The Survivor  ★★★½ BEN Foster can almost do no wrong on screen. The American actor tends to fly under the radar but always turns in a strong performance including in recent films like Hell or High Water, Leave No Trace, Galveston and Hostiles. His latest, the biographical drama The Survivor, may […]

Foster a force of nature

Saloum  ★★★ YOU could probably count on two hands the number of Senegalese supernatural thrillers. But if all of them are as interesting as Saloum then they are worth diving into. This is Congolese writer/director Jean Luc Herbulo’s second feature and he is obviously a Tarantino disciple. The idiosyncratic American’s […]

Senegal…Tarantino style

The Good Neighbour ★★½ TALK about coincidences…The Good Neighbour just has too many contrived ones for its own good. An American journalist, David (Luke Klientank), arrives in a Latvian city to work for a press agency run by an old friend. Grant (Bruce Davidson) organises a house and his old […]

Good Neighbour too contrived

Sputnik  ★★★½ SPUTNIK has set Egor Abramenko on a successful trajectory. The 2021 horror sci-fi thriller was the Russian writer/director’s first feature and is already set to be remade by Hollywood. It’s not hard to see why. Sputnik is a very tense affair with major Alien overtones. It tells the […]

Sputnik holds something deeper

I Came By ★★★ ENGLISH actor Hugh Bonneville has had a comfortable acting career mostly playing stiff upper lip, generally inoffensive types. The epitome of these has of course been his role as Robert Grantham in the Downton Abbey television series and two recent films. I Came By gives him the […]

Bonneville steps out of the Abbey

Orphan: First Kill ★★★ THE 2009 horror film Orphan included a terrific twist that greatly elevated an otherwise standard evil kid story. To review 2020’s Orphan: First Kill is almost impossible to do without spoiling the previous film. You can go into First Kill completely cold and enjoy an above average […]

Back to a new twist

Beast ★★★ FANCY watching Idris Elba fight a lion? I mean, who wouldn’t. The American action/thriller Beast gives you that and a fair bit more. Elba plays Dr Nate Samuels, a widowed father of two teenage daughters who is taking them to South Africa where their late mother was born […]

Elba stalked by tracking shots

The Last House on the Left (2009 remake) ★★★½ “Stomach-churningly anti-human”  is the description given by the New York Daily News in its 2009 review of The Last House on the Left remake. It’s a nice turn-of-phrase but also an hysterical one as there are dozens of horror films more […]

Remake wants it both ways

The Invitation ★★½ AFTER a reasonable first act the American supernatural horror film The Invitation loses much of its impact. Don’t mistake this film for a couple of better horrors with the same title. This is the 2022 release directed by Jessica M. Thompson and starring Nathalie Emmanuel and Thomas […]

Invitation from a vampire

DC League of Super Pets  ★★★ COMBINING super-heroes with lovable pets seems like a children’s film match made in heaven. And the computer-animated DC League of Super-Pets is mostly just that. The visuals and very crisp and there is always something interesting happening on the screen. Dwayne Johnson and Kevin […]

Super Pets for Super Heroes

The Sweeney: Paris  ★★½ THERE isn’t much to the 2015 French actioner The Sweeney: Paris. Also known as The Squad or Antigang, the English title obviously trades upon the following for the old British crime series The Sweeney with John Thaw and Dennis Waterman. The Gallic version also has plenty […]

Gallic Sweeney not a patch on original

Karen  ★★½ WHAT an odd film Karen is. The writer and director, Coke Daniels, has made a dozen previous films but none have had decent reviews. Karen continues the trend with many terrible reviews and Golden Raspberry Awards for worst film, director, screenplay and actress. And it has one of […]

Karen’s split personality