Sound of Freedom ★★ SOUND of Freedom doesn’t warrant the controversy or success it has enjoyed to date. After an interesting first act it becomes very much a run-of-the-mill crime drama with uneven acting and script and slowly shuffles to its climax. The marketing machine was in over-drive for this […]

Hype fails to deliver

Talk To Me ★★★½ A LOT of people probably don’t realise, or maybe care, that 2023 sleeper hit Talk to Me is an Australian film. They should because we have always had a good pedigree in horror, as evidenced today by the continued influence of Saw franchise co-creator James Wan. […]

Aussie frightfest a sleeper hit

Malum ★★★ IT’S rare that a director remakes their own film. Michael Haneke’s Funny Games is the only one that springs immediately to mind. A recent example is the 2023 American horror film Malum, directed and co-written by Anthony DiBlasi, who made basically the same film in 2014, then called […]

Malum worth doing twice

The Communion Girl ★★½ THE Communion Girl is a solidly-made horror in the vein of the Annabelle spin-offs from the Conjuring franchise. This 2022 Spanish film isn’t outstanding in any way but it does the job of providing some tension and jump scares for those whose staple is the horror genre. […]

Spanish version of Annabelle

The Flood ★★ LET’S assume you’ve never seen an alligator nudge open a door by the handle. Apparently, the makers of action thriller The Flood seem to think this is possible in just one of the film’s many ridiculous moments. A jail break during a Louisiana hurricane is interrupted by […]

Smart gators enter through doors

Zero Dark Thirty ★★★★½ THERE are many different ways film-makers have chosen to depict the horrific events surrounding the 2011 terrorist attack on New York. You might have thought the most controversial path would have been taken by Oliver Stone, as he has done with other treatments of historic events. […]

Bigelow embraces the controversy

Champions ★★★ WOODY Harrelson is perfectly cast in the 2023 American comedy Champions. It’s a remake of a 2018 Spanish film about a temperamental minor-league basketball coach who learns about himself through having to coach a group of young people with intellectual disabilities. Yes, I know, talk about cliched. But […]

Woody and the champions

The Expendables 4 ★★½ THE highlight of the fourth film in The Expendables franchise is a motorcycle chase on a container ship. That is something I haven’t seen before, as opposed to 99 percent of The Expendables 4 which repeats story and elements of not just the last three films […]

Expendables becoming expendable

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?