Zheng Kaisi (Li Yifeng) is a disaffected young man who works a dead-end job at a gaming arcade. His mother lies in a coma in a nearby hospital, the bills for which cost more money than he can afford. His … Continue reading REVIEW: Animal World (2018)
While Gene Kelly is appropriately remembered as one of cinema’s best-ever musical performers, his non-musical performances are by now largely forgotten. His performance as E.K. Hornbeck in Inherit the Wind (1960) is likely his most widely liked dramatic role, but in 1948 … Continue reading REVIEW: The Three Musketeers (1948)
There are many good films released around the world every year. Masterpiece celebrates the best of the very best: genuinely superb works of cinema that come with FictionMachine‘s very highest recommendation. If we had our own Criterion Collection, these are the films we … Continue reading MASTERPIECE: The Fugitive (1993)
I think it is a common childhood dream to watch an action movie and ask, why can’t they make an action movie that is all action? No character development, no boring talkie bits, but just pure non-stop action? It is clear to … Continue reading REVIEW: Ambulance (2022)
Here is Lou, a film produced by Bad Robot for Netflix. It has an irresistible premise, which is basically to make a Liam Neeson grumbling action thriller only to replace Neeson with award-winning and much-loved dramatic actress Allison Janney (The … Continue reading REVIEW: Lou (2022)
A slightly odd confluence of factors make Martin Campbell’s The Foreigner a splendid action thriller. The picture reunites James Bond veterans Campbell and Pierce Brosnan, but then throws in a healthy dose of the Northern Irish troubles and a top-of-his-game Jackie Chan … Continue reading REVIEW: The Foreigner (2017)
John Hillcoat’s Triple 9 (2016) mixes good ideas and bad. It is well-cast and slickly directed, but it is also messily written. In many ways it is a solid pastiche: part-James Ellroy, part-Training Day, and part-Grand Theft Auto V. It also subverts … Continue reading REVIEW: Triple 9 (2016)
There is a superbly tense sequence in Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World: Dominion. Co-protagonist Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) is crawling through the undergrowth while a hulking feathered dinosaur with absurdly long blade-like claws sniffs the air in search of her. She … Continue reading REVIEW: Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)
Almost all videogame movies are crap, goes the general sentiment. Since the early 1990s popular cinema has been littered with the corpses of failed blockbusters, murdered by audiences after being poorly equipped and armed by numerous production companies, studios, and … Continue reading REVIEW: Uncharted (2022)
Perversely given a wide cinema release earlier this year, Robert Eggers’ The Northman is a grim and spectacularly obtuse viking thriller. The masses failed to connect with it, which given Eggers’ atmospheric style and deep cultural immersion is not a surprise. For … Continue reading REVIEW: The Northman (2022)
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