Deathstryke

Miyazaki movies have always been a mixed bag for me. Throughout the years I have admired his ability to capture the wonder and exuberance of life through a child's eyes, to celebrate the beauty in stillness and nature, to pay reverence to ritual and the small details that give his animated characters so much life and believability. In Ghibli films characters don't talk like Gen Z brats on the subway, constantly quipping and making cynical pop culture references; they behave in a way that feels timeless and humour is something which tends to be incidental and not prompted with ironic gags, which is refreshing.

However, on the other hand, his stories can have a pointless, meandering direction with random moments that, whilst symbolic in a grander subtextual theme, don't appear to have a narrative sense or serve any purpose in the character arc. This can lead to a confused, rambling experience where the audience doesn't know why anything is happening. Also sometimes the indulgence in details like characters dressing and eating can really slow the pace and become boring. Howl's Moving Castle and Princess Kaguya are painful examples of this.

Spirited Away managed to hit that sweet spot between a traditional Western hero journey and ancient Japanese folktale, which made it compelling as all of Chihiro's actions were grounded in pursuit of a clear goal: to win her freedom from Yubaba and bring her parents back home. For the first 40 minutes it seemed as though The Boy and the Heron would do the same.

Mahito is adjusting to life in a strange house with a new stepmother, after his own mother tragically died in a fire. Miyazaki employs a live action sophistication in the way he uses the camera to keep things from Mahito's perpective. We really feel the strangeness of his new environment and the sudden intense flashbacks of the fire give a stark realness to his trauma. The film slowly builds intrigue as Mahito is pestered by a sinister talking Heron who entices Mahito to follow him to a mysterious tower beyond the trees where he insists that his mother is still alive. Initially skeptical, Mahito is forced to act when his pregnant stepmother, Natsuko -for some unexplained reason- disappears into the tower alone. Mahito must journey in to save her.

It's at this point where the film crosses into full fantasy adventure that the narrative wheels fall off. Not to say I didn't enjoy aspects of this insane rabbit hole world which, in typical Ghibli style, has some truly fantastic imagery, but with each progressively crazy thing that happens we lose sight of Mahito and his ultimate goal.

New characters keep popping up and we don't have time to really absorb who they are or their importance, so it's impossible to develop an emotional connection with any of them, the stakes just aren't set up clearly. The dialog only serves to give lazy exposition for some of the randomness. I watched it in Japanese with English subs, but honestly the subs could have been removed and it wouldn't have made it any harder to understand.

It's a deranged mushroom trip where nothing makes sense and the rules of the fantasy world constantly change. All you can do is buckle in and laugh at the absurdity.

Inevitably there will be people sifting through the debris trying to piece together a symbolic breadcrumb trail as to what Miyazaki was really trying to say with this film, but I just thought it was an incoherent mess. I'm not impressed with symbolism if it doesn't come together in a meaningful way with a character who actually learns something about their world and grows. TBATH doesn't provide satisfying answers for any of the setup in the first half of the film. What's more, the ending is so laughably abrupt that Miyazaki could have just tied it up with:

"And it was all just a dream. The end".

Loosely based on Spielberg's own life, The Fableman's explores how Sammy, a Jewish boy with a penchant for film-making navigates the ups and downs of family life and school relationships before finally getting his big break as a director.

This was meant to be Spielberg's 'Cinema Paradiso', but it's rather unfortunate to say then that the film really isn't that good. In fact it might be one of his worst.

The plot is a generic coming of age drama, heightened with overwrought performances and an indulgent, roving camera. At 2hrs 30 mins, it feels bloated with sentimentality; the dialogue is awkward and unnatural while the performances are hammed up to the point of parody. Michelle Williams as Sammy's mother, seems to be channelling Judy Garland in her drunk years, while Paul Dano sounds like a tired 50's car salesman.

It's all very cliché, by the numbers stuff, and despite a solid main performance from Gabrielle LaBelle as Sammy, it didn't resonate with me emotionally, as much as it tried to do. I was bored.

A plucky farmer strives to build a life and legacy in a miserable marshy wilderness. Little by little, the obstacles he faces chip away at his persona; the cruelness of the environment, the death of his wife, the gossip of the village people and the constant, petty attacks by a conniving neighbor cause him to become mean-spirited and distrusting. His relationships with his wife and children sour, and he gradually realizes that the path he so stoically forged may not be one anyone else wants to travel down.

