Film Review: 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

When the first trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane appeared mere weeks before the film was due to come out - a shocking turn of events in an age of drip-feeding information, release dates being announced years in advance, and teasers for trailers for movies that won't come out for many months - and once it became clear that it wasn't a direct sequel to Matt Reeves' Cloverfield, the first thing I thought of, as is so often the case, was Halloween III: Season of the Witch. The third installment in the venerable horror franchise created by John Carpenter and Debra Hill is most famous for being the only one not to feature the character of Michael Myers, instead focusing on a supernatural storyline that had nothing to do with the slasher genre that defined (and was defined by) the previous films.

Film Review: The Monuments Men (2014)

The core argument of The Monuments Men is one that is provocative in the abstract, though less than compelling as the driving force for a lavishly produced war drama. In telling the true story of art scholars who went to the European Front to find, identify and protect great works of art stolen by the Nazis, co-star, co-writer and director George Clooney reframes the conflict as not just being between conflicting ideologies. It was also a battle for history, and the Nazi effort to steal art - and, later in the war, to destroy it - was an attempt to rewrite the very history of the world. In that context, the efforts of the Monuments Men to protect the past seem important, even noble, rather than something flip or insubstantial when compared to the death happening around them.

Film Review: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

From its first scene, in which its title character suffers a beating at the hands of a shadowy, unknown man, Inside Llewyn Davis is a disorientating, darkly funny and quietly menacing experience. Set in and around the Greenwich Village folk scene in 1961, it covers a week or so in the life of Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), a folk singer who is perpetually broke, and spends pretty much the entirety of the film shuffling through the brutal New York winter, trying to bum a cigarette or grab a night's sleep on a couch from anyone he can, all the while hustling to get a few dollars together. As he pinballs from crisis to crisis, most, if not all of which are problems of his own making, he contemplates his sputtering career, failed relationships and dying friendships. Oh, and there's a cat who figures in there somehow.

Film Review: Monsters University (2013)

The biggest obstacle facing any prequel is that of keeping an audience engaged even when they know the broad strokes of how the story will finish. It's not a problem unique to prequels - most people were probably aware that Lincoln wasn't going to end with an Animal House-style freeze frame explaining how awesome Abe's second term and subsequent retirement were - but it's still hard to make what is essentially back story compelling when the blueprint has already been laid out so thoroughly before. At their worst, this can result in films that consist of little more than colouring in parts of a picture which is already pretty complete, and in the process runs the risk of marring it with talk of midichlorians or amnesia bullets.

Film Review: Monsters, Inc. (2001)

In storytelling, there is a tendency to place too much emphasis on endings as indicators of quality. One of the chief criticisms of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is that it's a film which ends four times before it actually finishes, and even the most ardent fans of Stephen King tend to agree that his books are great right until something dumb like a giant spider shows up in place of an actual finale. These might not invalidate the rest of the story being told, which could still be a hugely enjoyable, even beautiful experience up until that point (though if you found the preceding 9 hours of little people walking through lovely locations to be interminable, I can easily see why Return of the King's stuttering finale would be hellish) but since endings are what an audience takes away, they'll be the thing that they remember most clearly.

Film Review: Red State (2011)

Growing up, Kevin Smith was a very important figure in my development as a film lover. His debut, Clerks, was one of the first films I had ever seen that seemed to say that just about anyone could make a film, no matter how limited their resources or knowledge of film-making. For myself and many others, Smith's lack of pretensions, both in his art and in his persona, made him one of the most accessible figures in modern film-making. There was, and remains, something incredibly inspiring about his story, about the idea that a convenience store clerk from New Jersey can make a film that speaks to a large number of people, then turn that goodwill into a career doing what he loves: making movies.