Martian Cold War. Life not as we know it takes down a Martian expedition. It’s a cold, people. Bacteria. Great, and I forgot to pack the Vicks Vaporub… THE LAST DAYS ON MARS boldly breaks conventions even whilst being one big convention. Within the framework of this clichéd thriller, writers Sydney J. Bounds and Clive Dawson, and director Ruairi Robinson … Read More
THE PROPHECY
Angels In The Outhouse. Angel Gabriel comes to Earth to extract a soul and destroy heaven. Like the catholic religion, THE PROPHECY is confused as hell. A spine-shivering opening sequence: camera pans down on a lone figure standing over a charred skeleton – of what appears to be a human with wings, bird-like appendages scorched into the ochre stone ground. … Read More
SHUTTER ISLAND
Just dropped in – to see what condition my condition was in… The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. –John Milton, Paradise Lost. What a beautiful, sophisticated, mind-leveling thriller! SHUTTER ISLAND is not “scary,” but creepy, disturbing and filled with enough tension and intrigue to drown a plush … Read More
THE FOURTH KIND
Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Idiocy. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. — Carl Sagan. Someone’s been reading Whitley Strieber’s Communion. And believing it. There are two kinds of hoaxes. The First Kind catches the public off guard with its ersatz authenticity (Piltdown Man, Orson Welles’s broadcast of War Of The Worlds, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT); the Second Kind requires … Read More
THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT
So silly it’s scary. THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT is advertised as “the most terrifying movie ever made.” It is. If you’re five. A family moves into a haunted house in Connecticut. Stupid things happen. The End. Okay, okay, so you want some evidence… Right outa the gate: “Based On True Events.” This phrase has become as meaningless as “whiter whites” … Read More
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
Youth is wasted on the Pitt. For the longest time, I held off on watching this movie because I thought it would be as depressing as rain on a Monday morning. I was wrong. It’s worse; like seeing police lights in your rearview mirror, like finding your lover in bed with someone else, like watching an AMERICAN IDOL winner attempt … Read More
SHOOTER
Shooter is Sharp but Misses the Marky. SHOOTER achieves that balance between action, political skullduggery, pretty orange explosions and Mark Wahlberg’s big guns (and I don’t mean his military sniper rifles), which notches it a cut above most political thrillers of its paranoid ilk – until its pat ending. With his shrapnel-explosive performance in THE DEPARTED, Wahlberg shrugged off the … Read More