Youth (2015)

I wanted to hate Youth. I usually walk into movies wanting to like/love them, but given my antipathy for Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning The Great Beauty, I was hoping for some more ammunition in my argument that it’s terribly overrated. Youth gave me sufficient ammunition, I’ll give it that. Sorrentino’s take on affluent, existential aimlessness, spent…

The Last Witch Hunter (2015)

What even are you, Last Witch Hunter? The ominous title and gothic poster suggest a grim action-fantasy flick – think Vin Diesel’s antihero Riddick shtick, but with witches – but we’re actually granted a slipshod, poorly-paced disappointment. Vin Diesel – sorry, “Kaulder” – was cursed with immortality some eight centuries ago, but where ‘curse’ would…

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)

If you ask me, the modern incarnation of James Bond – as played by Daniel Craig in Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall and the upcoming Spectre – has been a resounding success. But while I’ve enjoyed Craig’s stint as 007, particularly Casino Royale, it’s fair to say that his Bond films have been lacking…

Interstellar

Interstellar (2014)

Where T.S. Eliot found fear in a handful of dust, Christopher Nolan finds it in huge clouds of the stuff. Dust storms are consuming America’s failing agrarian communities decades from now. Blight ravages the planet’s few remaining crops as that dust brings illness and despair. This is a pre-apocalyptic world, a wasteland upon which mankind…

Dressed to Kill (1980)

Brian de Palma’s work always has gigantic quotation marks about. He doesn’t tell stories; he makes “cinema.” His larger-than-life, garishly coloured style is best suited to big movies, stories of sex, violence and oversized emotions. On paper, his style seems perfectly suited to the lurid psychosexual thriller-cum-horror movie Dressed to Kill. There are some thrilling…