Editor's Reviews
In-depth reviews by our experts 🔮
The Crying Game
"I can see why it was this big surprise as per its era and it definitely was ahead of its time but the various themes felt zigzagging all over the place. Maybe a product of its time but too late for me I guess when it comes to the shock and surprise."
Winner
"Putting an Adam McKay spin on the 2023 Tina Satter's Reality starring Sydney Sweeney. There is a line between biography and a full-blown hagiography that is also a political thriller and Winner here jumps across the line towards the latter energetically with fast-cut edits and expositions yet superfluously and superficially turning an espionage event into a coming-of-age drama, you know, what Hollywood does the best. Except Emilia Jones has been pretty great in everything she has been in including this…"
Blink Twice
"So, this is how they would have wanted to strangle the fifth wave of feminism in its crib.A spiritual sequel to Don't Worry Darling and a Westworld rip-offIt's like If George Saunders had written an episode of Black Mirror. All of Dante's nine circles of hell in one movie. Whatever Glass Onion/Midsommar/Get Out/The Menu cocktail mixing was going on in this one, I couldn't be able to just breeze past the idea of Hollywood self-criticizing itself regarding the…"
An Inspector Calls
"I think it's impertinent to even suggest that An Inspector Calls has resemblances to 13 Reasons Why because first of all it was originally written three quarters of a century ago and secondly it's also bears within itself the Eat The Reach underpinnings that takes it beyond the formulaic detective-styled whodunnit. It's about a genuine sense of guilt or lack thereof in the upper echelons of the social class (or as they say in America- Karens). Personally, I see this…"
Oddity
"More about Twinning Reaction than ghosts, ghouls or apparitions. Oddity takes clear-cut inspirations from Mike Flanagan's movies and TV Series, especially from The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass as well as Guillem Morales's Julia's Eyes and quite successfully evokes the creepy side of things but when it comes to the mystery thriller side, it becomes way too easy and predictable. But, with the help of peeling off the layers in a non-linear fashion quite cleverly it holds onto…"
The Marsh King's Daughter
"Room + Where The Crawdads SingIn an attempt of strict adherence to the thumb rule of 'Show, Don't Tell', this movie throws every subtlety out the window and mistakenly forgets How much show is too much. Every memory, enactment, reenactment, wishful thinking don't have to be on the screen or worse getting beaten over the head with the metaphorical hammer in the most obvious manner. Still, The Marsh King's Daughter has something substantive to say if you lean towards the whole "Strong Female Character"."
Rebel Ridge
"Wowza! This unexpectedly eyebrow-raising movie hit me right in my face like a slab of concrete and made me question- "Does this kind of case really happen in the US?" Not the racial profiling and defund the police stuff; that much is clear, that civil asset forfeiture thing. Let's settle this once and for all for future reference in case an opportunity arises and some people get miffed about the so-called "race swap". After this movie there should be no…"
Bad Boys for Life
"Groovier than before but gets so tedious that I was like- When is this whole thing gonna end. Same old backstory-laden gambit most franchises conjure up around the second or third installment which generally has to deal with the past life of a protagonist catching up. Same old same old when they run out of fresh materials."
Secondhand Lions
"Man! Haley Joel Osment couldn't catch a break in his movies, could he? Secondhand Lions is like Big Fish minus Tim Burton and all his eccentricities and fantastical elements. It is about the fact that a boy doesn't just become a man because of observing some ritual and how much of an impact stories have on a young impressionable mind. Never thought I would see the day Robert Duvall making me chuckle with his dry humor. A little too much…"
Bad Boys II
"At this point Michael Bay had embraced his trademark flair for which he is known. Better than the prequel though."
Bad Boys
"Oh! Now I get it from where Conan got the idea for his Cube-Hart bit. The more the movie went on the more Will started behaving like Lawrence and vice versa."
What Lies Beneath
"Jeez! What year was it? Yeah. 2000. Figures. Overcooked plot and saturated with jump scares and worn-out scare tactics. Obvious inspirations from Rear Window and Body Double along with the audacity of the same red herrings."
The Lighthouse
"What in the name of Green Goblin; It's like some sort of old-timey Stanford Prison experiment but only for two people. Even for Dafoe's standards this is nuts. I mean what were they expecting would happen putting an uncouth curmudgeon on a power trip with a bullheaded inexperienced troublemaker at his wit's end due to humiliating circumstances and that too in an isolated setting with nowhere to escape and enough crates of booze till kingdom come. Monochromatic madness. I can still hear the wind howling, waves crashing and seagulls squawking."
Dredd
"Karl Urban's flashy violent non-stop fast-paced boot camp for Butcher and The Boys minus the humor."
Greedy People
"This is why the kids are warned- "Thou Shalt not Lie." A Guy Ritchie style rigmarole of a caper without Ritchie's flair or fancy. It would have been better if Greedy People had stuck to a key instead of zigzagging from funny to grim. Love the new color on JGL."
Once
"Broken-hearted Hoover-fixer sucker guy.... Didn't know I had another string in my heart since I watched Sing Street. Classic blueprint on how bands form, break up and new ones form again..."
Hunt for the Wilderpeople
"A folk ballad straight from the land of The Shire that warmed my heart. A grouchy old man, a troublemaker gangster for a kid and a very loving but practical mother, that's all I needed on a rainy day. A movie with matter-of-fact dry humor that has Taika written all over it. Couldn't believe the old dinosaur hunter still had it in him and got it why Dennison got big roles in Marvel and Monsterverse franchises. Well Done! New Zealand."
The Killer
"An outlandishly mindless action thriller oozing with unnecessary slow motion sequences and outrageously non-complementing background scores with Missandei as Nikita and recycled dialogues. Typical John Woo stuff."