Film reviews and more
★★★☆☆ With an apocalyptic résumé that includes Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012, Roland Emmerich is renowned as one of the biggest purveyors of over-the-top blockbuster mayhem. White House Down (2013) is very much in the same mould; loud and unabashedly dumb, it’s fun and forgettable popcorn fodder at its purest, all wrapped up in that now-familiar […]
★★★☆☆ There are certain subjects and mediums which seem tailor-made for each other – one example being fairytales and animation. This union, which began with the release of Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed in 1926, is now continued with Manuel Sicilia’s Justin and the Knights of Valour (2013). Though not derived from one of the common fairytale sources […]
★★☆☆☆ James Wan certainly knows his way round a haunted house. Behind the camera, he’s the de facto ghost in the closet: pulling the strings of our discomfort, trespassing from within, turning the reassuring, nurturing properties of what we identify with as home into a baleful, alienating spectacle. He showed this kind of familiarity with the genre in this […]