The Boxtrolls (2014)

A lovely grimy, grungy, stop-motion Grimms' Fairy Tale sort of a movie, with a surprising amount to say about greed, class, privilege and corruption, and clueless toffee-noised oiks at the top of the chain munching on brie and fucking the poor (not literally). In a kids movie. Had this been released a week or two earlier in the UK, the Scottish independence vote might have gone quite differently.

Rating: 4/5

Dick Smith: RIP

The legend that is Dick Smith: makeup FX artist has died. One of the truly great visual artists in cinema history. You'll probably have noticed his work most overtly when he transformed rosy-cheeked thirteen-year-old Linda Blair into the devil him/her/itself in The Exorcist. However, I would point you also to his Oscar winning work turning F. Murray Abraham into the decrepit, elderly Salieri for Amadeus. A feat of makeup ageing that still, thirty years on, no CGI has yet to equal.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Not so much a movie, as an exquisite, miraculous mechanical automaton from a delicate, half-forgotten age. Insubstantial and inconsequential, yet for all that, somehow rather delightful.

Rating: 3/5

The Raid 2 (2014)

The Raid 2: A Review:

10: PRINT "pain"
20: GOTO 10
RUN

Rating: 3/5

How to fail an Audition.

Sigh. Another week, another terrible money-grabbing pointless remake idea, signalling another impending case of forever more having to say, in place of "Have you seen Audition? It's really smart / interesting / moving / terrifying (delete as applicable)" saying instead "Have you seen Audition? No not that steaming pile of inept, derivative flatulence directed by Brett Ratner / Eli Roth / Rob Zombie (delete as... on second thoughts, just delete all)".

Audition Remake Planned (Empire Online).

I've ranted written at some length previously about my issues regarding remakes, especially of non-English language movies. You can find that article here.

Apocalypse Now... and Again.

Great news. Pacific Rim 2 is confirmed. Reports of it being made according to Dogme 95 rules still TBC.

The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013)

Well that was three hours in the company of a hideous, debauched, vile, selfish, abusive, self-destructive, fucked-up individual... and I loved it. Am I a bad man?

Rating: 4/5

Not One For All After All

Three episodes in, and I'm calling it quits with the BBC's new Musketeers adaptation. It's not without some redeeming charms, but overall, such a mess. Uneven performances, anachronistic script, toe-curlingly melodramatic and stylistically all over the place with so many jarring tonal shifts that it feels like the assembled work of six different student directors who weren't allowed to speak to each other. After careful consideration I think I will return to an adaptation featuring far more engaging and relatable characters, and a clear, well-structured through-line of narrative purpose that best honours the source material. Namely this one: