The Exorcist: Believer ★★½ THE temptation with reviewing The Exorcist: Believer is not about being too precious over the original film. It’s more about trying not to be too cynical. If David Gordon Green and Danny McBride love the 1973 film as much as they claim, why use the name […]

Strike two for Green and McBride

Hardcore ★★★½ PAUL Schrader is the writer behind a canon of intriguing and powerful male screen characters. Robert De Niro in Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, Richard Gere in American Gigolo, Willem Dafoe in Light Sleeper, Nick Nolte in Affliction, Nicholas Cage in Bringing out the Dead, Ethan Hawke in […]

Hardcore Schrader’s lesser-known work

Hypnotic ★★★ THE American thriller Hypnotic jumps around genres but manages to pull everything together in a fairly successful way. Director Robert Rodriguez has worked across many genres but this time he pulls together mystery, thriller, action and science-fiction for the type of film you usually associate with the likes […]

Change of pace for Rodriguez

The Black Demon ★★ LET’S get something straight from the outset. The Black Demon is promoted as a shark movie but that is barely the case. This sci-fi thriller does have a giant primitive shark on the attack but it’s hardly sighted. That’s because the writers try to pack too […]

But where’s the shark?

Meg 2: The Trench ★★½ AS FAR as shark films go, 2018’s The Meg was a disappointment. Plenty of people obviously enjoyed it, but I felt it lacked the expected tension and thrills you’d expect from a genre film with a decent budget. The same goes for the sequel, Meg […]

Meg 2 another disappointment

Sisu ★★★★ IT’S probably not hard to claim that Sisu is the best action film to come out of Finland this year. But, along with John Wick 4 and The Good Mother from Poland, it’s also one of the best action films of the year full stop. Brutal, inventive and, […]

Sisu one of year’s best action releases

Mad Heidi ★★★ ONCE upon a time there was a young woman called Heidi who lived in a Swiss village with her kindly grandfather. Heidi loved their farm and also a local boy named Goat Peter whom she sometimes spent time in the barn with. One day Peter Was selling […]

Twisted tale of Mad Heidi

Outpost ★★★ FOR some reason the combination of Nazis and zombies works well on screen. This murderous double-threat also enables story-lines that focus on experimentation gone wrong and some more interesting explanations as to why the zombies may exist. Or maybe it’s just the uniforms? Who really knows. The 2008 […]

Nazi zombies on the march

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2  ★½ THE Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the best horror films ever made. Unfortunately it’s immediate 1986 sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, may be among the worst. It’s certainly a major disappointment for pure horror fans, with the same director Tobe Hooper, opting […]

Horror classic’s sequel a waste

Black Box ★★★½ THE role of sound in films can be underestimated. Its main importance is of course to ensure you can properly hear what is being said by the characters. But, in a film like the French thriller Black Box, sound becomes integral to the story in another way. As […]

Sound integral to Black Box

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One  ★★★½ IF THEY had their time again, Chris McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen should have spent a little more time on their script for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. It’s the one aspect that stops this seventh instalment from matching the last […]

Seventh mission falls just short

The Nun II  ★★½ SINCE when did nuns become scary? I can’t recall the exact time or circumstances, but The Conjuring franchise has created a pretty good one. The demonic sister Valak made such an impact when she played a small role in one entry that she gained her own […]

Damn those demonic nuns