Muck ★½  HOW’S this for scintillating dialogue: Woman: “Just because your date got crushed by a car doesn’t mean you can smack my arse whenever you want”. Man: “Hey, I saved your arse so I can smack it whenever I want”. Woman: “I hate it when you make sense”. The […]

Muck by name and nature

The Banshees of Inersherin  ★★★★ IT’S almost a century ago, 1923, and the Irish Civil War continues to tear much of the country apart. But, for the people of Inersherin, a small, sparsely-populated farming community on an island off the mid-west coast, life has continued untouched. On occasions signs of […]

Make the trip to Inersherin

Lost Bullet 2  ★★★ THE key to Lost Bullet 2 is in the credits. The original 2020 film was a taut crime action/thriller from France that featured impressive hand-to-hand combat, gunfire and vehicle stunt sequences, matched by a script with some decent twists and turns. Having established his characters and […]

Lost Bullet sequel ups ante

The Menu  ★★★½ RALPH Fiennes has great fun with his lead role in the wonderfully black horror comedy The Menu. He plays celebrity chef Julian Slowick who runs a high-end restaurant with the precision of an SAS unit. Hawthorne is located on a small, secluded island that can only be […]

A menu to die for

The Wonder  ★★★½ FLORENCE Pugh can pretty much do no wrong. In just eight years, through performances in The Falling, Lady Macbeth, Fighting With My Family, Midsommar, Little Women, Back Widow, and Don’t Worry Darling, she has shown the ability to be both a character actor and movie star on […]

Pugh is a wonder

Lost Bullet ★★★  THE French love their action crime thrillers and seem to be churning them out for Netflix in particular at the moment. Whether it’s a film or television series you will find at least a dozen of good quality. Of course I haven’t seen them all, but my […]

French action aplenty

A Few Good Men  ★★★½ “YOU can’t handle the truth.” Those five words are some of the most quoted in cinema history and come from the snarling mouth of US Marine Corp Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, played by the great Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. The highly-entertaining 1992 […]

Cruise and Nicholson face off

Hellhole  ★★½ POLISH director Bartosz M. Kowalski must be a fan of The Omen. The opening scenes of Kowalski’s horror film Hellhole could almost be an alternative continuation of Richard Donner’s 1976 classic ending. Spoiler alert for a 48-year-old movie…if you recall, The Omen’s climax is the flash of gunfire from […]

Polish monks look into abyss

Violent Night  ★★★½ SITTING in my seat waiting for Violent Night to start screening at a Universal Studios preview, I realised I knew nothing about the film. A quick look at IMDB and how on earth did I not know this Christmas-themed, genre/crossing release was directed by Tommy Wirkola. Ok, […]

Violent Night for naughty list

Bull ★★★½ BRITISH actor Neil Maskell is far from a household name. But he’s a creator of memorable characters whose air of quiet menace can dominate the screen, similar to the likes of Ray Winstone, Sean Harris and Stephen Graham. His first film was the ferocious Nil By Mouth in […]

Bull charges at audience

Clerks II  ★★★½ FOLLOWING the surprise success of ultra-low budget comedy Clerks in 1994 it took writer/director Kevin Smith 12 years to bring a sequel to the screen. The wait was kind of worth it. It’s great to have all the main characters back for Clerks II and there are […]

Clerks II delivers differently

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell  ★★½ HOW can you go past a movie titled Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell? Add the claim that it’s the Japanese version of Evil Dead and only runs for 70-odd minutes and I’m all in. In fact this 1995 release is more Evil […]

Bloody hell…a muscle body builder!