The Wild Goose Lake (2019)

I’m a sucker for the neo-noir vibe and thank goodness filmmakers all over the world are too. The Wild Goose Lake (2019) is a Chinese film about aesthetics, rainy nights in urban areas, neon signs casting a glow outside in the darkness and bold lighting indoors. But the film also feels tied to a specific […]

Across 110th Street (1972)

Jackie Brown is one of my all time favourite soundtracks and I always wanted to watch the movie where it took its opening/closing theme, ‘Across 110th Street’ by Bobby Womack. I was a little surprised to find that the melancholic, orchestral sweep of the song I know was not used in the title credit sequence […]

Cohen And Tate (1989)

Cohen and Tate (1989) is a nasty little thriller that feels longer than its 90 minute run time due to the fact you’re stuck in a car for one long night with two psychos and a kid not afraid to cuss. Yes, Travis (Harley Cross) is a nine year old boy in FBI protection because […]

The Kid Detective (2020)

Tone is such a tricky thing to get it right, particularly when you are juggling tones while blurring genres. The Kid Detective (2020) begins with a goofy premise – a kid detective (like Encyclopaedia Brown) who solved neighbourhood crimes, now a washed up adult still solving “cases” – and eventually becomes one of my favourite […]

Last Man Standing (1996)

Last Man Standing (1996), Walter Hill’s remake of Yojimbo (already remade as A Fistful Of Dollars), is almost mythical yet reductively basic. Set in a ghost town named Jericho that nobody else lives in except for two gangs fighting over the same turf, a state of purgatory only destabilised by the arrival of a gun-for-hire […]