CEL Mates: The Animatrix Conor Morgan July 15, 2014 CEL Mates, Features, Independent The Animatrix is a 2003 animated portmanteau film set in the Matrix universe. Released directly to video to coincide with the theatrical release of The Matrix Reloaded, it is comprised of nine individual short...
Maybeland: Children of Men Madeline Joint July 13, 2014 Features, Independent, Maybeland In 2027 the youngest human on Earth is killed. None will come after him. They’ve all stopped: there are no more pregnancies, no more births, no more babies, and no answers. In the chaos of the 18 years since...
Boyhood – Review Christopher Preston July 7, 2014 Reviews 1 Comment Richard Linklater’s expertise - or at least his largest triumphs - has been in the capturing of rapidly burning candles. By comparison, Boyhood (a project filmed over twelve years) is a great fire; burning...
Transformers: Age of Extinction – Review Christopher Preston July 4, 2014 Reviews 3 Comments Michael Bay isn’t a film director. He’s a demolition expert, and a damn good one at that. So much destruction explodes across Age of Extinction, in fact, that it appears to have shellshocked any semblance...
How To Train Your Dragon 2 – Review Christopher Preston July 3, 2014 Reviews Dragons really are the myth du jour. Daenerys Targaryen’s beastly brood continues to incinerate all of HBO’s competition, while Smaug, Tolkien’s monstrous kleptomaniac, is looking to drag another $1bn of...
12 Rounds With James D. Dever Hugh Blackstaffe July 1, 2014 12 Rounds, Behind The Curtain, Features 1 Comment In the second article in the series, One Room With A View goes 12 Rounds with James D. Dever, the master of on-screen warfare. An expert on all things military, contemporary and historical, Sergeant Major...
Maybeland: Her Madeline Joint June 29, 2014 Features, Independent, Maybeland 3 Comments Maybeland is a new feature exploring all the Brave New Worlds of cinema, a look at the various visions of the future – utopic, dystopic and in-between – that all have their own style, predictions and ideas...
CEL Mates: A Town Called Panic Conor Morgan June 9, 2014 CEL Mates, Features, Independent Created by animators Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar, A Town Called Panic is a 2009 Belgian stop-motion film that, whilst only 75 minutes long, is totally bonkers for every single one of them. The first...
22 Jump Street – Review Christopher Preston June 8, 2014 Reviews 1 Comment 22 Jump Street is belly-aching, mickey-taking, cinema-shaking summer comedy at its very best. Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s follow up to their 2012 reboot does not shy away from its bigger sequel status....
CEL Mates: Mary and Max Conor Morgan May 28, 2014 CEL Mates, Features, Independent 1 Comment “Mary Dinkle’s eyes were the colour of muddy puddles. Her birthmark, the colour of poo.” These are the opening lines of Mary and Max, read in the lovely warm voice of Australian national treasure...
Blended – Review Tom Bond May 22, 2014 Reviews 1 Comment Welcome to Blended, brought to you by the South African Tourist Board. On your left is a lumbering performance from Drew Barrymore, and on your right is a clunky and drawn-out plot. At least South Africa looks...
Why The Modern Superhero Film Failed Tom Bond May 20, 2014 Analysis, Features, Opinion 5 Comments Last week I wrote an article explaining why the modern superhero film succeeded, and now here I am telling you the exact opposite. A bit hypocritical, right? But as much as the genre has wowed audiences and...
X-Men: Days of Future Past – Review Tom Bond May 13, 2014 Reviews 2 Comments Empire. X-Men. 25 covers. 1 issue. It was more worrying than exciting. How on earth would Singer combine two franchises into one coherent film? Answer: very, very well. The cast serve the story, not their...
The Wind Rises – Review Christopher Preston May 11, 2014 Reviews 4 Comments Hayao Miyazaki’s films have always been bathwater cinema; warm and comforting and so enchantingly illustrated that we never truly want to leave them. The grief of being hoisted out of The Wind Rises,...
CEL Mates: The Illusionist (2010) Conor Morgan May 7, 2014 CEL Mates, Features, Independent 2 Comments The Illusionist is Sylvain Chomet’s long-awaited follow up to The Triplets of Belleville, based on a controversially unproduced script written by French comic Jacques Tati and released in 2010. It was...