“Chris, please explain to the normie: we need to finish what we’ve started.” Justine Christian Wolff’s introduction in The Accountant was a pleasant surprise in its blend of crime thriller and character study, provided one approached Wolff as a neurodivergent superhero. It has taken nearly a decade for him return, following a muted initial reception […]
Some people have rescue pets; I have started to rescue miniatures from ebay. The idea was to buy some cheap miniatures in poor condition to see if I could breathe some new life into them. Here are the results from my first attempt. As a teenager I was drawn more to the Warhammer fantasy setting […]
“We’re mortal men. We serve an ideal. We cannot always be ideal.” Cardinal Wozniak Last year’s Conclave proved to be prophetically well-timed, with the death of Pope Francis just a few months later resulting in the secretive papal selection process that the film portrays. The new head of the Catholic church is chosen by the […]
“Is there any way out of here that doesn’t involve garbage?” Lilith The cartoonishly violent videogame world of Pandora has sufficient space for nuanced narratives, as shown by Telltale’s Tales of the Borderlands spin-off. With a bizarrely accomplished cast (including Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis) and colourful wasteland visuals, Borderlands seemed like it might […]
“Why am I here?” Stephanie Smothers It is a fair question seven years after the martini-fuelled comedy/thriller A Simple Favor proved forgettable despite the chemistry between its leads. With Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick returning along with director Paul Feig, the only missing ingredient was a compelling reason to reunite the characters. Two hours later […]
“Is he peeking or probing?” Sam Warfare emerged directly from last year’s Civil War as a collaboration between the film’s director Alex Garland and military advisor Ray Mendoza. Here, they co-direct to portray a single encounter Mendoza experienced in Iraq in 2006, reconstructed from the memories of his Navy SEAL platoon. Warfare is unadorned in […]
“Once you start asking those questions you can’t stop. So we don’t ask. We record so other people ask.” Lee Alex Garland’s timely depiction of a USA descended into civil war will hit too close for some, while not engaging in sufficient reflection for others. Garland makes a deliberate choice to sidestep party politics — […]
“In school, I learned about the women who had been murdered in the Medieval witch trials. Some of them were healers and midwives. Some of them had lost their minds.” Elizabeth Sankey Something of a bait and switch, Elizabeth Sankey’s documentary is a fascinating personal examination of postpartum psychosis and recovery presented through an artistic […]
“You fabulous thing. You crawled out of a pitiless grave, deeper than hell.” Dementus Returning to the wasteland with a revenge-fuelled origin story for Fury Road’s Furiosa, George Miller delivers a solid prequel with more of the same visual spectacle. The vibrantly oversaturated desert and high octane action are still arresting if not as if […]
“Look at what happened to our families, look at where we came from. I mean, who isn’t — you know, who isn’t wrought?” David Kaplan Jesse Eisenberg’s second directorial outing is a low-key exploration of grief and family through two cousins on a Holocaust tour of Poland to honour their recently deceased grandmother. Eisenberg’s background […]
“Does evil come from within us, or from beyond?” Ellen Hutter I was surprised that an auteur like Robert Eggers would choose to remake an existing film, but unlike the plethora of creatively bankrupt recent remakes he has gone back 100 years to F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent film, blending it with a dash of Tod […]
I wrote about my mother’s corticobasal degeneration syndrome diagnosis and recent, rapid decline at the start of the year. We were aware that her accelerated deterioration meant that she may only have a few months left with us — in fact it turned out to be a matter of days, and she passed away peacefully […]
I spent much of my free time in 2024 painting miniatures, so that will be the illustrative focus of my recap to provide some colour in what has been a difficult year. Returning to this hobby after two decades was not simply fortuitous, but a way to find the meditative headspace I have needed to […]
Back in 2018, one of the first tabletop games I crowdfunded was Tainted Grail, a narratively dense take on the Arthurian legends from a team of Polish designers called Awaken Realms. Think a cross between the Knights of the Round Table and The Witcher and you will have an idea of the grim, corrupted world […]
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 […]
Unplayer One is a recurring feature exploring games in way that should appeal to those who enjoy art irrespective of the medium. Unlike other review posts, these are likely to contain major spoilers so, if you have any intention of playing the game in question, please do so before reading. In 2008 the storied action-platformer series Prince of Persia […]
Continuing from last year, I am again composing a top ten list of films (a week later than intended). Some readers will know that I have reduced my day job to four days a week, which has given me more time to watch and review films this year. That led to a considerable increase with […]
I. Iona — Harvest Iona inhaled deeply, closing her eyes to appreciate the world around her. The crisp morning air bore base notes of redwood and cedar, grounding a grassy aroma perfumed with top notes of rose and lily. Her face bloomed into a wide grin as she trekked along the Syon Vista toward Kew […]
It was already 10:30pm when Evelyn Carr arrived at the yellow door of ‘Knighting Gail’, a small basement jazz bar in the back streets of Notting Hill. She removed her press card lanyard and slipped it into a coat pocket, banishing thoughts of the office and acrimony over byline attributions. Closing her umbrella, she ducked […]