It's a beautiful film, perfectly paced and the cinematography aches with melancholy. Just a really well told story, with genuine performances that depict humanity in all it's shades. A must see.

I wasn't aware that this was a retelling of an actual rape murder in Italy and so I felt there was a lack of context for much of what happens, which sort of colors my review.

The first two thirds of the film follow a group of Catholic school boys -most of whom look to be in their mid twenties with receding hairlines- and their families, observing their caricaturized machismo behavior and sexual frustration through a bleak lens, portraying all of them as shady, violent deviants in the making. The director seems to be making the argument that all the boys are capable of the crime by showing us glimpses of their toxic bro culture and unsavory views on women, but it's done in such a broad way that we never really engage with any character in particular. One boy narrates the film, but there is no real protagonist and nobody to root for, bar the two female victims who appear in the final 30 mins.

Many of the plot points feel random and irrelevant to the over-arching narrative. For example, a lot of time is spent setting up one of the boys as being gay, but this never leads to anything. In another scene there is a traumatic accident involving the narrator's younger sister, but it just comes and goes without a sense of why this event is significant, or what imprint it has left on the characters.

The final third is a drawn out re-enactment of how three of the boys lure two young women to a house, imprison, rape and murder one of them. It's disturbing and believably acted, but my lack of context led me to feel like it came out of nowhere. The ending left me with a hollow feeling and while I appreciate it brought the victim's true story to my attention, the film didn't convince me of any of the sub textual points it was making about religion or masculinity. It was overall very scattered and confused.

"Everything, Everywhere, All at Once" is a rollercoaster of glitter, color and chaotic multi-verse hopping nonsense. Beneath it all is a stretched story about a dysfunctional Asian family trying to muddle their way through life as they negotiate their relationships, heart-breaks and bitter disappointments.

While visually impressive, with a kinetic pacing and clever editing, I found it hard to be invested emotionally in the story. The absurdist slapstick humor is sporadically funny -hotdog-fingered apes reenacting the stick scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey made me snort- but more often it's just crude and stupid (yes, butt-plug fight scene, I'm looking at you). When it slips from Gen-Z 'Rick & Morty' style gags to tender family moments that are supposed to make us cry, these scenes don't really hold up. It's hard to feel moved by a mother embracing her wayward daughter when you've just watched a guy sumo squat on a dildo and dropkick someone through a door.

The script pokes at existential questions, but isn't really clever enough to come at them in a meaningful way; In fact, I don't think it's really interested in doing so. Much of the dialog is just exposition for the wacky dimension-hopping world rules, which you quickly realize don't make any sense. The sequences where characters are switching in and out of their parallel selves become so frantic, it's often hard to tell which version of a character you're looking at and what their motivation is. The writers can of course always keep leaning on the main point of the film that 'life doesn't make sense, so this doesn't need to either'. The ultimate effect on me was that, rather like our main character Evelyn, I just felt exhausted by it and rather lost.

I have to give a film kudos when it dares to try something new. There were some spectacular moments and genuine laughs, but it wasn't the masterpiece I'd hoped for.

'X' sets up all the promise of a fun, black comedy / exploitation horror that is mostly entertaining, but sabotages itself with predictable slasher tropes, hammy makeup and downright stupid plot moments.

The premise is silly, but you roll with it: a bunch of amateur pornographers rent a cabin on a farm owned by an elderly couple, where they plan to shoot the film that will kickstart their careers. But we soon find out that the elderly couple have some disturbing kinks of their own...

The first 50 minutes is a stylish homage to Tobe Hooper's ' The Texas Chainsaw Massacre', with some cool shots and editing tricks that harken back to the films of old and give everything a glossy, dreamy vibe. The tension is cranked meticulously throughout, and we know that despite all the tits and giggles, some shit is about to go down.

I was having fun up until the first kill scene, which is so over the top and implausible, I almost laughed. And then it just gets stupider from there. I didn't know whether I was supposed to be laughing or flinching, but the 'scary' moments just came off as lame and ridiculous.

It doesn't help that the old couple are clearly two younger actors in prosthetic makeup. There are some disturbing, gross out scenes I'll say, but nothing that made me jump, which is kind of what I expected from a film like this. The final denouement is laugh out loud funny, but again I'm not sure if it was intentional or just another dumb plot point.

