Released: 18th August
Seen: 20th November
There’s been a strange trend recently of people pretending that horror films have never been political before roughly 2016. It might seem harsh to say they’re pretending but the alternative is to assume they’re just incredibly media illiterate. Horror as a genre has been political since the start and horror in film is regularly political, even if it’s incredibly subtle about it.
Continue reading “Men (2022) – Uggh, Men”
Released: 18th August
Seen: 16th November
There really is nothing quite like a gangster film, it’s such a fascinating underground world that can often lead to a story full of intrigue, backstabbing and murder if done right. Of course, the problem is that there have been so many truly great films in this genre that it’s hard to do something to stand out. You could go the Guy Ritchie route with something like The Gentlemen and make a big broad comedy full of fast quipping characters, a ton of extravagant action scenes and just blow the budget on going all out or you could take the route The Outfit takes and be a little quieter, calculated and generally intriguing.
Continue reading “The Outfit (2022) – See My Vest”
Released: 29th September
Seen: 16th November
2022 is turning out to be a fantastic year for horror, every month just seems to have another great horror flick for fans of the genre to enjoy. Not only has Horror as a genre been doing great, but the kind of horror that’s striking it big is so varied. Films like Terrifier 2, Barbarian, Scream, Hellraiser, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Nope and X are just a handful of horror titles that’ve come out this year and turned this into one of those years that horror fans will mark as a turning point for the genre. Smile is just another film to throw on the pile that we will point to in years to come when proclaiming 2022 to be one of the best years for horror in quite a long time.
Also, time to issue a content warning, this film deals heavily with ideas of suicide and mental illness and those will need to be discussed so consider this your trigger warning.
Continue reading “Smile (2022) – It’s Smile Time!”
Released: 27th October
Seen: 15th November
In 1894 there was a film released that is known as “The Dickson Experimental Sound Film”, the first film produced for the Kinetoscope which was one of the progenitors of the modern-day projector. This film would be very culturally significant as it is the first known sound film to exist and while the technology wasn’t perfect it was an important step in developing the ability to combine sound with image… that film featured a man with a violin playing a tune from the opera Les Cloches de Corneville and two other men dancing together to it. As far as we know, this is the earliest gay imagery captured on film and it lasts for about 17 seconds.
Since then we’ve made leaps and bounds in terms of progress, gay stories are getting told more often in media and there are more roles for gay actors – and now, thanks to Bros, we finally have a gay romantic comedy that was written by and stars predominantly LGBTQ people that was released by a major studio… a thing that it’s apparently taken until 2022 for us to get around to doing, so that’s fun.
Continue reading “Bros (2022) – Duuuude”
Over on Soda & Telepaths we’re trying something new, a list of the 10 best moments in the upcoming Black Panther: Wakanda Forever movie. It’s a good movie, go see it and then go read the list and see if you agree with me
If you want a short proper review (I’ve waited YEARS to type this line)… is good, go see
Released: 18th August
Seen: 7th November
The two-hander is a fascinating thing in film. Placing a pair of actors in a room and letting the conversation between them carry the film from start to finish is something very few can actually pull off. There’s a not-insignificant risk to it, it can make the work feel stagey and if the two actors lack chemistry or drop the ball for even so much as a second it can all fall apart. However, if the leads have chemistry and are able to keep up with each other and the script is good enough then a two-hander can be something truly magical… Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is something truly magical.
Continue reading “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022) – Charmed, I’m Sure”
Released: 4th November
Seen: 6th November
If there is any genre that would be on my dislike pile it would be the biopic, after all despite each one being about a very different artist, they all end up being the same. A traumatic childhood, hard-fought battle to get a recording contract, a surprise hit, lots of drugs, more hits, more drugs, more hits while doing more drugs culminating in a massive meltdown during a very important concert and redemption set to the tune of one of the most famous songs of that performer’s career.
Continue reading “Weird: The Al Yankovich Story (2022) – Now You Know”
Released: 4th November
Seen: 5th November
In 1952, Alan Turing began a relationship with a man named Arnold Murray who he met outside a cinema. On the 23rd of January, an acquaintance of Murray’s broke into Turing’s home and performed a burglary, a crime that Turing naturally reported to the police. However, during the course of that investigation, the relationship between Murray and Turing (which was notably sexual in nature) came to light and soon both Murray and Turing were arrested as acts of homosexual sex violated laws surrounding Gross Indecency.
Continue reading “My Policeman (2022) – All Cops Are Boring”
Released: 10th October
Seen: 2nd November
One of the wild things about horror films is how quickly they can jump on something new and find the terror in it, take the mundane and make it into the malicious. Recent years have shown a lot of ways this can be done, from something as simple as an app being turned into an instrument of foretold death in Countdown to a pair of jeans turning into sentient killers in Slaxx and even if the films aren’t great, they can at least be interesting on some level… and then there’s Grimcutty, a film that takes the concept of a killer meme and turns it into boring sludge that isn’t interesting even if you squint.
Oh, and trigger warning for discussions of suicide because that’s a major theme of this film and it’s impossible not to talk about it on some level.
Continue reading “Grimcutty (2022) – Meme To Death”
Released: 8th September
Seen: 2nd November
In 1962, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis starred in the surprising late career hit What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? which was a touchstone in both of their careers and also inadvertently created a new subgenre known as Hagsploitation, or Grande Dame Guignol. The genre itself revolved around older female actresses playing characters who used to be glamorous stars but have turned into mentally unstable recluses who occasionally do a little bit of murder.
Continue reading “Torn Hearts (2022) – Whatever Happened To Peg Bundy?”independent and curious
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