Film Reviews

In the list of things no sane person has ever wanted, the third instalment of the Hotel Transylvania franchise is right up there with Trump’s recent visit to the UK. It’s expensive, pointless and fails to bring anything of value to anyone’s life. However whether we like it or not, Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation is here and this time, the awfulness is dialled up to 200% with the addition of a truly detestable soundtrack packed full of loud and obnoxious...

Despite passing them on the street almost every day, I’ve rarely given Jehovah’s Witnesses much thought. It is easy to look past them and continue with your daily routine. In many respects, Apostasy, the debut feature from former Witness Daniel Kokoajilo, was the first time I had ever really thought about the religion. The film is set within a Jehovah’s Witness community in Oldham. Ivanna (Siobhan Finneran) and her two daughters Luisa (Sacha Parkinson) and Alex (Molly Wright) are active member...

Felix Randau delivers with his satisfying, Chalcolithic revenge thriller Iceman. For those who have been waiting on a wing and a prayer for part two of The Revenant, Iñàrritu’s two and half hour DiCaprio driven epic about a fur trading frontiersmanslogging his way through the wilds of North American after being mauled by a bear to seek revenge on the man who killed his son, the wait may well be over.  Felix Randau’s Iceman is leaner, if not quite meaner,...

For decades, the Soviet Union was the staple movie boogeyman. Spy films, sci-fi, action movies and more often had an accented bad guy from mother Russia (or an alien analogue for one), the spectre of the all encompassing evil of communism. Then Rocky punched communism and over the next few years it began to crumble, first the Berlin wall, then the USSR itself. Culture moved on, we found new boogeymen. Now though, Russia is back in the news, espionage is...

Name three action film heroes? You probably went for… Bond, Bourne and McClane. Or maybe The Rock? Perhaps however it is time to re-consider Ethan Hunt. Tom Cruise has played Ethan Hunt since 1996. 22 years and six films later we arrive at Mission: Impossible - Fallout. Surely this once rebooted character from a short lived 1960/70s US TV show cannot still be around? Cannot still be relevant? Or even be interesting? Well yes, actually, because Mission: Impossible - Fallout is...

Grab your GoGo boots, slap on the sunscreen, and warm up that vibrato, for it’s finally time to return to the fictive Greek isle of Kalokairi; a lush landscape where the sky is always blue, the sea always sparkles, and where no problem is too big that it can’t be resolved by someone belting out a couple of garish hits from the ABBA Gold album. It has been 10 years since we saw the sun set on Sophie Sheridan’s (Amanda...

Setting films in one place or over one night run the risk of not being able to gain enough depth to the characterisation or theycan feel hemmed in by their own surroundings. Hotel Artemis attempts to tell its storyboth over one night and in one location, drawing the audience in with a tasty mix of funk and pop, neon lights and the promise of close quarter action and several, sometimes unnecessary, f-bombs. The premise of Hotel Artemis is simple, Jodie...

Documentary director and photojournalist Lauren Greenfield returns after her 2012 feature debut, The Queen of Versailles, with Generation Wealth, an ambitious if underwhelming examination of modern-day affluence. Dusting off her Rolodex, Greenfield returns to those she has captured throughout her career and cobbles together a series of interviews with porn-stars, rappers, career driven mothers and hedge fund managers who speak candidly about the impact the pursuit of wealth has had on their lives professionally, emotionally and at home.  Moments are...

In a world that so often looks hopeless, can we still have faith and what does it mean to have faith? In First Reformed, Paul Schrader, seemingly reinvigorated as a filmmaker, wrestles with these questions through Reverend Toller (Ethan Hawke), the priest at a historical church with only a few congregants. When he’s asked by a new attendee, Mary (Amanda Seyfried), to speak to her environmentalist husband Michael, Toller is troubled by his hopelessness and, when Michael kills himself, haunted...