I gave up caring and just rode the rollercoaster to the end, but I wouldn't watch it again.

I loved Robert Egger's previous films and his hauntingly dark aesthetic. I had high hopes that he would craft something spectacular with this Nordic tale of bloody-minded revenge, but The Northman was a massive disappointment.

While the visuals are as striking as I would expect, the story is a one-note bore-fest that fails to engage on an emotional level.

The first problem is that Amleth is a horrible protagonist; a big, dumb brute with an unquenchable thirst for blood, few redeeming qualities and no ideological arc. I found it hard to care about him on his quest; his decisions are often eye-rollingly stupid and reckless. Sometimes it's hard to know if the film is mocking the tragic masculine warrior-ideal, or celebrating it. I found the ritual animal dancing, loud screaming and fetishized muscle flexing just plain silly and I heard more than a few derisive sniggers from the audience at my screening.

The flowery dialog, which sounds like a teenager's attempt to write like Shakespeare, gets in the way of the characters' performances and makes the exchanges feel artificial. There is one intimate scene where Amleth is confronted by his mother, played by Nicole Kidman, which is one of the few juicy moments of acting that drew me in to the film. Most of the time, however, I felt distanced from the characters and more like I was observing an elaborately choreographed stage play than watching real people experiencing real emotion.

The violence is relentless, but not as gory as I'd anticipated. Perhaps I've been desensitized by shows like Game of Thrones, but the fact that I didn't really care about any of the characters and whether or not they survived made the blood-spilling feel inconsequential. Even some of the battle sequences were stagey and poorly choreographed, lacking the frenetic energy of a real melee.

Things are best when it leans into the fantasy elements. Bjork's creepy cameo as a blind prophetess is great. There is some interesting camera work and cool dream sequences, but 80% of the film is spectacle; The story lets it down and doesn't justify its two and a half hour runtime. Watch Gladiator instead.

Encanto, the latest misfire in Disney's increasingly dull catalogue, props up a bland story about a simple family dispute with lots of colour and spectacle, but very little in the way of real conflict or emotional stakes.

Some people have praised the film's writers for ditching the typical hero vs villain narrative and instead making the conflict about familial relationships, but for me this was not executed well enough. The source of tension in the Madrigal family appears to be superficial and petty. We're to believe that the reason the house is crumbling is because Abuela is putting so much pressure on her family to uphold their roles as magical village protectors, they can't cope with the expectation. That's it? They just need to hug it out and realise their worth to each other as a family, then -boom- cracks are mended, the magic is restored? This is in a nutshell the entire story, but we have to wade through nearly 2 hours of bland exposition and flat song and dance numbers to get there.

One reason for the rift seems to be the infamous renegade Bruno -who no one wants to talk about- abandoning them. However the reason for him running away is not at all believable. The family understand Bruno's gift is predicting the future, so why would they blame him when those visions become true? Had he willfully done something reckless or selfish to hurt the family, then I could buy his guilt and the family's resentment toward him, but the writers try so hard NOT to make anyone look like an agitator that most of the conflict feels contrived. It's just too damn friendly, all of the time! I want drama and fights, not constant apologising and hugging.

Also, big plot-hole: Why can the girl with extraordinary hearing not hear Bruno living inside the walls??

The syrupy ending where the magically giftless Mirabel realises -no surprise to anyone- that she IS the gift after all is predictable and trite. It's full of tender closeups and teary voice acting, but none of it feels earned. As a grown man who still gets a lump in my throat watching the Lion King or Land Before Time, I found myself totally unmoved and annoyed that I'd invested time for such a hokey reward.

Then there are the songs. Disney has created some gorgeous music in the past which transcends all ages and stands the test of time. Encanto falls into the trap of making songs appeal to a certain generation, with very modern pop rhythms and lots of choreographed stagey dancing. None of the songs are memorable and they replace poetic expression for bland soliloquizing where characters spell out exactly how they feel in rapid tongue-twisting bursts that are often hard to understand. The sequences are technically marvelous, but they feel like disconnected moments in the story and altogether pointless. Compare the songs in Encanto to any of the Oscar-winning Disney songs of the last four decades and it's painfully obvious how inferior they are.

