By Matthew Moorcroft Definitely think we could use more of these, just so people know what’s going on. We are about a month into 2023 and life already seems to have, both metaphorically and literally, decided to make itself tough. Lots of emotional baggage and personal stuff have come to a head this month, along…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation It may seem like an eternity ago, but Kevin Williamson was once the king of the slasher genre. With the double whammy of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, the game was changed. Gone were the days of scared teenagers, clueless adults, and summer camps gone awry.…
By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation I’ve never read Don DeLillo’s White Noise. In fact, my only prior experience with DeLillo in general is through David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Cosmopolis, which I found to be one of Cronenberg’s more unique and hard to decipher works. This is mostly a long winded way of saying that Noah…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation The original Knives Out’s breath of fresh air – and surprise box office success – was cut short by the news that Netflix had acquired the rights to it’s now two sequels. Part of Knives Out’s own success in theaters, apart from it being an original murder mystery from a…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR BABYLON, PARTICULARLY THE 10 LAST MINUTES. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Babylon’s extended opening sequence – which begins with literal elephant shit graphically splayed across the screen and around our lead character and ends with said elephant being used as a distraction at a party-turned-orgy…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation Was there any doubt? I’m pretty sure at this point you’d be a fool to underestimate James Cameron as a filmmaker. The man has defied expectations time and time again to the point where it’s almost superhuman in how he accomplishes his feats. You can’t make a sequel to Alien…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation For some reason, 2022 has been the year of Pinocchio overload. Outside of this widely anticipated version from auteur Guillermo del Toro, there is also another animated version that earlier this year infamously starring Pauly Shore, as well as a live action Disney remake. And with so many famous versions…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation If anybody was going to do a biopic on Steven Spielberg, it might as well be the man himself. And that’s pretty much what The Fabelmans is despite all of the names being changed around; this is pretty much as autobiographical as they come, and those in tune with Spielberg’s…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation How do you follow up a cinematic milestone? The simple answer is, usually, you don’t, and leave it at that. Black Panther’s very existence might be mostly the result a studio hoping to expand their universe with a large array of characters to maximize profit, but director Ryan Coogler and…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation I know it’s going to be weird starting off a review about The Banshees of Inisherin by talking about yet more Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri discourse, but here me out. Three Billboards, admittedly, is the rare movie that has soured for me over time. I still quite like it…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation A thud in the night is what startles Jessica, our lead, awake. It’s a loud, sudden burst of noise after a long stretch of silence, and the banging never returns. As Jessica lies awake, waiting for it to happen again and possibly find some kind of source for the bizarre…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation In terms of cinematic blindspots, Hirokazu Kore-eda has remained one of the biggest in terms of my own personal experience. Outside of general praise from fellow cinephiles and a constant reminder of the strength of his films – particularly when Shoplifters hit several years ago and was widely seen as…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation Park Chan-wook is one fascinating guy huh? One of South Korea’s most enigmatic talents, it’s not surprising that as Korean cinema has flourish over the past several years, Chan-wook himself has remained something of a cinephile only name. While his contemporaries like Bong Joon-ho and Hwang Dong-hyuk have achieved mainstream…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation It’s been a long road to get here for One Piece fans. Out of the so-called “Big Three”, One Piece has always been the one that, while having a large cult following in North America, has never been able to reach the same heights in terms of popularity as Naruto…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation About halfway through Women Talking is when you realize that they still haven’t left the hayloft. This makes sense, of course, as the women of the titular title have an near impossible decision ahead of them. In the wake of numerous sexual assaults from the men in their community, they…
By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation When it comes to projects aimed solely to be mostly STEM propaganda aimed at younger audiences, you could honestly not pick a better subject to do it then the Mars rovers. Outside of being one of the more easier to understand concepts about space exploration – as they say in…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation I’ll give Ruben Östlund this, he certainly knows how to be the center of attention in the room at all times. After years and years of being a Cannes darling – including with this film – Triangle of Sadness is the first time Östlund really seems have hit something of…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation In the back third of Aftersun, Calum and Sophie, our father-daughter duo of leads, take a picture while at a restaurant during their vacation. It’s clearly the late 90s-early 2000s – though the time period is a little ambiguous outside of that – as the man who takes their photograph…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation The loss of David Bowie in 2016 felt like a monumental, almost towering fall. Regardless of how influential and popular he was, Bowie was, ultimately, the artist to end all artists – a fully immersive, always challenging, and yet widely accessible voice that never did the same routine twice in…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation It’s hard for me to even properly convey words to describe Holy Spider, as the grim subject matter and heavy material on display here means that a normal review process almost seems insulting to this kind of film. We get a lot of true crime material over the years, especially…
By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation Before the title card drops on Hunt, you are thrust into the middle of an immediate hostage situation and assassination plot without any warning. The camera spins around, gun shots fire off, a couple of grenades send agents flying, and it all ends with a tense standoff that nearly leaves…
By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation In the back of my mind, I was dreading Close due to the name of Lukas Dhont attached to this. Back four years ago, he made a big splash at Cannes directing Girl, a movie about a young transgender girl going through ballet classes that, simply put, ignorant at best…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation An unsung master of anxiety inducing cinema, Rebecca Hall is one of Hollywood’s great underappreciated, yet always incredible, performers that manages to floor you each new role in spite of itself. You think she can’t get better, and then viola, she does anyways, and you are left wondering to yourself…
By Matthew Moorcroft Weak Recommendation Empire of Light’s first mistake letting itself try and be more then it actually is. Sam Mendes is a lot of things, but one thing he isn’t is “simple” as many of his films tend to tackle numerous subjects at once to varying degrees of success. When Mendes hits, he…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation The original All Quiet on the Western Front is commonly cited as the first great American anti-war film, a sentiment that hasn’t really gone away as it ended up becoming America’s only really great anti-war film until Saving Private Ryan. And even then, including that film, the tendency to showcase…
By Matthew Moorcroft No Recommendation You can’t deny that Dwayne Johnson doesn’t pay his debt or skimp out on promises. Having been attached to the Shazam franchise in general for over a decade, it’s clear that Black Adam, initially set to be simply the antagonist in a solo Shazam film turned full on separate project,…
By Matthew Moorcroft Solid Recommendation Just in time for Halloween, Smile is given to us courtesy of newcomer Parker Finn. Initially intended to head to streaming, Smile played so well during test screenings that Paramount saw theatrical potential for the film, and in a year where high concept horror seems to be flourish – just…
By Matthew Moorcroft Highest Recommendation While it’s explosive three-episode premiere showcased Andor’s slow burn approach and how effective it is, Aldhani slows things back a bit to sit down with the cast. So far the strength of Andor has been it’s quieter, more introspective moments, giving time to let the characters breath and just tell…
By Matthew Moorcroft Episode 1 – Highest RecommendationEpisode 2 – Strong RecommendationEpisode 3 – Highest Recommendation I’ll get around to it eventually – Star Wars Wednesdays aren’t dead, I promise guys – but Rogue One is a movie that I consistently have mixed feelings about. I don’t know if they are the right words or…
By Matthew Moorcroft Strong Recommendation After being introduced briefly in the first episode, Jameela Jamil finally makes her big entrance into the fray. While initially advertised as the main villain of the piece, Jamil’s role as the arrogant and vain Titania is more of a rival and a nuisance then an actual threat. While this…
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