, but it would be churlish to spoil that fun – that makes it clear this season really …
In a small Romanian town, Marius (Adrian Văncică) is the medical chief at the local hospital. He just lost his wife, and his son, Ioan (Teodor Butănescu), is almost finished with high school. This is the setting of You Don’t Belong Here (Nu e locul tau aici) by Florin Şerban. …
We must congratulate director Andrey Zvyagintsev both for winning the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and for using his thank-you speech to ask Putin to stop the carnage of the war in Ukraine. Mr Zvyagintsev now lives in exile in France thanks to his political beliefs, but …
The absence of any major American films from this year’s Cannes Film Festival competition allowed room for some French films to sneak in. The Birthday Party aka Histoires de la Nuit is a film which would have never otherwise been allowed to compete for the Palme d’Or. It’s the kind …
It’s been eighteen months since Season Three of Reacher and the series’ appeal is more valuable than ever. The character of Reacher – ex-military brat, ex-military police, now a keenly observant drifter with no living family, no possessions, no way of being traced as he moves through the world, and …
Wasteman follows the great British cinema tradition of bringing no-holds barred, gritty stories to life. Cal McMau’s feature debut casts a sceptical eye on the British prison system and questions how effective it realistically is. The drama follows Taylor (David Jonsson) who is mere weeks away from being released on …
Surrealism is not my favorite film genre, but I will make a massive exception if it’s in the hands of Boots Riley. Not unlike his debut, Riley’s latest feature, I Love Boosters, is a weird, vibrant, funny, thoughtful, hopeful thesis on collective action and workers’ rights. At a time when …
It’s a trope seen more often in romantic comedies, but on this level at least Paper Tiger innovates: it is the rare thriller that relies on The Idiot Plot. The only way everything in Paper Tiger happens is because all three main characters are complete and total idiots. It looks …
Note: This review contains some mild spoilers for season 5 of The Boys. Back in 2019, The Boys burst onto the scene by having a supe burst through an actual person. This year, we have the fifth and final season, and it is an absolutely wild ride to an explosive …
Babe: Pig in the City this ain’t. There are some similarities, in that Hen was filmed using real animals with humans as incidental to the plot, but this Hungarian film set in Greece is so disturbing that it’s definitely not for kids. It is from the perspective of a black …
2004’s Man on Fire, starring Denzel Washington (based on a book of the same name from 1980), existed as a seminal film of its time. Twenty-four years after its release, the film has cemented its place in the action movie pantheon. In my younger film-watching years, it existed as a …