The worst thing about Encanto is that despite all its failings, it will likely win the Oscar simply because it has a "nice message" and ticks the "diversity" box. A Latin story with a fully Latin cast, how progressive! When these things become more important than making an engaging film, you are set up for mediocrity.

Set across different time periods and worlds, The House features three separate short stories that all revolve around one grand manor house and the many strange goings on that happen there.

The first "And Heard Within. A Lie is Spun" tells a wonderfully dark Shining-style horror where the house itself is an evil, cosmic entity that slowly imprisons and consumes its inhabitants. The fact that the characters are wool puppets does not make what happens any less terrifying; there are some truly nightmarish moments and I think it could easily have been a standalone feature.

The second story jumps to the modern day, in which an anthropomorphic rat is attempting to refurbish and sell the house to wealthy buyers. In his way are plumbing problems...and some large bugs. This one was more comical, but in an off kilter 'something weird is going to happen' way which keeps the suspense going.

The third story is the weakest in my opinion. Set in what I presume is a post-climate change future, the house is surrounded by floodwater while a landlord cat tries to reign in her unruly hippie tenants. I thought there was probably some sub textual commentary going on about society needing to abandon capitalism and embrace a utopic socialist ideal in the face of rising sea-levels, but it's very vague, albeit charmingly acted and animated.

I do wish the stories were better linked; While the house is the same in all three stories, they don't reference each other; In the first film the building is almost sentient, whereas in the other two it's just bricks and mortar. There's no common lore that links the house from film to film, which I think was a missed opportunity. That said, each film was brilliantly executed in its own right and it's great to see Netflix embracing animation that is not afraid to tell quirky, left-of-field stories.

This is a strange, ponderous, drawn-out drama which, despite wonderful performances from Olivia Coleman and Kate Buckley, is too frustratingly vague and complex to land a proper emotional punch.

Set in a blissful holiday resort in Greece, Leda, played by Coleman, and Buckley as her younger self, is a hollow selfish woman, secretly tormented by regret having abandoned her children to pursue her career as a professor. She comes to this island to escape, but finds her peace interrupted by a rowdy American family with no manners and a sinister vibe. One of their members, Nina, a beautiful young mother clearly struggling with the same feelings of resentment toward her own daughter leads Leda to revisit her past and form a weird bond with Nina, which becomes almost obsessive.

There's a lot going on here and the film never really knows what it wants to be. At some points it feels like a murder mystery is about to kick off, at other times it's giving lowkey lesbian romance vibes with all the voyeuristic shots of Nina acting coy and sexy in her swimsuit. It builds up the mob family as a possible violent threat toward Leda, but doesn't go anywhere with it. There's also a bizarre relationship with a doll that Leda steals from a child on the beach. I might guess it symbolizes something that she feels was stolen from her and wants to regain control of, but it feels weird and poorly explained. Indeed, Leda's behavior throughout the film is erratic and difficult to understand. Perhaps she is bi-polar? It makes it tough to engage with her, although it is fun to watch Coleman act out her awkwardness with people she despises.

There are some dud performances: Paul Mescal is a bland beach attendant whose character is irrelevant to the plot. Dakota Johnson is woefully miscast as a mob princess, coming across more air-head valley girl. Her looks are magnetizing, but it's often hard to know what emotion she's striving for.

Overall, it is an interesting character study led by Coleman and Buckley, but it is also messy and overly long, with an unsatisfying conclusion. 5/10.

"Don't Look Up" is exactly how I like my satire; Blending comical absurdity with a believable caricature of reality, it exposes all the pointless greed, materialism and frivolity we have allowed to contaminate our lives, the falsehoods we accept in the face of things we do not want to hear, our tribalism, our corrupt, ineffectual political system and our hubris in the face of our own destruction.

It's both hilarious and poignant at the same time, with Di Caprio and Lawrence's scientists representing the only few voices of sanity in a mad house.

The performances are all terrific, but my favorites are Meryl Streep as the vulgar (Republican) Madam President, and Mark Rylance as tech CEO Peter Ishwell, whose shifty-eyes and quivering Jimmy Stuart-style delivery had me cracking up. Cate Blanchett also vamps it up as the boozy TV show host. They all stay on the right side of cartoonish and the humor has the same cynical snark you get in an Onion News sketch.

