Pig (2021)

I appreciate people who avoid trailers or reading reviews (and can easily skip reading this); the idea of taking a movie in without preconceptions, expectations or spoilers is like the pure film viewing experience. But I can’t help myself – I like watching trailers, I like reading advance reviews, probably to my detriment. So it […]

Snake Eyes (1998)

I saw Snake Eyes (1998) at the cinema when I was a teenager and enjoyed it then. Over time my love for it has grown alongside my appreciation for both Nicolas Cage as an actor and Brian De Palma as a filmmaker, and I truly think it’s an underrated collaboration. While in contrast to De […]

Color Out Of Space (2019)

The final film I saw at this year’s MonsterFest was Color Out Of Space (2019), which I was very keen to see as a new adaptation of the HP Lovecraft story by cult director Richard Stanley (Hardware), his first film in many years after being booted off the 1996 flop, Island Of Dr Moreau. More […]

The Trust (2016)

Among the half dozen movies Nicolas Cage releases every year, there’s always a stray diamond in the direct-to-digital-TV rubble. Well, maybe diamond is pushing it but The Trust (2016) is still a good movie. Elijah Wood and Cage play a pair of Las Vegas cops who work in evidence collection. When paperwork leads Cage to […]

Mandy (2018)

I was really primed with anticipation for Mandy (2028) and yeah, no surprises, but I loved it. Definitely a case of style over substance or that style is the substance here, but I fully bought into director Panos Cosmatos’ desire to create a “1983 A.D.” where lumberjacks, religious cults, biker gangs were all subsumed in […]