Visually striking, thematically rich, emotionally vapid. A feast for the eyes it may be, but Denis Villeneuve's take on the epic SF saga is cold and solemn, with a starry cast who somehow manage to be uniformly drab and lifeless, to the point that I couldn't care less what happened to any of them...least of all lead Timothée Chalamet, who is a complete charisma vacuum. Worth watching for the vast scope and dazzling imagery, but its characters and drama failed to engage me in the slightest. To be honest, I kind of miss the frequent unharnassed lunacy of the derided David Lynch version.
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The Empty Man 2020
Shot back in 2017 and shelved during a studio merger, this was briefly dumped into U.S. cinemas in the midst of the Covid pandemic, and appears to have ended up on streaming services only here in the UK, with no theatrical or physical release that I'm aware of.
Given such an unjust treatment is it any wonder David Prior's compelling debut feature has largely been slept on by horror fans? Such an ignominious fate is completely unwarranted as The Empty…
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RoboCop 1987
Browsing through my 2013 diary here on Letterboxd it became apparent the vast majority of films I watched last year were either current or recent releases. To remedy this I decided to expand my viewing habits a bit more in 2014 by catching up with a few more vintage offerings, whether they be first-time watches or long overdue rewatches.
So, to this end I decided to set myself a mini movie season each and every month throughout this year in… -
The Raid 2 2014
2011's The Raid was lean, mean, lightning-paced, and carried absolutely zero baggage, it was a supercharged combination of visual flair and insane ultraviolence. So the decision to develop the story in this eagerly-awaited sequel to a far more expansive narrative based around an undercover infiltration of the underworld, and the duplicity and dealings of gangland politics and rivalry, was always going to deliver a different, far broader kind of film. As a result The Raid 2, weighing in at a…
