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Holy Motors
(2012)
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Luke Buckmaster
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For lovers of cinema Holy Motors is probably a must-see, but in sad clown cinema as sporadic and strange as this, even a rock solid recommendation seems to be slippery territory.
Posted Apr 29, 2020
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4/5
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Jen Kirkman: I'm Gonna Die Alone (And I Feel Fine)
(2015)
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Daily Review
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She's a natural raconteur, and her show is a cleverly crafted and perfectly delivered monologue that feelsmore like a natural conversation with your funniest friend than a contrived comedy show.
Posted Jul 16, 2019
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Fifty Shades of Grey
(2015)
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Helen Razer
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Nice as it looks, this movie tastes bad...
Posted May 16, 2019
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Trainwreck
(2015)
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Helen Razer
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Five minutes ago, Amy Schumer was an ungovernable force of comedy. Then, she was introduced to Lena Dunham, and possibly Patricia Arquette...
Posted May 07, 2019
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Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
(2015)
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Helen Razer
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The most depressing, tragic and, of course, marketable version is presented here and what we have is not good record but Sundance-friendly miserablism...
Posted May 07, 2019
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Dallas Buyers Club
(2013)
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Helen Razer
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The gays, in this film, are titillating extras, as they so long have been, and not only are the courageous stories of many people co-opted for profit, but theft itself is valorised.
Posted May 07, 2019
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Avengers: Endgame
(2019)
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Luke Buckmaster
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I might be tempted to describe Infinity War and Endgame as a couple of the worst and ideologically vacuous blockbuster movies ever made - except I'm no longer sure they should even be called movies
Posted Apr 25, 2019
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Burlesque
(2010)
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Luke Buckmaster
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Magnificently awful.
Posted Mar 28, 2019
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4.5/5
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Hannah Gadsby: Nanette
(2018)
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Ben Neutze
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That story is both funny and horrible, and Gadsby has told it over and over again. But this time, she doesn't just want to laugh it off.
Posted Jul 19, 2018
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Tully
(2018)
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Luke Buckmaster
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Mary Poppins by way of bleary-eyed Middle America, substituting the idea that life gets better - or love means sacrifice - for a childish fantasy involving the healing powers of a 20-something, Greta Gerwig-type free spirit.
Posted May 10, 2018
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Last Flag Flying
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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A humanistic work, with a slight and unprepossessing way about it...about losing and finding, and finding and losing, faith in higher powers and purposes.
Posted Apr 30, 2018
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Avengers: Infinity War
(2018)
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Luke Buckmaster
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A celebration of mediocrity on a scale the cinema has never seen before. Avengers: Infinity War isn't a movie: it's advertising and brand management
Posted Apr 25, 2018
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I Feel Pretty
(2018)
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Luke Buckmaster
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Viewers will sense I Feel Pretty's buttery didacticism well before it gets spread across the final act.
Posted Apr 19, 2018
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A Quiet Place
(2018)
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Luke Buckmaster
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Despite some B movie residue, in the novelty of the premise and no shortage of 'bump in the night' spooks, it is pro-human and pro-intellectual, reinterpreting 'survival of the fittest' as 'survival of the smartest'.
Posted Mar 28, 2018
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Mary Magdalene
(2018)
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Luke Buckmaster
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Some of the commentary around the film has suggested Mary Magdalene is a bold second feature from Davis. That's an usual compliment, given how many biblical adaptations have already been made, and how risk-averse this one is in the scheme of the things
Posted Mar 19, 2018
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Death Wish
(2018)
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Luke Buckmaster
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Arguing the new Death Wish unreservedly supports the views of the gun-toting, 'by my cold dead hands' American conservative would require at certain moments the viewer to close their eyes and block their ears.
Posted Mar 12, 2018
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Red Sparrow
(2018)
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Luke Buckmaster
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The director lurches from titillation to grotesquery, dangling Jennifer Lawrence's beauty as a carrot and moments of ice pick discomfort as the stick.
Posted Mar 02, 2018
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Phantom Thread
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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A high-flown drama directed pretentiously, with a style that prioritises debonair aesthetic while the subtext of the script moves in the opposite direction - telling us that fancy accouterments cannot hide deeper issues of character and substance.
Posted Feb 04, 2018
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I, Tonya
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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I, Tonya has a dangerous fizz. The drama isn't cheapened by comedy, and the comedy doesn't undermine the drama.
Posted Jan 29, 2018
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Molly's Game
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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Pedal to the metal dialogue is paired with pedal to the metal voice-over narration, which exacerbates the film's hurried manner.
Posted Jan 19, 2018
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The Post
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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The balance doesn't sit right and the most exciting elements of The Post remain off-screen. The film has measured surface and technical values, though there is little flair in Janusz Kaminski's cinematography and its texture feels cold and clinical.
Posted Jan 14, 2018
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The Florida Project
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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A reverse-Spielberg view of being a kid. No alien buddies, cuddly friends or otherworldly adventures. But there is still magic.
Posted Dec 28, 2017
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Star Wars: The Last Jedi
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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It's easy to forget the original movie was a terrifically bold, innovative, industry-realigning blockbuster. Lucas dreamed big and took massive risks. In that sense, The Last Jedi could not be more different to the Star Wars created four decades ago.
Posted Dec 14, 2017
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Goodbye Christopher Robin
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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There are powerful ideas and emotions here, at times communicated effectively - but always with a chewy sweetness that cheapens them. This is a bizarro world where every sin is forgiven and every wound healed.
