28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

One of the big successes of last year was the return of Danny Boyle to the 28 Days Later films, 28 Years Later. The end of the film left many confused, but now we get the follow-up, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, and as a middle film to a trilogy, it not only manages…

Rental Family

Rental families have been a huge business in Japan since the 80s. They are companies that hire actors to serve as family members or friends for events or to fill emotional gaps. This is something that I certainly haven’t heard about before, but now, with the arrival of Rental Family, a sweet, gentle comedy drama,…

The Voice of Hind Rajab

It’s not often you sit in a cinema with a packed audience in stunned silence during the end credits (unless there is some sequence you are expecting). Still, it happened with The Voice of Hind Rajab, a powerful, gut-wrenching drama based on actual events during the Israeli-Gaza war, that doesn’t need to be seen; it…

Hamnet

The awards season is upon us, and one of the front-runners for major awards is Hamnet, based on a best-selling book by Maggie O’Farrell and directed by Oscar-winning Chloe Zhao, returning to human drama after dabbling with the big-budget Marvel flop, Eternals. It has to be said that this isn’t a film if you are…

Marty Supreme

The thought of watching a movie about a man who wants to be the face of table tennis in the 1950s might not sound like the most exciting experience, but this is far more than just that. Marty Supreme is from director Josh Safdie, part of the Safdie brothers who brought us the intense Uncut…

Song Sung Blue

Trailers can be very deceiving. Take, for example, the one for The Holdovers. It doesn’t sell the film well, and yet it’s one of the best Christmas movies around. The same could be said of Song Sung Blue, a biopic of a married couple who became a Neil Diamond tribute act. It doesn’t do the…

Peter Hujar’s Day

There is never an issue if you see a film about someone you’ve never heard of before, as, if you become invested in the movie, you want to find out more about them. Peter Hujar was a gay photographer from the 70s, whom I didn’t know a thing about when entering Peter Hujar’s Day, and…

Anaconda

How do you reboot a series that was so bad, it was almost a parody of itself? You re-imagine it into a comedy-adventure. That is what has happened to Anaconda, the 1997 action monster movie starring Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, and an awful performance by Jon Voight. Instead of going for a remake, you approach…

Avatar: Fire And Ash

There aren’t many film franchises where I could say I don’t care. Some are bad but bearable, while others worsen progressively. Still, James Cameron’s Avatar films just don’t do anything for me, to the point that even though cinema is going through a terrible patch at the moment, I want the third entry, Fire and…

Fackham Hall

Earlier this year, we had the reboot of The Naked Gun, and while brimming with laughs, it wasn’t always successful, as there were far too many moments when the comedy was lacking. Now, the Brits are taking a chance at spoof comedies with Fackham Hall, which pokes fun at Downton Abbey, and while it might…

Eternity

They often say that they don’t make them like they used to. Once in a while, a film tries to debunk that accusation. Eternity is one such film, a screwball romantic comedy that takes the beats and rhythms of past movies and gives them a modern edge. While it might not be entirely successful, you…

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

It might be coincidental, but in the same week as the release of the Agatha Christie 4K box set of her classic 1970s murder-mystery movies, with massive stars as suspects, we get the third in Rian Johnson’s Christie-style thriller, which started with Knives Out back in 2019 and continued with Glass Onion in 2022. Wake…