Category Archives: Film

The Witch. (2024). Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 5/10

Cast: Russell Shaw, Ryan Spong, Sarah Alexandra Marks, Fabrizio Santino, Mims Burton, Nick Tuck, Nell Bailey, Ritchi Edwards, Hazel Fell, Jane Hamlet, Danny Howard, Arpen Kapadia, Livvy Nicolae, Anto Sharp, Ella Starbuck.

Like many stock-in trade characters or tropes, the notion of the witch has become one that has become over-used and to little or no effect of portraying something new, revealing little even of the origins or the disciplines of the women who practise such machinations of the spirit world.

The Witch. (2024). Film Review. full post

(443 words, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)

I.S.S. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Ariana DeBose, Chris Messina, John Gallagher Jr., Masha Mashkova, Costa Ronin, Pilou Asbæk.

Even if there were just two people left on Earth, they would find a way to carry on a war that destroyed all other life in the name of patriotism, nationalism, and self-interest.

I.S.S. Film Review. full post

(460 words, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)

The Holdovers. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Carrie Preston, Brady Hepner, Ian Dolley, Michael Provost, Andrew Garmen, Naheem Garcia, Stephen Thirne, Gillian Vigman, Tate Donovan, Darby Lee-Stack, Bill Mootos, Dustin Tucker, Juanita Pearl, Alexander Cook, Liz Bishop, Cole Tristan Murphy, Will Sussbauer, Carter Shimp, Melissa McMeekin, Dan Aid, Kelly Aucoin, Colleen Clinton, Fred Robbins, David J. Curtis, Pamela Jayme Morgan.

The Holdovers. Film Review. full post

(501 words, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

Freud’s Last Session. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode, Liv Lisa Fries, Jodi Balfour, Jeremy Northam, Orla Brady, George Andrew-Clarke, Rhys Mannion, Pádraic Delaney, Stephen Campbell-Moore, Aiden McArdle, Tarek Bishara, Nina Kolomiitseva, Gary Buckley, Emmet Kirwan, David Shields, Anna Amalie Blomeyer. 

Perfect for the stage, but perhaps in many eyes not good enough for the large screen, in that itself the message is lost in psychoanalysis and treatment, the thought that one piece of art cannot exist in two or more different realms of the public’s mind; this schism is a mindset that cannot afford space in the human experience.

Freud’s Last Session. Film Review. full post

(468 words, estimated 1:52 mins reading time)

Zombie Town. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *

Cast: Marlon Kazadi, Madi Monroe, Dan Aykroyd, Henry Czerny, Brenna Coates, Chevy Chase, Lexie Mitchell, Brooke A. Smith, Chris Farquhar, Mikael Conde, Jonas Goddard Lashbrook, Ryan Anthony Mauro, Chattrisse Dolabaille, Scott Thompson, Callan Potter, Samuel Lariviere, Emiliana Perrotta, Bruce McCulloch, Rossana Tassone, Jocelyn Lacroix, Mitch Markowitz.

Genres lose their power when they have not only been parodied, but when those same parodies cease to be amusing, when everything they have that is special fails, when the jokes no longer are seen to be fit for purpose.

Zombie Town. Film Review. full post

(525 words, estimated 2:06 mins reading time)

Joker: Folie à Deux. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Zazie Beetz, Steve Coogan, Harry Lawtey, Leigh Gill, Ken Leung, Jacob Lofland, Bill Smotrovich, Sharon Washington, Alfred Rubin Thompson.

Imagine the longest middle finger to be attached to the largest, most muscled, sizeable hand, and then seeing it for all its worth as it is raised up in the face of all, a large moment in which we understand we have been probably taken for a ride; one set of the audience will see it with anguish and fury, feeling the ridicule personally…the other knowing at the end that the joke was on them and revelling in the cinema reveal in which the emotional needs and wounds have been opened and the flesh ripped apart.

Joker: Folie à Deux. Film Review. full post

(547 words, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

Apartment 7A. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Julia Garner, Dianne Wiest, Kevin McNally, Jim Sturgess, Marli Siu, Rosy McEwen, Andrew Buchan, Anton Blake Horowitz, Raphael Sowole, Tina Gray, Patrick Lyster, Rachel Atkins, Andre Lillis, Hannah Morley, Nikkita Chadha, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Patricia Jones, Tina Chiang, James Swanton, Amy Leeson, Scott Hum.

One of the main issues with a prequel written years after the original was filmed is that it can, if not researched properly by the writers, deflect from the narrative that made what followed an act of cinematic glory.

Apartment 7A. Film Review. full post

(570 words, estimated 2:17 mins reading time)

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Jenna Ortaga, Justin Theroux, Willem Defoe, Monica Bellucci, Arthur Conti, Nick Kellington, Santiago Cabrera, Burn Gorman, Danny DeVito, Sam Slimane, Amy Nuttall, Mark Heenehan.

It is the reunion we never knew we needed to dispel gloom and want of a sense of humour that has been deprived to us for so long; for whilst some comedy has gone down a road where it thinks to much of ramifications and not enough time on what is actually funny, what is cinematic anarchy in full flow and timeless.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Film Review. full post

(482 words, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)

Madame Web. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating *

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Mercad, Celeste O’Connor, Tahir Rahim, Mike Epps, Emma Roberts, Adam Scott, Adam Scott, Kerry Bishé, Zosia Mamet, José Maria Yazpik, Kathy-Ann Hart, Josh Drennen, Yuma Feldman.

Seemingly Sony feel as though every character that has stalked the pages of its Marvel acquisition of Spiderman is worthy of being transferred to the silver screen, and whilst the likes of Venom, and even the upcoming appearance of Kraven The Hunter has been widely applauded, and eagerly awaited, but to delve, to perhaps scrape the barrel of transferring comic creation to cinema, content that nobody was asking for, to put on screen someone who was never more than a bit player and give them the widest possible view above several others more inclined to do the genre justice is arguably one reeking of desperation.

Madame Web. Film Review. full post

(611 words, estimated 2:27 mins reading time)

Arcadian. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Jaeden Martell, Maxwell Jenkins, Sadie Soverall, Samantha Coughlan, Joe Dixon, Joel Gillman, Daire McMahon.

Like the instant smash hit, A Quiet Place, some films just unexpectedly come along, grab the viewer by soul, and takes them on a ride of horror driven by a unique monster so appealing that you cannot but help wonder just what the back story to their appearance on Earth actually is.

Arcadian. Film Review. full post

(392 words, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)