It’s never easy to deliver a sequel to a successful whodunnit, much less a threequel. At this point, the amateur sleuths have begun to identify recurring patterns and misdirects, the characters have become archetypal, and the audience is waiting for the surprise twist...
When Robert De Niro radically transformed his body to play the boxer Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, it meant he was serious about his craft, and reshaped our understanding of authenticity in acting. What does it mean that Sydney Sweeney transformed...
In the beginning there was nothing and then there was light. Or in the instance of The Carpenter’s Son, in the beginning there was the dogmatic Joseph, played by Nicolas Cage, awestruck by the light of God while his wife, Mary...
It is that Finnish word “that cannot be translated” again, and yet which is translated, also again, in opening text, as “a white-knuckled form of courage and unimaginable determination”, which “manifests itself when all hope is lost.” Wikipedia suggests ‘guts’. Three years ago,...
The accusation of “all style, no substance” gets thrown around often, sometimes appropriately, but what about a film that has neither style nor substance, no matter how much it tries to sell that it has both? Wicked: For Good is that picture, one...
Despite only running between 2004 and 2007, To Catch a Predator had an indelible impact on popular culture. Fronted by the journalist Chris Hansen, the 44-minute episodes became must-see TV, as law enforcement set up sting operations around the US to...
Gluttons for emotional punishment would do well to seek out Dylan Southern’s The Thing with Feathers, an ickily-stylised screen adaptation of Max Porter’s hit 2019 novel ‘Grief is a Thing with Feathers’. It’s telling that they’ve removed the marketing turn-off term “grief”...
While Kelly reckons with his own personal failings – occasionally detailed in flashbacks filling out his path to stardom – his crew have problems of their own. His manager Ron (Adam Sandler) is constantly on the phone to his incredibly...
Predators: Badlands works best when it’s dealing with the organic. In the soft, frictionless world of so many computer-generated tentpole spectacles, there’s a textured sensuality to the world crafted by director Dan Trachtenberg that’s undeniably appealing. The scaled, rippled skin of the...
The hallowed performer and auteur of acting, Daniel Day-Lewis, is a man who perpetually has his out of office on, though in the background he’s probably perusing his inbox, and occasionally deigns to reply out of sheer politeness. Yet his first...
