Perhaps the original rom-com, this fresh but faithful retelling of the classic Jane Austen novel will charm audiences. For those who aren’t familiar with the story (though you probably are – it’s been adapted and re-fashioned many times already); “handsome, clever and rich” Emma Woodhouse fancies herself as the village matchmaker. She spends her days…
The popular TV series Fantasy Island ran for seven seasons from 1977. It involved guests being granted fantasies, but at a price that often involved exposing the error of their ways. So there were perils and life lessons, but nothing like this big screen horror version of the show. Each of the five guests who…
Hero or villain? Richard Jewell, the movie, answers that question about the chief suspect in the Centennial Park bombing in 1996. That incident killed two people and left more than 100 injured. On 27th July that year, during the Atlanta Olympics, security guard Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser) discovers a suspicious backpack hidden under a bench…
Take an intergalactic blue hedgehog. Add a small-town sheriff and a never-ending battle with a maniacal villain. Then stir liberally and, believe it or not, you have the makings of a fun, if totally far-fetched, family film. With no expectations entering the cinema, I emerged thinking the filmmakers had thrown a little magic dust at…
A charming Australian comedy about a serious subject, H is for Happiness is a surprising gem. Set in the West Australian coastal town of Albany, this is a feel-good film for all ages. Writer Lisa Hoppe adapted My Life as an Alphabet by Barry Jonsberg for the screenplay. The film tells the story of a…
Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn makes the most of her starring role in Birds of Prey. She’s undoubtedly the bright star in a fantasy that has much going for it until it loses its way. Birds of Prey is, indeed, a twisted tale, as told by Harley herself. Harleen Quinzel is a former psychiatrist who…
Director Robert Eggers certainly loves a descent into madness. After the refined horror-thriller The Witch, he’s back with another hallucinatory drama in The Lighthouse. Despite having only two characters on screen for much of the time, this is a complex, disturbing examination of human frailty; sprinkled liberally with a variety of myths from different cultures….
Nicolas Cage movies broadly fall into three categories – the good, the bad and the bizarre. His latest film, Color Out of Space – a hybrid of sci-fi, alien invasion and horror, based on a 1927 short story written by H P Lovecraft (who is considered the father of the modern horror story) – falls…
A feel-good road trip, The Peanut Butter Falcon concerns a couple of outcasts who take to each other like ducks to water. A down-on-his-luck fisherman and a young man bent on achieving an impossible dream make their way down the waterways of a mythical American South. At a loose end since the death his brother,…
I’ve loathed every film revered auteur Terrence Malick has made since The Tree of Life. His impressionistic take on the material – with its ethereal visuals, non-linear structure, the fragments of whispered, overlapping dialogue, the rapid cutting within scenes that barely give a moment room to breathe and the off-centre framing of his characters and…
