There’s something weirdly meta and unsettling about sitting in a room as a film critic watching a movie about a fiendishly pompous and self-centred critic, in this case a theatre scribe. In Anand Tucker’s The Critic, Sir Ian McKellen’s gleefully malevolent performance as London theatre critic James Erskine is the highlight of an uneven film. With his notorious poison pen,
Read moreTodd Phillips’ Joker (2019) reimagined the supervillain origin story as a study of a fracturing mind with the beaten down incel Arthur Fleck transforming into the weirdly charismatic murdering psychopath clown of the title. In this age of superhero/ villain obsession it was an ambitious and subversive take on an iconic character but not always a riveting one. For those
Read moreIt’s been a while since we were subjected to a huge, lumbering, overly ambitious turkey of a film. Damien Chazelle’s Babylon looked to be heading that way but ended up as genuinely stylish and entertainingly bonkers. Francis Ford Coppola has stepped up to the plate, though, with his near unwatchable dystopian sci fi stinker Megalopolis. This was apparently a passion
Read moreFrench writer/ director Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance disturbingly updates Oscar Wilde’s The Picture Of Dorian Gray and adds a smattering of Showgirls for a gruesome body horror satire of Hollywood, the beauty industry and the damaging expectations placed on women. In an unsettlingly appropriate piece of casting, Demi Moore plays celebrity aerobics trainer Elisabeth Sparkle who hosts a successful Jane
Read moreWhile 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 moreFor some, June Squibb will be best remembered as Bruce Dern’s long-suffering wife in Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, or Sheldon’s flinty grandma in The Big Bang Theory. She’s been acting in movies since 1990 but the uneven yet touching comedy Thelma is her first leading role. Squibb plays the 90-something title character who’s still adjusting to life after her husband’s death.
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