Leviticus Review: Too Close to Its Influences to Carve Its Own Path ★★★½

The film doesn’t shy away from this influence and in fact sets out its stall early by essentially picking up where It Follows left off – a swimming pool. I worked in swimming pools for almost ten years and even I still find them creepy and in this grimy and run down location we see a young […]

Disclosure Day Review: Familiar Territory in Spielberg’s Latest Alien Encounter ★★★.5

There was a lot of hype surrounding Disclosure Day, with arguably the worlds most successful director returning to one of his core themes in the extraterrestrial, albeit coming in from a slightly different angle, but I’m sure many of us were left wondering if the man himself could ‘Spielberg’ us one more time. It’s hard […]

Full Disclosure: Aliens, Anxiety and VHS Nightmares

There is no thought more powerful and paralysing to my anxiety addled brain than ‘what if?’ In my adult life this can take on a whole load of monstrous variations from some of the most deranged and disturbing ideations to every time I sit down in the cinema, without fail, wondering if I’ve forgotten to […]

Just here for The Drama- A Review ★★★★.5

The show of The Drama started for me, before the film itself began. It was the 7pm screening on a holiday Friday but even still I was surprised by the numbers filing in, the buzz in the air not too dissimilar from that of a wedding congregation taking their seats with an excited expectation. In […]

Paul Sng on “Reality Is Not Enough”: Crafting a Documentary With Irvine Welsh

Sometimes things line up oddly perfectly and when I heard of this screening of a new Irvine Welsh documentary, Paul Sng’s ‘Reality Is Not Enough’, it seemed to be one of those occasions. The screening, along with a Q&A with the director, was taking place in a relatively new cinema in my hometown of Montrose […]

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple – Gang Initiations, Duran Duran and a Myriad of Malevolence ★★★★.5

There is trepidation going into any sequel or further franchise instalment, a fear that the new property won’t live up to what came before or worse still will even damage its predecessors in some way by tarnishing your feelings towards them. Given some of the tonal shifts and wild stabs that the first 28 Years […]

Not Quite 28 Years Later: When a Franchise Turns Formative

“at that time, just knowing a film with such a thrilling concept existed was the purest joy, even if I had no access to it.” It’s not quite 28 years Later now, it’s around 22 and a half and of course I’ve seen 28 Days Later countless times, I’ve seen it on the big screen, […]

The truth is I’m a bad person: when seeing yourself on screen turns bittersweet

Within the first ten minutes of Together I was squirming in my Cineworld seat. It wasn’t the body horror (which would come much later in the film), I wasn’t annoyed by someone using their phone and I hadn’t accidentally worn the wrong underwear. No, this was something much worse: I was relating to the film. […]

A Few Small Tears: the sentimental heart of Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘One Battle After Another’

After three viewings of Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest feature, I’m still not sure why Leonardo Dicaprio uttering the words ‘from here on out it’s one battle after another’ evokes such a whirlwind of emotions within me. Granted, it contains the title of the movie and every music fan knows the power that just saying the […]