The aesthetics and mechanics of Black Conflux converge for a splendidly-made, interesting picture. And yet, something feels missing here. It’s a great concept, and a skillful Canadian film, but it just doesn’t have the electricity to cross the finishing line. It follows the separate lives of a young girl and a troubled, mentally ill man…

It’s an unfortunate side effect of filmmaking that when you have proven, red-hot talents in your film, you take for granted they can carry it. John Cena has seen immense success with Blockers and The Suicide Squad, while Lil Rel Howery has stolen scenes in everything from Get Out to Free Guy. But the two…

The original 1992 Candyman is my favourite horror film of all time, no question. Tony Todd’s bee-covered visage still haunts me to this day, and the storytelling prowess and horrific tales passed down in the original were even scarier than the character actor’s nightmarish villain. So it was with apprehension that I went into a…

This intense, brutal vehicle for star Megan Fox is both terrible and great at the exact same time. It’s full of silly, quippy one-liners and entirely ridiculous plotlines, and yet it’s endlessly watchable the whole way through. Emma is trapped in a loveless marriage to a high-powered lawyer, and she feels as if she’ll never…

There’s an incredible film hidden in the depths of Billie Piper’s directorial debut, but one would have to dig through the messier narrative bits here to find it. Dubbed an “anti rom-com”, the main difficulty I have with Rare Beasts is that its characters are so incredibly vile that I have trouble rooting for a…

For a long time, Neil Blomkamp has been an enigmatic, interesting genre filmmaker. The sci-fi auteur has mostly been vacant from screens – and not done a feature film – since 2015, and I’ve sorely missed him in that time. But I would have waited another six years for the Oscar nominee’s return to directing…

I had high hopes for The Protege, an assassin thriller that co-starred two of my favourite actors. But this film just spends too much time trying to be too much, and ends up falling ultimately flat. It’s headlined as a film brought to you “by the studio that brought you John Wick” but the action…

This study of all the odd little characters who visit an inauspicious Midnight Diner from late night to late night is a reserved drama with an appetite for the profound. Based on the comic from Yaro Abe, it follows a man in his 50s who runs the little spot in Shanghai. He works through the…

This little tale – based on a true story – will envelop you in 1,000 emotions, and make you fall in love with its complex characters. Little Q is based on the novel Goodbye, Khoru, about a guide dog who brings out the best in his unhappy, difficult master. The screenplay from Susan Chan is…

Too much of a good thing can inevitably make you sour on it. Materna is a movie with a good concept and game stars that pushed my patience. It told the stories of four women connected only by a terrifying subway car encounter. But we’re given exposition and a view into the lives of these…