While its plot and thickly layered Australiana are a little clichéd, Runt, from director John Sheedy, is still a very sweet, charming family film that represents another instalment in the ‘amazing animal’ film sub-genre. The title character (played by a dog named Squid) is a stray terrier who lives in the fictitious remote Australian town of Upson Downs. Having just
Read moreThe thinly plotted but generally fun and family friendly fantasy Harold and the Purple Crayon is based on the 1955 children’s book by Crockett Johnson. The slightly meta story has the character Harold (Zachary Levi) living in the two-dimensional book world created by Crockett Johnson. There, Harold can use a magical purple crayon to create any object he needs including
Read moreStrange Darling is guaranteed to be a favourite of those who enjoy blood-soaked cinema. While it’s certainly violent and confronting, it’s also inventive in the way it gleefully plays with the conventions of the serial killer film and with audience expectations. Written and directed by JT Mollner, the film cleverly goads us into thinking in a certain way about the
Read moreTim Burton has forged a unique sub-genre in Hollywood, comical goth horror with films often celebrating mercurial outsiders such as Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Willy Wonka and of course the title character from the film that arguably put him on the map, the 1988 horror/comedy hit Beetlejuice. That anarchic, inventively odd, if occasionally irritating film introduced us to the mischievous
Read moreThe eccentric, super rich tech entrepreneur has become a strange 21st Century icon. It should come as no surprise that one should figure as the central character in an oddball Hollywood movie. Writer/ director Zoe Kravitz’ darkly comic, at times disturbing but derivative and underweight mystery thriller Blink Twice, features one such figure in a story that has creepy resonances
Read moreThe original Alien from 1979 was a masterpiece of production design that infused Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett’s ‘haunted house in space’ concept with Ridley Scott’s remarkable aesthetic sense. James Cameron’s 1986 sequel, Aliens, while lacking the original’s eloquent artistry, inventively expanded some its ideas and reworked the concept into a brutally efficient, white knuckle action film. After two reasonably
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