Category Archives: Review in Brief
Review in Brief: Evil Dead Rise (2023)
Who needs Ash? Lee Cronin’s addition to the Evil Dead franchise is just as, if not more, mischievously gnarly as the Sam Raimi-masterminded films, but he keeps things contained and personal throughout. Swapping out the usual cabin in the woods … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
They only went and EMPIRE STRIKES BACK-ed SPIDER-VERSE. If the first film was “anyone can be Spider-Man” then this is “can (and should) Spider-Man save everyone?”. 2 years after several very different Spider-people crossed over to the world of Miles … Continue reading
Review in Brief: The Five Devils (2022/23)
THE FIVE DEVILS (I never did work out why it’s called that) is a captivating, beautiful and very weird sort-of time-travel story. The life of the Soler family is rocked when aunt Julia (Swala Emati) comes to stay and young … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2022/23)
MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON is an endearingly strange and melancholic live-action/stop-motion animation hybrid mockumentary. An anthropomorphic shell called Marcel (Jenny Slate) lives with his grandma Connie (Isabella Rossellini) in the corner of an Air BnB and wonders where … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Rye Lane (2023)
Rom-coms have an established grammar and beats everyone expects you to hit, but RYE LANE follows its own rules. A chance meeting in a club bathroom sees two lost souls find each other following all-time bad breakups. Dom (David Jonsson) … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Women Talking (2022)
It’s a clear sign of writer-director Sarah Polley’s skill and awareness that her beautiful, hard-hitting and verbose piece about processing sexual assault isn’t wall-to-wall misery. Yes, the debate this community of Mennonite women are having is important and will change … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Tár (2022)
I don’t know if you’ve heard, but TÁR is a bit good. An often uncomfortably close character study of a complicated genius, we follow conductor Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) hailed as the greatest of her generation as she goes through … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Decision to Leave (2022)
Park Chan-wook’s latest is less extreme than the films he’s most famed for (that’s the Vengeance Trilogy, particularly OLDBOY for most audiences) but is just as dazzlingly stylish and intriguing to unpack, a good deal sexier (OK, not sexier than … Continue reading
Review in Brief: Something in the Dirt (2022)
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s follow-up to the weird THE ENDLESS and the (slightly) more mainstream SYNCHRONIC is another low-key, cerebral sci-fi, this time filmed mostly in Moorhead’s own LA apartment out of Lockdown necessity. Two new neighbours discover a … Continue reading
SSP Thinks Film 