Reviews of the Bosch

Whatever it is that people find scary about the Five Nights at Freddy’s  video game and assorted franchise is lost on me. I get it conceptually, the idea of creepy mascots in an abandoned family fun-house is a fine if not particularly inventive one; but from what I’ve seen of this title it’s really underwhelming -certainly the mascots of the game can’t hold a candle in terms of fright factor to the real ShowBiz Pizza animatronics they’re based off of. The popularity of this series always seemed a bit artificial -grown more out of the 80s nostalgia gimmick and internet memes than any level of quality to the game itself. But I’m not fit to judge that. I am however fit to judge its movie -finally released after nearly a decade of troubled development- and it is potentially the dullest movie I’ve seen all year. Like another highly disappointing horror movie to release this month, Five Nights at Freddy’s was produced by Blumhouse, directed by newcomer Emma Tammi after Chris Columbus droppe

Andrzej Ż u ł awski’s Possession  is one of the most unhinged horror movies I have ever seen. Even against some of the weirder things out there like Eraserhead  or House , it is bewildering; a movie made from and consisting of a lot of extreme and troubled emotions (can you tell that this was made in the aftermath of a messy divorce?). It is chaotic, fluctuating between being distressing at times and downright comical –the actors pushed to every limit of their express iveness  and skill. And yet it is artful, passionate in some of the right ways, bold and creative, excruciating yet fascinating in its ambiguity and implications. There’s reason why it is such a cult favourite, and yet it makes complete sense why it failed to catch on in 1981. In fairness, the American cut did chop off a third of the film’s runtime, resulting in what was by all accounts a dull and unwatchable wreck. Though the original itself is hardly mainstream-friendly and perhaps only marginally more coherent, driven

For going on a decade now, one of my Halloween season traditions without fail has been to crack open my copy of the Collected Works of Washington Irving to read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow  -one of the greatest ghost stories ever written. It’s such an evocative, atmospheric work that I never get tired of and that never loses its witching power, its inherent and vivid spookiness. It’s one of the classics of American literature for a reason. And yet unlike most other stories of similar stature and cultural ubiquity, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow  has never had a good live-action movie adaptation. A Christmas Carol , Little Women , Treasure Island , Huckleberry Finn  -all have yielded several movie translations, at least one or two of which have been good. But Sleepy Hollow  has not been attempted as often as any of them, and where it has it’s been thoroughly unimpressive. To be fair, Sleepy Hollow  is a highly difficult story to adapt faithfully. It was written with the conceit of being sh

“I love money!” It is a sentiment echoed numerous times by one Ernest Burkhart over a period of about seven or eight years, and each time with immeasurable glee at the prospect of wealth at the expense of others. Greed is a powerful motivator, and historically one of the more potent tools of western imperialism. Someone else has something that we must have, and there are a great many unscrupulous ways to get it. The Osage Nation of Oklahoma knows this incredibly well. Though they were initially settled in modern Nebraska and Kansas, they were forced off their lands in the nineteenth century by white westward expansion. Though undisturbed for a time on the prairies of Oklahoma, once they struck oil white greed yet again descended on them, endeavouring in more stealthy ways to enrich themselves off the Osage wealth. This is the story fervently told by Killers of the Flower Moon , Martin Scorsese’s new western crime epic that illustrates the series of murders that took place on Osage land

One of my best theatre experiences recently was going to see the fortieth anniversary remaster by A24 of Stop Making Sense , Jonathan Demme’s much acclaimed concert film for Talking Heads. A high recommendation if you haven’t seen it: eclectic and energized and so so cinematic -with even the shadow of a story weaved through the way front-man David Byrne’s incredible stage persona develops over the course of the show. It was the first concert film I’d seen in a while and was a demonstration that here is a genre more versatile and entertaining than it may be given credit for. Proximity kept Stop Making Sense  on my mind as I considered and ultimately followed through with seeing a much-anticipated new concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour . It engendered curiosity from its announcement just two months ago, especially in the context of its release strategy -whereby Swift bypassed the major studios entirely to partner directly with theatre chains at a time when well-earned animosity to

Some short films are good in that they could easily be features, others are good in that they fill out their reduced form just right. Pedro Almodóvar’s Strange Way of Life  fits somewhere between the two: a movie with a scope to its storytelling and drama that could be much more expansive and yet conforms to its limited parameters in a very fulfilling way. It leaves you wanting more and yet it is complete -and I think that dichotomy is really good for it. It’s also clearly an excuse for Almodóvar to make an old-fashioned western, something he is clearly delighted by given all the staples of the genre he manages to incorporate: the old shanty town and a ranch on the border, the sheriff and outlaw, a Mexican stand-off. And his actors, Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal are having a blast too. But mixed in with the cowboy fun is a heartfelt queer love story that Almodóvar illustrates with his characteristic tenderness. Hawke plays Jake, the sheriff of Buggy Creek, and Pascal is the gunslinger S

This week saw the Paramount+ streaming release of the last movie by the late great William Friedkin. And by all accounts,  The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial  is a fitting swansong for the New Hollywood maverick, clever and intense and highly singular. But in an ironic twist of fate it’s drowned out almost entirely in the movie discourse this weekend by a dull reboot of one of the iconic films that made Friedkin famous. Fifty years later  The Exorcist  is still one of the greatest horror films ever made -it’s just as intense, compelling, rich and shocking now as it was when first released. The Exorcist: Believer is none of those things -merely the next classic horror property Blumhouse got the rights to and gave to David Gordon Green to make them a quick buck after he had finished his Halloween  trilogy . And Green approaches it the exact same way he did those Halloween  movies -by making a direct sequel to the original film that pays shallow homage and is stripped of any real character or