Love, particularly romantic love, the stuff of Valentine’s Day, romantic comedies and long moonlit walks, is regularly placed on a pedestal with many of us eager to buy into the idea that there is something unassailably perfect about the notion of ’til death do us part and selfless commitment Continue Reading
Movies
Horrors of copyright: How Night of the Living Dead gave birth (or death) to the modern zombie genre
The Walking Dead. The Newsflesh Trilogy. World War Z. Pride Prejudice and Zombies. Resident Evil. Shaun of the Dead. All those highwater marks (and quite a few low water marks, sensibly not mentioned, too) of the modern zombie genre would likely not exist, or at at least not in Continue Reading
The age of stone is over! Oops, someone forgot to tell Early Man (poster + trailer)
SNAPSHOT Set at the dawn of time, when dinosaurs and wooly mammoths roamed the earth, “Early Man” tells the story of how one plucky caveman unites his tribe against a mighty enemy and saves the day! (synopsis via Coming Soon) So can you imagine what it would feel like Continue Reading
Movie review: Kingsman The Golden Circle
As befits a series that began life as a series of comic books by Dave Gibbons and Mark Millar, the Kingsman films, first The Secret Service (2014) and now The Golden Circle, possess a cartoonish zest to go with their tales of Bond-like derring-do, their Bourne-levels of violent self-discovery and their almost Continue Reading
Movie review: After Louie
For many people, the past is just that – the past. An influence, a set of memories, a formative influence on who they are but nothing more than that; creatures of the present, however weighed down by what came before to greater or lesser degrees, they exist now, happy Continue Reading
Deck the modern festive halls: The Man Who Invented Christmas (trailer)
If you have paid but a moment’s notice to this blog, it will be patently obvious that I love Christmas. LOVE. IT. The songs. The tree. The lights. The bonhomie and goodwill. The presents. The spirit of giving. It all adds to what the song joyfully describes as “the Continue Reading
Coco: A colourfully lush reminder that family and music is everything
SNAPSHOT Despite his family’s baffling generations-old ban on music, Miguel (voice of newcomer Anthony Gonzalez) dreams of becoming an accomplished musician like his idol, Ernesto de la Cruz (voice of Benjamin Bratt). Desperate to prove his talent, Miguel finds himself in the stunning and colorful Land of the Dead Continue Reading
Movie review: Patti Cake$
People, against all odds, are born dreamers. There are a million reasons why they shouldn’t be, with life mounting plenty of compelling reasons why it’s a fools errand to think that anything but the beige-coloured, dead hand monotony of reality awaits anyone’s hopeful grip. Yet despite everything, that brass Continue Reading
Movie review: That’s Not Me
At one point in That’s Not Me, a marvellously entertaining comedy that gives an hilariously poignant thoughtfulness to the idea of an existential crisis, the protagonist, almost forgetting she is trying to impress a guy she’s met at a party, says something along the lines of “I don’t watch Continue Reading
Book becomes movie: All I Want For Christmas is You premieres first trailer
SNAPSHOT The animated movie tells the story of young Mariah, who wants nothing more for Christmas than a puppy and has set her eyes on a specific little pooch named Princess. Little Mariah is tasked with taking care of her uncle’s dog to prove her responsibility to get the Continue Reading