The Omen is silly when it should be scary, despite the stately sets and sombre acting surrounding it. David Warner (not the cricketer) does an admirable job of delivering a huge chunk of ominous exposition without it sounding too absurd (until he loses his head) and Gregory Peck is always reliable. The soundtrack and special…
I had expected something revolutionary from The 400 Blows: imaginative, exciting filmmaking from the film that began the New Wave movement. The cinematography itself didn’t wow me as I’d hoped, aside from a spectacular and extended series of tracking shots that conclude the film. But the story of young Antoine Doinel is certainly touching, particularly…
There’s something to be said for nostalgia, especially when it comes to music. It’s no accident that whenever people put together a “best music of all time” the list tends to skew very heavily to the music that was coming out in their late teens and early twenties; the time when they were singing along…
Yes, another horror movie… Sinister is, for its first half, a genuinely scary film populated by reasonably well-developed characters. Ethan Hawke, writing a true crime novel, finds a handful of creepy snuff films in the attic of his latest house (the site of a recent murder, naturally) and watches them, one by one, late at…
Frank Ocean’s channelORANGE seems to have topped nearly every “best albums of the year poll” I can think of, and it’s not undeserved. The album is futuristic and retro together, the personal vision of a thoroughly talented individual. It’s also not really my thing: R&B is just not a genre that does a whole lot…
Far-Cry 2 remains the most immersive game I’ve ever played. The entire game was constructed to feel as real as possible: maps that you had to look at without pausing, rusty guns that jammed at the worst possible moments, and a huge game world completely bereft of useful fast travel. These elements didn’t necessarily make…
David Lynch is one of my favourite filmmakers, so I thought Wild at Heart, which left me cold on first viewing, warranted a second chance. I’ve heard many others unimpressed by Lynch’s work, even masterpieces like Mulholland Drive, describing them as simply random events strung together. Sadly, Wild at Heart puts me in their shoes.…
A horror “classic,” starting Wes Craven’s career, The Last House on the Left is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good film. The cinematography and editing can be generously described as amateurish, the screenplay (a loose reinterpretation of The Virgin Spring) decides that the best thing to play against a harrowing rape/murder sequence…
Velociraptor sound great on record but really need to be experienced live. They’re apparently a twelve-piece, but at The Rev ten players (including both members of DZ Deathrays) took to the stage. They all performed with a rambunctious, infectious energy, swapping instruments roles regularly, everyone singing along (whether there was a microphone in front of…
Another horror movie remake! This one tries is particularly faithful to the Wes Craven original, even recreating a number of scares shot-for-shot. Not necessarily a bad thing, I suppose, but the new interpretations are pedestrian interpretations, without flair or creativity. There’s no emotional throughline in the first half; the film focuses on one character for…
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