Bone Tomahawk ★★★½ IT TOOK Craig Zahler almost 30-odd years to discover his true calling. The American was an animator, writer and musician before directing his first film, Bone Tomahawk, in 2015. He has only made two other films – Brawl in Cell Block 99 and Dragged Across Concrete – […]

Western/horror mash-up cuts to the bone

Ferrari (2024) ★★★★ THE main problem with Michael Mann’s Ferrari is length – it isn’t long enough. At the film’s end I was wanting to know more about both the professional career and,  albeit to a lesser extent, personal life of the Italian racing legend. Does this mean, as some […]

Ferrari leaves you wanting more

The Cursed (2021) ★★★½ SEAN Ellis is another name to look out for. The British writer/director has made barely a handful of feature films but they include two highly lauded ones – crime drama Metro Manila (2013) and the 2016 WWII thriller Anthropoid. In 2021 he moved into the horror […]

Cursed with natural talent

Night Swim (2024) ★★ NOT content with scaring us away from the beaches, Hollywood is now trying to scare us out of enjoying our backyard pools. Granted the haunted pool in the American horror film Night Swim has been built on a former natural spring that I gather was sacred […]

Night Swim occupies the shallow end

Terminal Island (1973) ★★½   WHENEVER exploitation films of the 1960s and ’70s are mentioned it usually involved male directors. But an American, Stephanie Rothman, also made a half-dozen or so, including some that emerge in minor classics discussions. One of those is the 1973 action/drama Terminal Island, principally due […]

Women take charge of Terminal Island

Quiz Lady (2023)  ★★★ AWKWAFINA and Sandra Oh have some great chemistry in the overlooked American comedy Quiz Lady. The pair play sisters in a love-hate relationship who are forced together to help their gambling addicted mother. Anne (Awkwafina) is the younger sibling. On paper she has her life together, […]

Comedy has a lot of answers

Anatomy of a Fall (2024)  ★★★★ SAVE some time and money and give the Oscar to Sandra Hüller now. The German actress is quite simply brilliant as the protagonist, Sandra Voyter, in the French drama/thriller Anatomy of a Fall. Granted, the words that Hüller has at her disposal are wonderful, […]

French thriller ascends the ranks

Suitable Flesh ★½ SUITABLE Flesh received good buzz on the 2023 festival horror film circuit. I’m not sure why, as it left me underwhelmed. Heather Graham plays a psychiatrist who becomes obsessed with one of her young male patients, leading her into a dark path of demonic possession. Firstly, we […]

Stupid is as stupid does

V/H/S/85 ★★★ THE V/H/S found footage horror anthology film series has had its ups and downs since starting in 2012. There have been six instalments to date and the latest, 2023’s V/H/S/85, sits squarely in the middle, both in terms of the overall impact and comprising, as usual, good and […]

Anthology series in the black

Friday the 13th Part 4 ★★★ DEVOTING the first three minutes of a 90-minute film to recapping the previous three instalments might suggest a franchise was in trouble. But that’s the kind of weird decisions that were made by producers and studios back in the 1980s and ‘90s when they were […]

Sequels an up and down affair

Insidious: The Red Door ★★½ INSIDIOUS franchise stalwart Patrick Wilson takes the helm for the fifth instalment Insidious: The Red Door. It’s the actor’s directorial debut and while he does a decent job it fails to reinvigorate a film series that continues to spin its wheels. Unlike the adjacent Annabelle […]

Insidious franchise spinning its wheels

Them ★★★½ FRENCH critics love certain foreign directors, including Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood and Roman Polanski. But they especially love the late Alfred Hitchcock whose techniques continue to serve as a template for many thrillers. Them, released in 2006, is a case in point; a nerve-jangling thriller full of Hitchcockian […]

French pay homage to master