Because Everybody Else Has One

It's been a while since I did a blog-exclusive review but this little gem of a film can far too easily escape the attention of those looking for a worthwhile time at the pictures.  It seems to have become something of a tradition since I started reviewing films for there to be at least one truly excellent coming-of-age film released per year. From the Way, Way Back to Ladybird, what may well be my single favourite genre of them all has really come to the table this century with funny, poignant and humane films about that most peculiar and often painful period in anyone's life: adolescence. Eighth Grade not only stands tall in that tradition but for those of us who fell or fall anywhere on the spectrums of introversion, social-awkwardness or anxiety (I tick all three boxes; yay me!), it will pack a particularly powerful and far, far too truthful emotional punch. And I'm really not underplaying the power of the film to reach out and grab your inner socially-anxious tee...

We've already had Hollywood trying its luck with Ghost in the Shell so how does it fare with another iconic manga property? Like Ghost in the Shell, adapting Alita: Battle Angel has been, if nothing else, more interesting than one might expect... This review is also on Channel 24 What It’s About Hundreds of years in the future, much of the world lays in ruins as a nuclear World War between Earth’s sky-cities have decimated humanity. One of the planet’s last remaining sky-cities, Tiphares, hovers above a place known simply as Scrapyard City, so named because it is literally a dumping ground for the trash and waste coming from the affluent city above it. When biomechanical expert, Dr. Ido, finds a cyborg head amongst the heaps of garbage routinely discarded from Tiphares, he attaches the head to a mechanical body that he made for his deceased daughter. The transplant is a success but the cyborg has no idea who she is or where she’s from so Ido adopts her as his own and na...

After being spoiled of late with really excellent horror, is there still space for a horror film that is simply very solid? I hope so... This review is also up on Channel 24 . What it’s about As Miles, a gifted child, grows from being a developmentally advanced baby into an exceptionally intelligent eight-year old, his parents start to notice that his brilliance is matched by increasingly worrisome behaviour. Are Miles’ increasingly anti-social actions a result of mental illness or something far more sinister? And what does the death of a ruthless serial killer on the day of Miles’ birth have to do with all of it? As mother, Sarah, and father, John, find their loving relationship taking strain, Sarah finds herself in a battle for the soul of her son, even as he becomes a greater and greater risk to them both. What we thought It’s been weeks since I finished watching it, but I’m still basking in the glow of Netflix’s sublime The Haunting of Hill House and it’s hard for ...