Horror sequels are much maligned. Mostly, deservingly so! There’re plenty of reasons to dismiss an arm of exploitation cinema that typically undermines a genuinely original idea by running it into the ground. Witness, for instance, how Freddy Krueger’s oneiric menace was eroded into wisecracking mediocrity by a string of undercooked, underbudgeted imitators. And, yet, many…
Toy Story and Child’s Play were both defining films of my childhood. In very different ways, of course.
In 2018, action is as strong as ever. But the boundaries of the genre have been redefined in the wake of the superhero genre’s dominance over the box office.
I’m not much of a fan of either Borg vs McEnroe or Wonder, but for their target audience – tennis fans and preteens/their parents, respectively – the films should be a hit.
Either Baywatch or Dead Men Tell No Tales could have been good – well, passable – with screenplays content to be plain ol’ mediocre.
Two films remaking the same story of an older man sleeping with his friend’s daughter and, weirdly, the 2015 one is less progressive than the 1984 movie.
One of the best things about attending film festivals – such as this year’s Sydney Film Festival – is the opportunity to explore the breadth of documentaries on display. It’s a stark contrast to the genre’s sparse representation in mainstream cinemas. The conventional critical wisdom would be to suggest that multiplex audiences tend to avoid…
Read a synopsis of either of Creed or Magic Mike XXL, two of 2015’s best films, and sight unseen it might hard to understand the excellence of either film. The former film, after all, follows a fairly stock Hollywood formula, hitting its Best Picture-winning predecessor’s plot points beat for beat, while Magic Mike XXL is…
So it turns out I’m not much of an Alex Ross Perry fan. I watched Listen Up Philip, Perry’s third feature, with high expectations. I’d heard positive things about this intelligent indie film, and its cast – Elisabeth Moss, Krysten Ritter, Jonathan Pryce and Jason Schwartzman as the titular Philip, a self-obsessed semi-successful New York…
Talking heads seem to be the most maligned convention in documentaries. Just look at Asif Kapadia’s Amy, which has earnt widespread praise for its omission of such interviews despite not being an especially good film. Certainly, talking heads can be a crutch for uncreative documentary directors, who use them solely as an opportunity to flesh…
