Category Archives: Review in Brief
Review in Brief: The Father (2020)
There have been many dementia dramas but few that attempt to put audiences in the POV of the person slipping away. THE FATHER is best seen with as little prior reading as possible, the tricky-clever ways the very building blocks … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Rare Beasts (2019/21)
Billie Piper’s directorial debut RARE BEASTS is one of the funniest and most profound, but also perhaps the most uncomfortable of films to watch this year. From an opening dinner date scene incorporating discussion of “gummy blowjobs”, Piper is completely … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Nobody (2021)
More melancholy than TAKEN and far funnier than JOHN WICK, NOBODY doesn’t exactly lay new ground for films of its ilk but is really rather satisfying on its own terms. Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) is a suburban loser stuck in … Continue reading
Review in Brief: A Quiet Place Part II (2021)
Certainly less lean and no-nonsense than the first instalment and too reliant on stupid horror movie characters acting like stupid horror movie characters, A QUIET PLACE PART II is still a mostly solid follow-up. After a pretty breathtaking opening flashback … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Psycho Goreman (2020)
If it wasn’t for all the splattery gore, this would be a great feelgood Amblin-style kids adventure movie. As it is, PSYCHO GOREMAN is an unholy union between FLASH GORDON and the TOXIC AVENGER, which is admittedly odd but works … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)
Make no mistake, SPIRAL is a SAW movie, it’s not a bold new direction for the franchise. Bafflingly someone says at one point “Jigsaw didn’t target cops”, which makes you wonder how closely people have been watching the other films … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Oxygen (2021)
An amnesiac woman (Mélanie Laurent) wakes up in a sci-fi cryo pod and has to figure out why she is there and how to escape using her logic and an only intermittently helpful AI (Mathieu Amalric). There have been lots … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Army of the Dead (2021)
Zack Snyder is clearly relieved to be done with superheroes for now and has returned to the genre that broke him through: the zombie movie. Unfortunately ARMY OF THE DEAD is an over-stuffed and largely ponderous affair. The promising premise … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Willy’s Wonderland (2021)
WILLY’S WONDERLAND is proof positive that nobody needs to make a FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S movie now. Nicolas Cage is a silent janitor with borderline superhuman capabilities seemingly imbued by energy drinks fighting animatronic mascots possessed by a cannibal cult. … Continue reading
Review in Brief: The Reckoning (2020)
It’s hard to put your finger exactly on what went wrong with THE RECKONING. It’s director Neil Marshall firmly back in his comfort zone, hybridising horror with another well-trod genre (in this case a historical witchfinder film) and he still … Continue reading
SSP Thinks Film 