Nosferatu may be a renowned film for its experimental Expressionism techniques, unsettling settings examining the Occult and its controversial backstory, which led to all copies of the original 1922 silent film by F.W. Murnau being destroyed due to copyright infringement of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. Ensuing restoration efforts resulted in …
J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings saga struck such a colossal nerve when it was first published because it was a reaction to the loss of the first World War. The displacement of the muddy, modern conflict into a deliberately regressive story of magic and magical creatures …
Musician and filmmaker H.P. Mendoza’s newest release The Secret Art of Human Flight looks like a B-movie and has an absurd premise usually seen in average-quality YouTube shorts. Known for his skill directing small-budget movies, Mendoza manages to take a film that even at its premise, teeters toward collapse and …
DC Comics has no shortage of quality animated material. This includes numerous direct-to-DVD films (the most recent being the Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earth trilogy). While those have offered mixed results, one corner of DC that has remained popular is its animated television content. HBO Max’s shows, such as …
2017’s The Greatest Showman is a musical drama whose popularity I struggle to understand. For all its huge setpieces and hyper-stylised choreography its narrative and thematic substance was cloying and often faux, with overwhelmingly bland songs – minus Rewrite the Stars – to boot. Director Michael Gracey at last returns …
On the 26th September 2021, screenwriter Russell Hainline posted on Twitter: “Just had the best idea for a Hallmark Christmas movie holy sh-t holy sh-t holy sh-t.” On the 13th November 2024, Netflix released the end result of this tweet: Hot Frosty. Mr. Hainline’s tweet made allusions to Hot Frosty …
After two monumental entries into the Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi had a lot riding on it. Trying to stick the landing is always a high pressure job but with this final piece of the original trilogy, we are thankfully in luck. While it’s not as airtight of …
If anyone suspected that the success of George Lucas’s Star Wars was a fluke, then the 1980s Irvin Kershner-directed The Empire Strikes Back smothered these allegations. It maintains the imagination and splendour of the original while adding narrative twists and new character dimensions to the mix. But while it is, …
In 1977, blockbuster cinema changed forever with the release of George Lucas’s Star Wars. While Steven Spielberg’s Jaws spawned the term blockbuster, Star Wars came to define the genre with its humongous popularity, critical acclaim, and financial success, which was unlike anything cinemas had seen at that point. Nearly fifty …
2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – the final entry in the Star Wars sequel trilogy – had severe production hurdles from the start. The film was originally going to be helmed by Jurassic World director Colin Treverrow, who had managed to pen a full script with Derek Connolly …
Despite the critical acclaim of Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, certain corners of the internet would have you believe that the film was “divisive.” While there were certainly some unhappy fans – they’ve been screaming from their parents’ basements since 2017 – the evidence of audience gathering surveys …
Shortly after Disney acquired Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012, one of the first announcements made was their intent to make a Star Wars sequel trilogy. Talks of a continuation in the form of Episodes 7, 8 and 9 had been floating around the zeitgeist for years, but to see …
This is perhaps my hottest Star Wars take: I think Rogue One is a bit overrated. I am by no means calling it bad, but this is a case where a lot of its issues become obfuscated by one excellent chunk of the film. However, that stretch of the film …
It’s all too easy to get swept up in the exaggerated hype surrounding a highly anticipated blockbuster, especially these days when initial reactions to such films often take on a clickbait tone and are packed with buzzwords studios love to plaster on posters, trailers, and more. Directed by Jon M. …
Revenge of the Sith is the best of the Star Wars prequel trilogy by a country mile. Where The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones felt narratively meandering, handicapped by their insistence on telling over showing, Revenge of the Sith takes much better advantage of writer-director George Lucas’s idiosyncrasies. …
If my review for The Phantom Menace could be perceived as me going out of my way to be fair, then Attack of the Clones is me reaping what I’ve sowed. Not only does this film suffer from many of the same issues as its predecessor, but it amplifies them …
When Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, the first of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, hit cinemas in 1999, it proved extremely divisive. A definite victim of overhype, with some fans literally camping outside cinemas before the first screening, neither critics nor audiences seemed to agree on the film’s quality. The …
Francis Ford Coppola’s first feature film in 13 years was always going to generate excitement, but Megalopolis – since its divisive Cannes premiere and disastrous marketing campaign with AI-generated quotes (the fault of US distributor Lionsgate, not Coppola) – is almost a sensation. Add in a star-studded cast, some of …
Timestalker, the sophomore directorial feature of writer-director Alice Lowe, takes the Shakespearean adage “The course of true love never did run smooth” to its most extreme and fantastical conclusion. Lowe plays Agnes, a woman who lives an ordinary life with only a nagging, unplaceable inkling that something is missing. More …
Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice screened out of competition at the 81st Venice International Film Festival on August 28, 2024. There are few directors in which can truly be accredited with the title of ‘auteur’, but Tim Burton, with his affinity for the macabre, can be called just that. Over a …