Northerner. Ardent defender of the Matrix sequels. One half of Ramblin: An Amblin Podcast.
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllRecent reviews
More-
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider 2001
Suffers from the same thing that has blighted just about every other attempt at a videogame adaptation—that of struggling to translate chase and collect gameplay into a coherent/satisfying narrative—but by god is Jolie perfect: looks the part, obviously, pouting and posing like this role was made for her, but also finds the sense of wry fun amidst all the cutscene characterisation. Everything around her splutters in the shadow of The Mummy as it attempts to defibrillate the Indiana Jones template…
Translated from by -
Conclave 2024
A wildly overqualified cast savours every morsel of papalistic scheming in Bergen’s handsome adaptation of Harris’ novel, which applies a prestige visual template over a tale of tawdry gossip to wring out the irony of grand, globally-important institution like the Vatican consisting of the designs of such ‘small, petty men’. It’s a thoroughly gripping bit of palace intrigue, ticking along at decent clip and making the act of writing names on pieces of paper as dramatically engaging as clandestine confrontations,…
Translated from by
Popular reviews
More-
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny 2023
Say what you like about Crystal Skull (and I am absolutely not about to mount a defence of it as an overlooked masterpiece), but it’s indisputable that, for large swathes of its opening half in particular, it’s a pretty indelible piece of visual storytelling. For something that so ravenously feeds on past iconography, Dial of Destiny is remarkably averse to creating a single memorable image, burying its action and performers between layers of flat CGI sludge and uninterested in even…
Translated from by -
The Matrix Revolutions 2003
If Reloaded was the thesis statement, Revolutions is all about putting those words to action. At its centre, the Wachowskis’ final (for now) entry is a bruising war movie. We spend much of our time on the ground with the grunts making up humanity’s final stand, giving us a vivid sense of the scale of the conflict and the hopeless desperation within. Again, the sisters’ aptitude for visual geography can’t be understated: they patiently sketch out the lay of the…
Translated from by