I was a bit wary of Arianna Grande's presence in the film -she's not a gifted actor and the few scenes where she speaks are rather weak, however her role is obviously to represent the vapidity of the social media-obsessed Gen Z crowd; she's really playing a caricature of herself (whether she's in on the joke is another thing).

Do continue to watch after the end; there's one hysterical moment after the first credits which had me rolling.

Indulgently paced with lots of charming vignettes of Italian family life and idyllic coastal landscapes, but little in the way of a coherent narrative.

The lead character, Fabietto, is a passive teen, emotionally numbed after the sudden death of his parents and struggling to know how to move forward. As a result there isn't much conflict or a specific goal for the audience to be invested in aside from some random, disconnected vignettes about his transition into adulthood, including an awkward scene where he loses his virginity to a woman in her 70's (I hope for the director's sake that bit wasn't autobiographical).

Fabietto says he wants to be a film director, but we see zero active engagement with the study of film and he never once picks up a camera.

He's just frustratingly disengaged as a protagonist and while I accept that the film is a recounting of a brief time in the director's actual life -which we all know can be random, weird and aimless- there just wasn't much going on here to excite an audience. More than anything I found myself bemused by the sporadic zany humor, the charming characters and beautiful scenery, but I wasn't emotionally invested.

There's no doubt The Piano is beautiful. The opening scene of the sailors carrying Ada and her beloved instrument onto the beach amidst the crashing waves is stunning; there are many shots like this, that show the awesomeness of the natural world, often as a reflection of the protagonist's emotional state.

I found the story to be less compelling however. It's slow, sparse on dialogue and doesn't give much information about the mute protagonist, like what her wants or fears are. I didn't find her particularly likeable.

There is also the matter of those awful Scottish accents; Why are American actors so bad at accents?

Even less convincing is the love story between Ada (Hunter) and George (Keitel). I felt there was zero chemistry between them; Keitel is such a lump of a man, I don't know why they couldn't have found someone more dashing for the role. His character, George, is so plain and boring, there's nothing about his personality that entices. It seemed silly to me that Ada would allow herself to be persuaded into bed with him, especially when his initial attempts at seduction were so blunt and rape-y. The love scenes left me cold.

It was the visuals and the haunting atmosphere that sustained me to the end. I can see why it gets praise from critics, but I can also see why it wasn't hugely successful with the general public. It just doesn't have the emotional power to match the cinematography.

While I can't fault the production, the cinematography or the acting, the story is morbid to the point of absurdity. All the people in this town are either fundamentalist religious whackos, rapists, psychopathic killers, or a combination of all three. The film just meanders aimlessly from one gruesome set piece to the next without much point to any of it. I don't know what this film was trying to say philosophically. It just seemed to be an unhealthy layer cake of shock porn and depression.

Tom Holland is endearing enough and does a good Southern accent, but I was finding it hard to care about his character's journey. The unrelenting misery just numbed me beyond interest.

The first 5 episodes of this series were perfect for me. Slow-burn atmospheric mystery, dripping with tension. It takes its time building the premise; weaving an intricate web of character threads and theological subtext with some genuinely creepy horror moments that had me spooked to turn the lights off.

Midway there is a tragic twist that left me heart-broken and engaged for the pay off to follow.

Unfortunately the ending unravels in a mess of camply acted set-pieces, over-egged religious metaphors and contrived philosophical monologues. The tension from the earlier episodes evaporates and the character's actions feel aimless and sluggish; the writers seem to be more focused on hammering us with a theology debate than committing to the action and the horror. Subtextually there are too many ideas being juggled and they don't land in a satisfying way. It just felt silly and unrewarding after all that build up.

"I Lost My Body" is a heartfelt story about overcoming grief and loneliness through taking risks and letting go of the past.

The premise is ingeniously inventive. A young man, Naoufel, loses his hand in a work accident, but the severed limb takes on a life of it's own, escaping the hospital refrigerator and making a perilous journey through the city to reunite with it's body.

From the perspective of the hand we experience flashbacks to Naoufel's life leading up to the amputation; We see him playing piano with his mother, revving the scooter to the job he hates, or as a child running sand through his fingers at the beach. It gives us a tangible insight into his memories, his fears and dreams. We feel for this disembodied hand, it is an extension of Naoufel's character and the threats it faces along the way represent the psychological torment endured by the protagonist as he tries to cope with the tragic loss of his parents, his unhappiness in work and his lack of emotional fulfilment.

