Tag: film
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Heretic (2024)
“Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?” This quote from Edgar Allan Poe opens John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980), but is arguably more applicable to Heretic, the new horror film for Halloween 2024, starring Hugh Grant as an oddball who hosts a couple of young Mormon missionaries straight out…
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American Pie (1999)
American Pie wasn’t the first sex comedy to up the raunch and gross-out levels before Tom Green pushed them to their apex (nadir?) in Freddy Got Fingered. But it’s a milestone in teen sex comedies, sliding them a little further out of the Stone Age – as represented by entries in the ‘80s – to…
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2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
I just saw Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 science fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey for its 55th anniversary at my local cinema and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’d seen it before but previously felt that it was a good but cold film, lacking in story apart from the section with HAL 9000 and without human interest. I…
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Infinity Pool (2023)
I just saw Brandon “Son of David” Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool and it was very silly. It was a work of fart, on loan from a fart museum. All of my analysis can’t improve on a perfect review that my friend gave in one sentence: “It was too long and now my eyes hurt.” None of…
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Prom Night (1980)
This is a slasher film to make you appreciate both the fine artistic craft of the original Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street, and the crude efficiency of the Friday the 13th sequels. Heck, even the original Friday the 13th wasn’t this dull. I’d be interested to see the 2008 reboot of Prom Night…
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A Rainy Day in New York (2019)
Set mostly over 24 hours, A Rainy Day in New York is a romantic comedy starring Timothee Chalamet as the evocatively named Gatsby Welles, a gambler and gadabout who takes his girlfriend, student journalist Ashleigh (Elle Fanning), for a romantic time in the Big Apple. Both are, however, sidetracked by misadventures and temptations as rain…
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The Pope’s Exorcist (2023)
I just saw The Pope’s Exorcist and it was really funny, which I guess is a shame as it wasn’t trying to be, I don’t think. It stars Russell Crowe as the real-life Father Amorth, who in the late 1980s visits a Spanish abbey being renovated by an American widow when a demon possesses one…
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When a Stranger Calls (1979)
There’s a quote on the poster for When a Stranger Calls that describes it as the most terrifying film the critic’s ever seen. What film they saw I can’t say, but I’d be shocked if it was the same one I did. We begin with Carol Kane playing a babysitter for a doctor and his…
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Scream 4 (2011)
Having recently seen Scream 6, I decided to give 4 a whirl on Prime and somewhat to my surprise had a blast with it. I ignored it when it first came out in 2011 because as much as I love this franchise, at that point I felt that it was done. Sidney Prescott’s trauma was…
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John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)
I just saw John Wick: Chapter 4 and it was a lot of fun. It’s the type of action extravaganza that perfectly streamlines both its plot and characterisation and uses elegant pacing so that it never becomes monotonous or dull, at least not for me. At a runtime of just under 3 hours, that’s very…
I Just Saw 