Thrillers are often hard to handle, whether they are too contrived to be believable or too ridiculous to be plausible. Echo Valley, from the writer of the Kate Winslet drama Mare of Easttown and the director of Beast, starts off way too contrived, but thanks to a strong script, direction and a brilliant lead performance,…
Tag: entertainment
How To Train Your Dragon
I have grown so tired of the trend of reworking animated features into live-action films. Disney seems to have built their studios around it recently, to the point that I have struggled to even venture to see Lilo & Stitch. When I first became aware of DreamWorks entering the same world as the House of…
Karate Kid: Legends
Since the 80s, there has been one franchise that won’t lie down: The Karate Kid. We’ve had four original movies (including the dire The Next Karate Kid, which could have been the death knell of the series); the 2010 reboot, and, more recently, Cobra Kai (not forgetting the animated TV series). Now we have Karate…
Ballerina
The John Wick films have been a surprising success of the 21st century. Ultra-violent action movies that have improved with each episode, culminating in the fourth entry, which features a spectacular fight sequence in Montmartre, Paris, that has taken the action flick to a whole new level. It’s a world that could be expanded, and…
The Salt Path
What would you do if your life were turned completely upside-down after losing your home and everything within it? Would you hide from the world and hope that something will turn up? Or would you do what Raynor and Moth Winn did, pack the few belongings they had and walk across a coastal path to…
The Phoenician Scheme
Whatever you think of Wes Anderson as a filmmaker, you cannot deny that he is meticulous in his creations. His mathematical approach to using the camera, with the centre being the focal point, is evident in his use of the written word on the screen and the use of narration. If you saw just a…
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
I wonder if Tom Cruise wakes up in the morning with a thought of doing something dangerous, then goes and tells his production team to put it in a movie, because, once again, the 8th and, possibly, final episode in the hugely successful Mission: Impossible series, The Final Reckoning, has the Cruise doing things that…
Final Destination: Bloodlines
The Final Destination franchise has been chilling audiences since its first film back in 2000, where the killer is Death, who doesn’t like being cheated when those who should have died, don’t. The last movie came out in 2011, and when it takes so long for another film to come out, it’s usually the kiss…
The Surfer
If you are going to make a movie that will appeal to the cult fans and is as mad as a box of frogs, then there is only one man you can turn to: Nicolas Cage. The Surfer falls into both those elements, a tale of the destruction of a man filmed in a way…
Thunderbolts*
Marvel Studios and the Cinematic Universe have not had the best times since Avengers: Endgame. A series of films underperforming at the box office, new characters that many didn’t care too much about, a chief villain who would be the franchise’s future that had to be dumped due to the actor’s personal activities and a…
Sinners
Genre films can be a difficult thing to get right. They can follow the rules of previous movies and come across as unoriginal. Others try to move away from the rules, and they end up falling flat on their face. Thank goodness, then, for Ryan Coogler. The director, whose back catalogue is looking more impressive…
The Acountant 2
In 2016, a middle-tier action thriller called The Accountant hit the screen, about a man on the autistic spectrum who doubled as an accountant and a hired killer. It was hardly remarkable, and while it wasn’t a box office bomb, it didn’t ignite it either. It does seem strange, however, that it has been given…
Stu Loves Film 