The film has an aching sense of melancholy often felt in North European films, which is stirred by an ambient synth track which runs throughout. The characters and their quiet performances feel like real people, not caricaturized or contrived. The camera work is also stellar; the sequences with the hand desperately tumbling and fumbling it's way through garbage, or fighting off rats on a trainline are suitably tense and dynamic, but then there are inexplicable moments of tenderness, like when the hand watches over a sleeping baby in a crib and embraces it's tiny fingers. In any other circumstance, this would be an image from a horror film, yet here we only feel Naoufel's intense longing for comfort and connection with another human being.

An engaging and rewarding watch, one of the best animated films I've seen.

It's tough to review this show without spoilers, but I'm going to try (deep breath).

I knew little about "Dark" going in. A friend described it as a more adult, sophisticated "Stranger Things" and that I should watch it in German with subtitles.

Straight from the get go I was pulled in by the mystery, the haunting atmosphere and the ominous tone. I had my assumptions about what kind of story it was after the first few episodes, but those thoughts were upended and my mind truly boggled as I discovered where it was really going. And that just kept happening as I watched, over and over.

This show hits hard. It's emotionally draining, unsettlingly dark and the story is a vast labyrinth of twists and philosophical conundrums.

The actors are all terrific and the casting...let's just say I'd never even thought about the role of a casting director until this show, but they pulled off an incredible feat with Dark. My enjoyment of the series owed a lot to being able to instantly recognize the characters in their various states as we flash back and forth through their lives.

Aside from all the mystery and supernatural elements, the human drama at the core is what kept me watching and there were some truly heartbreaking moments throughout as the characters navigate the web of lies, mistrust and constant threat of impending doom. The show wields exposition like a knife and some of the revelations left me truly gob-smacked.

(**Next bit is spoiler-ish**)

Now it's not perfect. I definitely found the 1st Season, and much of the 2nd to be more compelling than the 3rd, largely because a lot of the mystery building falls away half way through Season 2, where the increasing bill of characters are fighting for screen time and the plot struggles under the weight of it's own complexity; The twists keep piling up faster than I could keep up with and the world logic became almost impossible to follow. I ended up just accepting whatever the characters were saying at face value most of the time, because pausing to think about one revelation for a second would then distract me from the next scene. Often I was left with more questions than answers. There are also characters who I was led to believe would have an important purpose, but for whatever reason, don't get a satisfying conclusion in the end, they just weren't tied up properly. However, there's a lot to be gained from re-watching.

Despite some clunky moments, Dark pulls off a gargantuan feat of story engineering and everyone involved has to be commended. It's a show that gets under your skin and makes you think, for better or worse, about the nature of existence.

Definite recommend. Watch in German with subtitles!

The first half of this film has a lot going for it. While hardly original and borrowing heavily from Hitchcock's "Rear Window", it's still a snappily paced, stylishly shot thriller with a strong central performance from Amy Adams that keeps you engaged and curious. However the last half wastes all of that build up with a generic, implausible reveal that leads to a campily acted and downright stupid teen slasher showdown, which doesn't satisfy and feels beneath what Amy Adams is capable of.

Really, don't waste your time. Watch "Rear Window" instead.

Honestly, the series has lost all it's charm for me. There's no suspense, no drama, everything is spectacle now. The SFX budgets get bigger, but the writing and character building has flat-lined.

Characters who I used to admire have become lame parodies of themselves who make irrational, stupid decisions. Some of the dialog is cringe-worthy. Hopper and Joyce's constant, inane squabbling is like nails on a chalkboard. The teenage kids are far less endearing than they were in Season 1. Everyone feels very disconnected from each other and it's difficult to care about any of them, because the close bonds that bound them together in the previous seasons just aren't there this time. The only characters who had great chemistry for me were Steve and Robin. Their bond is great. The rest are just empty vessels, particularly Elle, who now exists solely as an exposition device. When she's not hopping in and out of people's heads she's tele-whacking a monster through a glass window, or crying and having nosebleeds. Her story is no longer important, it's just her powers that are useful when the writers need to clear an obstacle.

