Christopher Machell
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Film Review: Colour Out of Space
★★★☆☆ An adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story The Colour Out of Space, filmmaker Richard Stanley’s latest is a richly textured, if not entirely coherent, descent into madness, body horror and technological anxiety. After a meteorite crashes in the Gardner family farm their well is poisoned. One would be well-advised not to drink the sparkling…
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Film Review: Little Joe
★★★★☆ In her sixth feature, Austrian director Jessica Hausner brings an intense, minimalistic creepiness to this science fiction tale of floral manipulation. Read as a loose adaptation of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Little Joe is a gripping and visually striking satire of essentialist maternal instinct and the contemporary anxiety of wellbeing. Opening on a…
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Adaptations: Post-war anxiety in Hitchcock’s The Birds
Daphne du Maurier’s short story The Birds was published in 1952 in her collection The Apple Tree. Telling the story of a Cornish village besieged by marauding birds, it would be adapted several times for TV, film and radio, most famously in Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the same name. Hitchcock’s The Birds marked the British…
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Film Review: Emma.
★★★☆☆ Autumn de Wilde’s debut feature – and the fourth big-screen version of Jane Austen’s novel Emma – is a handsome and witty if slightly uninspiring adaptation buoyed by a surfeit of game British acting talent and a quite delightful turn from rising star Anya Taylor-Joy. De Wilde’s film serves an interesting counterpoint to Armando…
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Film Review: First Love
★★★☆☆ Japanese horror maestro Takashi Miike is back with this dive into comic book-style, hyper-violent crime noodling. First Love is not among the director’s best work – not by a long shot. Nevertheless, there’s enough of Miike’s trademark bonkers sensibilities to recommend this pulpy tale of crooked cops and warring Yakuza. First Love opens in the…
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Film Review: Birds of Prey
★★★★☆ Margot Robbie stars as Harley Quinn in Cathy Yan’s spin-off to 2016’s Suicide Squad. But where its predecessor was a mirthless, incoherent mess, Birds of Prey is a chaotic, violent multi-coloured joy; easily the best of DC’s extended universe films to date and the perfect vehicle for its star’s inimitable energy. Things aren’t going…
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Baftas 2020: Short film nominees review
This year’s Baftas ceremony is mere hours away and with a host of strong, if largely homogenous, feature contenders for the big gongs most eyes are on these nominations. Nevertheless, the shorts offer an equally compelling catalogue of filmic excellence.
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Film Review: Queen & Slim
★★★★☆ Music video director Melina Matsoukas brings her considerable talents to the big screen with Queen & Slim, a crime drama fitted out like Bonnie and Clyde but driven by the engine of contemporary racial politics. The gorgeous framing that characterises her earlier work serves this debut beautifully, while understated turns from British actors Daniel Kaluuya…
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Film Review: Jojo Rabbit
★★★★☆ “Fuck off, Hitler!” The spirit of Taika Waititi’s satirical comedy is certainly clear in its demands for the monster supreme of national socialism to kindly do one. While the spectre of global fascism seems to once again be rearing its head, Waititi finds a way to turn his unique brand of humour to the…
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Film Review: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
★☆☆☆☆ Rey (Daisy Ridley) is continuing her force training, now under the tutelage of Leia (a disturbingly reanimated Carrie Fisher). Meanwhile, we are told that Supreme Leader Kylo Ren is consumed with a quest to find the ultimate evil in the galaxy. Forty years and nine episodes in the making, can J.J. Abrams’ capper to…
