Life is a messily indistinct business. While it would be lovely indeed if it divided itself neatly into clean cut before, during and afters, the unsettling reality is that one period often bleeds into the other, leaving us craving a neat fairytale transition but never really being delivered one. Continue Reading
Mission: Impossible — Executing the Perfect Heist (video essay)
The Mission: Impossible films have captivated me from the moment the first movie in the now six-episode series debuted in 1996. Possessed of a larger-than-life action persona, an emotional resonance lacking in action movies on the whole, and a tight knit team that fought the bad guys in the Continue Reading
Fear the Walking Dead: “Close Your Eyes” (S4, E10 review)
SPOILERS AHEAD … AS WELL AS SHISH KEBAB ZOMBIES, UNWANTED WINDOW GUESTS AND REGRET, LOTS OF REGRET When the world around you has gone to the undead dogs – frankly in a world where civilisation has fallen, the reanimated dead wander the earth and Lord of the Flies is Continue Reading
I spy a brand new Star Wars animated series – Resistance
SNAPSHOT The series, which revolves around the ace fighter pilots of Leia Organa’s burgeoning Resistance, follows a young pilot named Kazuda Xiono (voiced by Days of Our Lives’ Christopher Sean), recruited by the rebel group to conduct secretive spying missions on the growing reach of the villainous First Order. Continue Reading
Movie review: Summer 1993 (Estiu 1993)
Childhood is supposed to be a safe, idyllic, untroubled place. Yet for a million different reasons that are as diverse as the various failings of the human race, it fails to be the fairytale dream it’s supposed to be, overwhelming young growing minds with the kinds of challenges and Continue Reading
Avengers Infinity War: How should it have ended?
Avengers: Infinity War is grim, people, GRIM with the kind of ending that has you leaving the theatre with a desperate, impelling need to eat your body weight in junky comfort food (which as luck would have it, cinemas have in abundance; true, it will bankrupt you ten times Continue Reading
Movie review: The Wife
There is a brittleness that permeates the entire length of the Björn Runge directed, Jane Anderson-scripted film The Wife (based on the book of the same name by Meg Wolitzer) which has nothing to do with the snowy wintry setting of Stockholm where much of the story takes place. The Continue Reading
Jurassic Park: Using theme to craft character (video essay)
Michael from Lessons from the Screenplay – you can sponsor him on Patreon and you should, you really should – creates breathtakingly detailed but beautifully-accessible video essays. In one of his latest instalments, he explores how a big, bombastic blockbuster, Jurassic Park, used it riveting storyline and finely-etched characters Continue Reading
Now this is music #110: NONONO, Kirsten Ludwig, Alison Wonderland, Robyn, Miss Eaves + RIP Aretha Franklin
We all love music that lifts up, lightens the soul, stirs up the joyous and the good, stills the anxious and the bad. That kind of music is all the better when it’s accompanied by lyrics that speak to the human condition in authentic, accessible, profoundly touching ways. Too Continue Reading
Welcome to Dreamland: Meet the characters of Disenchantment
SNAPSHOT In Disenchantment, viewers will be whisked away to the crumbling medieval kingdom of Dreamland, where they will follow the misadventures of hard-drinking young princess Bean, her feisty elf companion Elfo, and her personal demon Luci. Along the way, the oddball trio will encounter ogres, sprites, harpies, imps, trolls, Continue Reading