Category Archives: Review in Brief
Review in Brief: Run (2020)
Non-specific spoilers for RUN ahead. If there’s one mystery-thriller movie trope that really needs to die, it’s the Convenient Incriminating Evidence Box. Aneesh Chaganty’s sophmore feature is far less assured than SEARCHING, being about 50 minutes of a decent thriller … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Promising Young Woman (2020)
With PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN writer-director Emerald Fennell has crafted one of the most challenging and keen-edged debut films in years, and it’s making just the right kinds of people mad. Cassie (Carey Mulligan) spends her evenings pretending to be blackout … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Baby Done (2020/21)
A lot of New Zealand comedies have a very distinct feel, and BABY DONE from writer-director team Curtis Vowell and Sophie Henderson echoes the voice of its producer Taika Waititi. This is deadpan-funny, heartfelt and unafraid to make its protagonist … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Judas and the Black Messiah (2020)
JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH tells a heightened version of a story that everyone should know, and tells it with righteous anger. Unfortunately some elements of the film’s abundant style do admittedly get in the way, like the depiction of … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Minari (2020)
There’s no debate, MINARI is an American film – what could be more American than a tale of a family buying a farm and dreaming of living off the land? It’s astounding that the film features two of the first … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Ammonite (2020)
AMMONITE is a labour-intensive, impeccably detailed and tender film, the second from tactile master Francis Lee. This is a story of passions, of the agony of being starved of them, of being kept from them. Direct comparisons to PORTRAIT OF … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Life in a Day 2020 (2021)
Despite a worldwide pandemic, in 2020 life went on. Ten years on from crowd-sourced documentary LIFE IN A DAY Kevin Macdonald and his team did it again, this time picking 25 July 2020 as the date of record. This world-spanning … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)
Exhausted as so many of us might be by all the needlessly aggressive online discourse attached to this, it’s finally here, what is apparently the closest we are ever going to get to seeing Zack Snyder’s original vision for JUSTICE … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Space Sweepers (2021)
SPACE SWEEPERS is an ambitious, vibrant, zongo Korean space opera that runs a bit long and perhaps suffers from being overstuffed with too many ideas, but you go with it because you grow to love this dysfunctional crew/family of misfits … Continue reading
SSP Thinks Film 