One of my great blindspots in cinema has always been The Talented Mr. Ripley, a film that has always lurked omnipotent as something I knew I’d get around to eventually, but never felt much urgency to watch, as so much has been said about this film, despite the praise compounding with every passing review or…

I had a strange experience with The Good Liar, which exemplifies the perils of listening to the public discourse and allowing it to construct your opinions prior to seeing something. The Good Liar is a film that was met with such ambivalence upon release, it seemed almost contradictory to what I’d have hoped it would…

“There are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators” This powerful quote was written by Victor Hugo and appears in his seminal masterwork, Les Misérables. They’re also the final words of another piece that appropriates the title of Hugo’s novel, as well as some of its underlying themes…

Dick Blaney (Jon Finch) is a former member of the Royal Air Force who fought for his country during the war. His life afterwards has hardly been fitting for a war hero, as he has struggled to earn a living through low-paying jobs that he reluctantly accepts, solely for the sake of surviving in a…

The 1990s were certainly a strange time. Political tensions were at an all-time high, society was growing accustomed to a new set of standards, and the entertainment industry was growing more audacious. I can’t personally say that the 1990s produced the best films, but it would be wrong to suggest they didn’t make some of…

NOTE: This review contains spoilers. Should you decide to watch this tragedy of a film, beware that there is a certain plot development that just can’t be avoided when talking about this trash masterpiece. Towards the beginning of Serenity, Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey) is in a bar. He is talking to some of his compatriots…

Upon viewing Spotlight on a Murderer (French: Pleins feux sur l’assassin), I realized something – no matter how original the idea, or how gorgeous the visual aesthetic, a film means nothing if it isn’t executed well. Georges Franju will forever have his name engraved in the canon of great artists purely because of his brilliant…

Revenge is a concept that cinema has been interested in for the longest time – I recently spoke at length about the revenge thriller in my review for Lady Snowblood. These are normally films that have a bilateral purpose – they prove to be action-packed thrillers, as well as fascinating character pieces, and they continue…

David Kim (John Cho) is an ordinary man living in San Jose with his daughter, Margot (Michelle La), the archetypal teenage girl who loves her friends and is constantly frustrated with her father, who has raised her single-handedly since the death of her mother and David’s wife. However, when Margot doesn’t return home one evening,…

Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see in Gone Girl. I was expecting a conventionally good thriller. I was not expecting a twisted, macabre and terrifying tale of the dangers that lurk in the minds of the most normal people. Simply described, it is about Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) whose…