Laura Blundell
Laura hopes to one day have a video store within her house, to fill the Blockbuster-sized hole that the eradication of physical media left behind.
Free Guy Review
Ryan Reynolds is a slave to the game in Free Guy, the new film by director Shawn Levy and from Disney subsidiary 20th Century Studios (née Fox.) He plays a humble bank teller and non-playable character in video game Free City trying to earn free will, become the hero and save the game from shutdown after it is revealed that the game’s quirky and arrogant creator Antoine (Taika Waititi) plans on sc...
Old Review
I don’t think M. Night Shyamalan understands what people actually liked about The Sixth Sense and it seems like no one’s bothered explaining it to him in 20 years. I say this as someone who still has not seen Split (I’ve heard it’s the exception to the rule that has plagued the better part of two decades of his filmography) but who has developed a great fatigue for Shyamalan’s perception of his ow...
Nine Days Review
A man sits at an antique desk with a clipboard and poses you this scenario: you’re a prisoner of war and your son just tried to escape, and all that stands between him and a hanging is a chair. If you do not kick the chair out from under him, your son, you, and all the other prisoners will be killed. Do you kick the chair? It’s the heaviest question I’ve ever heard in a job interview, but we are d...
Werewolves Within Review
Did you enjoy Knives Out but felt it could do with more lycanthropy? You may just love Werewolves Within, the new film from Josh Ruben and starring a bunch of comedy actors you know you’ve seen in something before. We open in the town of Beaverfield where a man hiding out amongst the snowy trees is taking off his wedding ring very conspicuously and messaging someone who is definitely not his wife....
Perfumes Review
Emmanuelle Devos of Read My Lips plays a “nose” in a film about olfactory frustration that doesn’t involve murder and embalming. Shame. Nevertheless, Perfumes (by Grégory Magne) has notes of sweetness and a drydown similar to that of 2011’s The Intouchables. Devos is wonderful as Anne Walberg, a somewhat prickly but deep-down sensory sook whose falling out with the perfume world, and desire ...
Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard Review
I recently saw Peter Greenaway’s masterful The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover and was blown away. I’d missed it initially, mostly because I hadn’t been born when it came out and thereafter because I hadn’t yet joined my film club when it was screened. I’m not saying I was expecting such heights from Patrick Hughes’ similarly-named sequel to his 2017 film The Hitman’s Bodyguard (wh...
Lapsis Review
What if Tony Soprano had to abruptly retire from his career in ‘waste management’ and pick up an entry-level job working for a tech conglomerate whose products he can barely use? Throw in the anti-establishment comradery of Office Space and the lowkey sci-fi world building of Primer and you get Lapsis, the genre feature written, directed, edited and scored by Noah Hutton. Dean Imperial stars as un...
A Quiet Place Part II Review
I don’t appreciate jump scares, Mr Krasinski. I expected as much from A Quiet Place: Part II, but there is still much to like about this sequel to the very successful 2018 monster feature that created a silence in the cinema I hadn’t experienced since seeing The Strangers by myself. Would this new installment garner the same shut-the-hell-upness among its audience? Mostly yes. Part II opens ...
Those Who Wish Me Dead Review
Those Who Wish Me Dead is the new feature from Taylor Sheridan, who knocked it out of the park with his screenplays for Sicario, Hell or High Water and Wind River (the latter of which he also directed.) It stars Jon Bernthal, Aidan Gillen, Nicholas Hoult and a little lady (you probably haven’t heard of her) called Angelina Jolie. From the trailer I was expecting a Hollywood rendition of Firewatch ...
Fatale Review
Remember that episode of The Office where the employees of Dunder Mifflin spent company time debating whether or not Hilary Swank could be considered ‘hot’? That accurately describes my experience watching Fatale, the new film written by David Loughery (not to be confused with talented filmmaker David Lowery) and from director Deon Taylor, whose highest rated work currently sits at 52%...
A Thief’s Daughter Review
When I was 22, I lived rent-free with my mum and worked part time at a low-paying electronics chain store while studying for an Arts degree, spending most of my income on wine and blu rays. In A Thief’s Daughter, 22 year-old protagonist Sara works multiple jobs to support her baby and lives with another young mother in a cramped flat on the outskirts of Barcelona. She is estranged from her mother ...
Gunda Review
More vital experience than film, Gunda (a Scandinavian word meaning “female warrior”) follows our titular sow in unadulterated black and white as she has motherhood thrust upon her and then shortly after, taken away. A much-anticipated and dreaded (by me) documentary-of-sorts, this film is helmed by visionary Russian filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky and executive produced by Joaquin Phoenix, whose own...