French director Eva Husson isn’t one to shy away from danger. Her previous film, Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) pretty much says all you need to know about her head-on filmmaking style. While watching Girls of the Sun, the story of a...
What if nothing happens? What if a big, massive, terrible event occurs and the world collectively shrugs at it and everything goes on as it was. That's probably what happens most of the time, actually. But in cinema that's not what we see. ...
I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to attend a select theatrical screening of the Israeli film Trip of Compassion, both from a psychological point of view and as a critic attempting to make objective sense of the deep humanitaria...
Remember that time The Greatest Showman outperformed critics’ expectations and there were theatrical encores galore, and people loved it as it gave them hope and joy and song in their lives? Well, forget all that because it was an inf...
Taking place in Santa Monica, California, the 2019 Independent Spirit Awards took something of a more grounded approach to awards season than the Academy. Although inevitably overshadowed by tonight’s Oscars, they represent an impor...
On the one hand, I’m really pleased to hear that Your Name is getting the praise it deserves in the form of imitation — surely that’s the sincerest form of flattery. On its release in 2016, it was the highest-grossing anim...
(This review is a continuation of my analysis of Les Miserables, Episode Six, Part 1.) The real turning point of episode six, for me, came about midway through. Although I emphasize that I know and love the plot of Les Mis, I genuinely di...
Readers, for the sixth and final(ish) time, welcome back to my review of BBC’s miniseries, Les Miserables - episode 6, part 1. I have so much to say that we're just going to have to slice this up across two posts...all the more ...
Readers, you are welcomed to the fifth week of Victor Hugo-inspired raving! What's eerily prescient about this episode is the way in which it echoes the ongoing real-life protests by the gilet jaunes, a French grassroots activist group ...
There's a certain magic to the perfect childhood movie. It involves the right mix of high adventure, coming of age, poor parental supervision, and the innocence of youth. The 80s was jam-packed with movies that somehow nailed this (or maybe...
Reflecting so far on the miniseries Les Misérables, it’s been a fantastic ride. Jean Valjean has completely turned his life around from convicted felon to mayor and employer of an entire town; afterwards, he makes amends...
It’s been thrown around a lot that this would be the defining performance of Melissa McCarthy’s career, and I have to admit that I entirely believe this to be the case. Ironically, even as unrecognizable as she was, her perfor...
While myself and fellow Flixist staff member Matthew Razak couldn't understand all the praise lavished on Baby Driver, it's hard to deny that writer-director Edgar Wright is a fantastic filmmaker. His work on the Cornetto Trilogy was a mast...
It was back in 2013 that Dome Karukoski first announced his upcoming biopic of the great J.R.R Tolkien -- that’s John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, in case you were wondering. Since then, this picture seems to have slipped a little under th...
To say that I was in shock after this week's episode would be a monumental understatement. Aside from the fact that I have been completely awestruck by Dominic West’s performance throughout the first and second episodes, there ha...
Capernaum made me think that we’re so privileged in the West: there are so many cultures in the world that haven’t had the safety and security -- on a national, local and personal level -- that many of us have experienced. ...
Welcome back! After last week’s pilot, I’m really glad to say that the BBC adaptation of Les Misérables is soaring. Thanks to the enduring patience of Flixist’s US writers, who have given me free reign to cover wh...
While I don’t often review individual shows, this is a unique and rare instance where the worlds of film, musical theatre, literature and TV come together in glorious harmony, or at least like competing relatives forced to be civil ...
It’s been something of a song and dance to get the sixth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise going, largely because of waning box office figures and increasing apathy for the whole shebang. Back in May of last year, ...
Michael Bay lost it somewhere along the way. Sure, he was always grandiose and absurd, but his action held together and his movies were fun. Look back at any of his classics and they are still exactly that. At one point, he was a good actio...
We're in an era of sequels and remakes, and with 2018 being the biggest box office year in the history of cinema we're going to be getting plenty more. If a studio can bring something old and beloved back they're probably going to do it. It...
After I (perhaps overzealously) reported in the summer that Wes Anderson’s latest film would turn out to be a musical set in 1950s France, it’s with a heavy heart that I have to go back on my words. Now that production is unde...
After multiple plot changes and an entire crew reshuffle since Toy Story 4 was first announced - screenwriters Rashida Jones and Will McCormack have walked away, and controversy surrounding John Lasseter booting him out - nobody seems quite...
I once I had the honor of meeting Eoin Colfer - and he is such a cool guy. Regrettably, I didn’t own a smartphone at the time (he, losing out on the opportunity to connect with his fans, understandably looked sad - I’m sorry, 2...
As if the news of the second LEGO Movie couldn’t get any better, YouTube has teamed up with Warner Bros. for a Black Friday publicity move, streaming The LEGO Movie for free this week - for one day only! On the back of yesterday&rsq...
I honestly got stuck with Instantly Family to review. Sometimes as EIC you gotta take a bullet for the team and let someone else review the big Harry Potter film (review coming later) or whatever. I was all set to take t...
A fusion of stark brutality, underhand crimes and complex systems of political and personal power, Widows is far more just than an awards-season thriller, but a sharp and forceful indictment of corruption on every level of society. I...
Believe it or not, prior to my screening I wasn't paying that much attention to Illumination's The Grinch, but from what I did see I thought the film was going to try something a little new with the character and focus on how he became...
Why is it so flipping funny to watch a grown man fall over? I don’t know, but Buster Keaton realized this from a young age and basically built his career on pratfalls and slapstick gags. Here he is - again and again - falling flat on ...
All Creatures Here Below is not a horror, but maybe it should be. In my time as a film critic I’ve seen some things (and I mean, seen some things), but there’s no other way of putting it: that was some disturbing stuff right t...
Karen Gillan continues to amaze me with her range. I remember her from Amy Pond days of old, and now she’s nothing short of a full-blown superstar. What’s fantastic about her is that she always seems to maintain her original int...
Every now and then there comes a film that’s just what you need: something life-affirming, something with just the right balance of reality and fantasy, something with a big ol’ glug of Nashville warbling. Yep, Wild Rose had it ...
Julia Roberts and Lucas Hedges serve up some mighty fine performances in the new trailer for Ben Is Back. In a wave of awards season films aimed at tearing parents’ hearts apart, notably with the Steve Carrell/ Timothee Chalamet-led B...
Veteran of the long-running Big Bang Theory Jim Parsons has decided that he just can’t break from TV, and will be executive producing a new comedy with ABC. It's been competitive, but ABC just had the edge and got dibs on the show, ba...
I feel like I've been availed with trailers for A Star is Born since last year. This movie has a lot going on so it needed the head start: Bradley Cooper writing, producing and directing, Lady Gaga (billed as Lady Gaga) in her fir...
Genre deconstruction is awesome when done right. When it's done wrong it comes across as trite, like the filmmaker doesn't actually understand the very genre they want to take apart. However, when it's done right you get films that help def...
It is really easy to tear Venom apart. There are a myriad of issues with it from casting to screenplay to plotting to... well, everything. Superhero movies have come a long way in the past ten years, and Venom feels like...
Okay, so it might not be true that the women were friends, or that they ever met in person - and, well, Saoirse’s Scots accent is so darn Irish that I just can’t see past it. But all of that aside, Mary Queen of Scots looks like...