They try to distract you from this with all the brightly colored 80's nostalgia references everywhere, but it feels cynical and empty, like

There are entertaining moments. The action sequences are cool, and the monster is freakishly grotesque, but it's all very cartoonish, lacking any real threat or suspense. Once we get into the evil Russian plot, it derails into absurdity and you're really just coasting along without a brain until the FX fueled finale.

Can't say I have big hopes for Season 4.

Excellent sci-fi film. Clear visual story telling, brilliantly acted and full of tension and twists. It is similar to Ex Machina in terms of it's contained setting, small cast and existentialist themes. Special effects are cleverly used and the robot is very believable.

The future world portrayed in the film is a terrifying one and the film poses many questions about where humanity is headed. It leaves you thinking, and I love that.

Definite recommend.

I awaited MATM with eager anticipation; I know several people who worked on it and it's easily the best looking animated feature since "Into The Spiderverse".

Alas, the film turned out to be a mind-numbing experience full of inane post-modern humor and frivolous, noisy action which completely failed to engage or satisfy me on an emotional level. What's worse is that it just wasn't funny, at all. Out of the mile a minute gags that are fired about memes, phones, cat filters, surveillance capitalism, killer kitchen utensils and pugs, about 98% failed to even register a smile. Mostly it just comes of as annoying. They had the opportunity to do some punchy satire here, but it's all very low brow and childish. The lackluster voice acting didn't help either.

Structurally, it's a mess. Many of the scenarios feel like they were selected with a dartboard at a writers session (a throwaway sequence involving an army of Furbies at a shopping mall being one such example).

There are no real threats or stakes and so we have no reason to care about anything that happens, or believe the heroes might fail. Stuff is just thrown at the screen in a haphazard way and explained with some lazy dialog exposition.

When we're supposed to care about the feeble father/daughter drama at the core of the film, we just get some soft piano chords and a few sad eye closeups. Compare the storytelling of Mitchells to say The Incredibles, which has similar themes, and it really feels lacking.

I was so bored after 40 minutes, I almost gave up. If I have to give any credit to the film, it goes to the artists who have done an exceptional job creating a unique and striking visual style. What a shame to waste that talent with such a mediocre story.

Sharp Objects is a slow burn character study with a murder plot running underneath. An unflinching examination of childhood trauma and the dark ways it can manifest in adulthood, set against a picturesque Southern backdrop. The lush cinematography and languid pacing give it a haunted, dream-like feel and the way Camille's thoughts slip back in time, revealing fragments of her troubled past, is edited perfectly, like a natural stream of consciousness. Some viewers might be frustrated by the seeming randomness of these intercuts, but they all work together in the end to form a jigsaw that is truly disturbing and one which quietly sneaks up on you.

Despite most of the scenes being bathed in sunlight, the tone is relentlessly dark. There is always a sense of nastiness lurking beneath the smiles and the white picket fences of Wind Gap. At times it feels oppressive and almost stretches credibility; The townsfolk are hard and pitiless especially the women, but as the writer, Gillian Flynn, pointed out, they inhabit a place where there is precious little else to do other than gossip and destroy each other. Because of this, it can be difficult to like a lot of the characters, though the performances are certainly commendable. Amy Adams is excellent as Camille, a journalist sent back to her old town to report on the gruesome murders of two young girls. She hides her fragility beneath sarcastic barbs and emotional avoidance, eliciting a mix of frustration and sympathy that is complex and believable. Patricia Clarkson is so quietly monstrous as her controlling mother; It's the kind of performance that gets under the skin and triggers things in the audience, at least anyone who's grown up under the influence of an over-bearing parent. The emotional manipulation she employs is spot on.

There are contrivances in the story and sometimes the dialogue is too wrapped up in riddles, answering questions with more questions. There are other revelations about Camille that I expected to be explored further which aren't and others which don't feel very relevant to the over-arching story in the end. Doubtlessly there are details that sailed past me though, so it definitely requires a second viewing.

A tough watch, but rewarding.

On the plus side: It's much better than previous Saloon films. Visually it still opts for the distinct illustrative style they are known for, but the pacing and storytelling is more dynamic this time around. It's faster, punchier, more aggressive than Song of the Sea and the animation in the wolf running sequences is spell-binding. The emotional moments resonate well without feeling too mawkish and the invigorating score by Kila is a joy. There are problems though.

