“Today, tomorrow, yesterday — it’s all the same.” Nyles Palm Springs is the another addition to the recently expanding genre of time loop movies that owe a debt to Groundhog Day but, where many are merely derivative of the 1993 progenitor, Palm Springs succeeds in finding its own voice. Its greatest strength is a risk, […]
“Honey, I know it’s hard to hear this, but your dad and I had a long talk and we agreed it would be best for all of us if you would just stop being who you are and doing the things you love.” Mary There is always a certain level of mythologising in any biopic […]
“I have the best drivers. You’re going to give them the best cars.” Charas Cars, criminals and crooked cops: Lost Bullet mixes these key ingredients to concoct a lean action crime thriller with a hefty dose of French style. Stuntman and actor Alban Lenoir is French action cinema’s answer to Jason Statham as the honourable […]
“You know what they call trees in a forest fire? Fuel. You know what they call the trees left up when the fires go by? They call them the standing dead.” Jeanette Brinson Actor Paul Dano’s directorial debut is a 1960s family drama set in a small town that is surrounded by wildfires, a metaphor […]
“You only got away because me powers are weak! I need me gold!” Leprechaun Eviscerated by critics on release, Leprechaun fares slightly better now as a campy 90s throwback, particularly as it stars a 24-year-old Jennifer Aniston before Friends catapulted her to global fame. Although it may offer unintended entertainment in its awfulness, there is […]
“I still don’t understand the play.” Augie Steenbeck Wes Anderson’s recent films have begun to feel like pastiches of his own work. Asteroid City trades his usual literary trappings for theatrical ones, a meta narrative providing monochrome sequences — narrated by Bryan Cranston — about a play that is represented by a full-colour film in […]
“In the beginning, everything feels so alive and exciting. But time makes it predictable.” Hen Predictability is not necessarily a flaw unless a film is so focused on impressing its audience with a twist that its fumbled attempts at misdirection serve only to weaken its narrative. Foe is a perfect example of prizing surprise over […]
“I’m not the hero of this story; I’m just the stunt guy.” Colt Seavers I have a soft spot for David Leitch, the stuntman-turned-director, who has produced some of the most creative and reliably entertaining action films of the last decade, particularly as the once-staple action comedy has fallen out of favour. Loosely based on […]
I still have a battered copy of the second edition of Space Hulk, a £40 big box boardgame from the 1990s that now sells on ebay for around £200. Set in the grimdark sci-fi universe of Warhammer 40,000, the game is unfolds aboard huge spacecraft adrift in the depths of space as hulking power-armoured Space […]
Few current readers are likely to know of Palace of the Phoenix King, one of the first websites I created at the age of around 12, dedicated to my recently discovered hobby of fantasy tabletop gaming, specifically Warhammer Fantasy Battles and its dungeon-crawling sibling, Warhammer Quest. The site took its name from the monarch of […]