Posted Nov 26, 2017
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Justice League
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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Not all the candy-coloured bombast in the world can disguise the fact that Ben Affleck, the bulkiest and mopiest Batman of all time, clearly doesn't want to be here, triggering memories of the #SadAffleck meme. Ben, we feel your pain.
Posted Nov 17, 2017
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Suburbicon
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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Matt Damon's steely, stripped-back, average Joe style works against him, lending Lodge a stoicism and stony-heartedness that feels inhuman and even machine-like.
Posted Oct 28, 2017
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Geostorm
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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Geostorm brings tin-eared dialogue and squirrely, logic-deprived plotlines a-plenty. Miraculously, however, I had quite a bit of fun with it.
Posted Oct 20, 2017
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Happy Death Day
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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A sick, slimy and noxious stalker-slasher, terribly repetitive and not even amusing accidentally. Built joylessly by and for men - about the mean pretty girl who must change
Posted Oct 12, 2017
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mother!
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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This lofty, pretentious, intellectually and emotionally grueling experience arrives machine-tooled to annoy as many people as possible, on as many levels as possible, down to the flagrant disregard for upper case lettering reflected in its title.
Posted Sep 30, 2017
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Gaga: Five Foot Two
(2017)
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Ben Neutze
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Five Foot Two is an entertaining and humanising documentary for this artist who started her career with a kind of alien appeal. But it's also a carefully calculated film...
Posted Sep 30, 2017
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Kingsman: The Golden Circle
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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High-powered and blinged to the hilt, with a lickety-split pace youngsters might expect of action movies these days - and an amount of visual invention they may not.
Posted Sep 25, 2017
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It
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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A deathly serious, exhaustingly banal, cut-and-dried cash grab.
Posted Sep 10, 2017
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2/5
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The Hitman's Bodyguard
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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The mind wanders. There wasn't a lot to distract it in this content-to-be-unimaginative, tenuously scripted (by Tom O'Connor) odd couple B movie.
Posted Sep 06, 2017
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Beatriz at Dinner
(2017)
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C.C. Ford
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The brilliance here is in equal measure the script and the cast, both of which elevate a predictable set-up into an unforgettable theatrical gem.
Posted Sep 06, 2017
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3/5
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American Made
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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American Made is compelling and unconventional: a film clearly made within the system, designed to look outside it.
Posted Sep 06, 2017
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Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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the sort of overflowing, eye-watering, glaringly intense aesthetic that might make Hieronymus Bosch or Willy Wonka say: whoa man, too much, too much, let's tone it down a bit.
Posted Aug 14, 2017
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Dunkirk
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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virtually every scene is pitched at a moment of near-crisis, the entire experience hanging in the nanosecond when the fuse has burned out but the explosion is yet to go off.
Posted Jul 27, 2017
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4/5
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Baby Driver
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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[Wright's] latest film, Baby Driver, is the sort of rarity that grumps such as myself often complain Hollywood doesn't make any more. Which is to say: a genuine original.
Posted Jul 15, 2017
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Baby Driver
(2017)
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Gemma Pecorini Goodall
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It's this shifting narrative tone that makes Baby Driver one of the most effective anxiety-inducing films out there.
Posted Jul 15, 2017
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4/5
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Spider-Man: Homecoming
(2017)
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Gemma Pecorini Goodall
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Holland's performance is wonderfully accompanied by a cast of talented young actors and seasoned veterans who provide an intellectual parallel for the millennial mindset.
Posted Jul 13, 2017
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The Red Pill
(2016)
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Luke Buckmaster
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A wretched, morally bankrupt documentary.
Posted Jun 24, 2017
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Berlin Syndrome
(2017)
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Lauren Carroll Harris
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It's not arthouse enough to be arthouse, nor thriller enough to be a thriller.
Posted Jun 06, 2017
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3/5
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The Family
(2016)
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Lauren Carroll Harris
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The affectless way in which the survivors describe their abuse comes to counterpoint the sometimes histrionic choice of cinematic techniques.
Posted Jun 06, 2017
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BPM (Beats Per Minute)
(2017)
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Gemma Pecorini Goodall
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It's stylistically beautiful, has an extraordinary cast and a soundtrack that heightens its emotion, but I couldn't help but be slightly disappointed by it.
Posted Jun 06, 2017
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The Square
(2017)
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Gemma Pecorini Goodall
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Bang delivers an incredible performance, his highly-strung and intensely self-important character constantly undermining the altruistic message at the heart of the story.
Posted Jun 06, 2017
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Okja
(2017)
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Gemma Pecorini Goodall
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While the film features excellent performances and stunning visuals, it falters with its message.
Posted Jun 06, 2017
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Wonder Woman
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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The hero faces off against a seemingly insurmountable bad-guy-from-Central-Casting, throwing around what appears to be a range of fluorescent Photoshop-generated squiggly lines.
Posted May 29, 2017
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War Machine
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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At once a cagey character study, political commentary, offbeat war pic and idiosyncratic black comedy, with little of the expected signposting associated with any of those kinds of films.
Posted May 23, 2017
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Ghost in the Shell
(2017)
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Luke Buckmaster
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Her outfit sticking to her flesh lecherously, like a Venom costume or an unclothed, vacuum-sealed, cream-coloured Barbie doll, Scarlett Johansson somehow looks both naked - sort of - and fastidiously covered.
Posted Apr 02, 2017
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Loving
(2016)
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Luke Buckmaster
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Loving offers much to draw from, but the greatest image we take with us is the same one on the poster: two lovers holding on, unwilling to let go.
Posted Mar 23, 2017
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