The plot of the hero befriending the noble savage and teaming up to defeat invading forces has certainly been visited many times before (Dances With Wolves, Ferngully, Pocahontas, Princess Mononoke, Avatar) and Wolfwalkers doesn't really do anything new with it. The heroine, Robyn, daughter of a British trap hunter tasked with wiping out wolves from a surrounding forest in Kilkenny, wants desperately to escape the shackles of domestic life. While exploring the forest, she runs into Mebh, a wild untamed wolfwalker who can magically commune with wolves, and discovers the freedom, magic and beauty therein. Robyn must try to convince her father to disobey his orders and save Mebh and the forest from destruction. From that synopsis alone, it's easy to imagine how those story arcs play out, if you've seen the other films I mentioned. At times sequences look and feel like they've been lifted directly from these sources and dropped into a different art style. Cliché messages about embracing the animal within abound.

Characters are depicted as one-dimensional stereotypes, particularly the invading Brits and the main villain, Lord Protector, a bland copy of Disney's Governor Ratcliff and Judge Frollo, who tries to tame this pagan-Celtic world one bible quote at a time. Princess Mononoke managed to be more ambiguous as to where the good and bad lies across the opposing factions, which made for a more engaging film, in my view. Wolfwalkers, however, seems to be aimed at a much younger audience and is thus played very straight. The Irish peasants are all represented as feeble-minded bog-dwellers, which I found surprising coming from an Irish studio. It seemed like they wanted to play up the Paddywhackery for laughs, but I found all the "ahh to be sure" gags more eye-roll worthy than funny, if I'm honest.

Another nitpicky issue for me was the voice acting. It was disappointingly flat and amateurish in a few places and lacked real drama. I'm not sure if all the actors were recorded together or separately, but their voices sometimes didn't sound like they were in the moment or really reacting to one another.

Gripes aside, this was an entertaining watch and easily the best animated feature to come out of Ireland in a long time.

Working in the animation industry, I'd often feel embarrassed admitting that I'd never seen Akira. "What!?", people would exclaim. "Akira is like The Godfather of animation, you HAVE to see it".

Well, now that I've seen it, I'm not sure I can agree. There's no denying the sheer technical marvel of this film. It looks incredible, even by today's standards and the camera work and action sequences are so high energy. To be an animator on this film must have been both an honor and a death sentence. I think I would go insane trying to render smoke and crumbling buildings to that level.

That aside, the story is an incomprehensible soup of Anime tropes. Hyper macho violence, loud screaming, casual misogyny and high falutin philosophical mumbo jumbo about higher beings. Things happen in disconnected bursts: Biker gang - Authorities - Revolutionaries - Corporate corruption - Weird wrinkly green kids - Telekinesis - Sciencey stuff - Explosions - Fighting - Explosions - More fighting - Super Telekenisis - Amoebas(?) - The world explodes...blah blah...- End credits.

There's no time to absorb the characters, no attempt to make them feel like real people. We're always being rushed to the next brutal action sequence and not really given enough information to know what's happening, who's doing it and why? I had zero emotional engagement from start to finish. For that reason, I can't call this a masterpiece, though I do still think it should be seen for historical context and to pay reverence to the painstaking artistry.

What is happening to this series? Barely 10 minutes in and this just doesn't feel like the show I recognize. Season 2 may have had a ridiculous ending, but everything up until that point was masterfully directed, with all the characters on a knife edge waiting for the walls to come crashing down around them.

Now I ask where is that threatening tension? Why don't I feel like I believe any of the characters' motivations anymore? The direction in this first episode of Season 3 is so limp and floaty, none of the scenes have any impact. The pacing is aimlessly dull, the dramatic exchanges between the cast feel forced and hollow and the dialogue is uncharacteristically bland, particularly between Nick and June.

Moss tries hard to convey June's complex states of emotion, but the direction and tone just do not add resonance to her acting. Even the shot choices are poorly considered and not serving a cinematic language. The music is terrible. Most of the episode is scored to a plodding piano arrangement that you might hear in a typically mawkish student film, with exception of one scene, a room on fire, set to the Boom Town Rats "I Don't Like Mondays", which feels cheap and stupid.

I really hpe this show can get back on its feet after this, but I'm starting to worry.