Articles, Cult Cinema, horror

Cult Film Review: Thriller – A Cruel Picture (1974) – a shocking blend of X-rated exploitation and arthouse filmmaking!

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Cult Film Review: Thriller – A Cruel Picture (1974)

Directed by Alex Fridolinski

Screenplay by Alex Fridolinski

Produced by Bo Arne Vibenius

Main cast: Christina Lindberg, Heinz Hopf, Despina Tomazani, etc.

Cinematography by Andreas Bellis

Edited by Brian Wikström

**Viewer discretion is advised – this film contains scenes that many will find disturbing**

Thriller – A Cruel Picture (1973) (Swedish: Thriller – en grym film) is a 1973 Swedish exploitation film from writer-director Bo Arne Vibenius, working under the pseudonym Alex Fridolinski, starring Christina Lindberg and Heinz Hopf. Infamous for its unflinching depictions of sexual violence, drug abuse, and degradation, the film charts the ordeal of a mute young woman who is coerced into heroin addiction and forced into prostitution before embarking on a brutal campaign of revenge against her tormentors.

Released in the United States in a heavily cut version by American International Pictures—under lurid alternate titles such as They Call Her One Eye, Hooker’s Revenge, and The Swedish Vice-Girl—the film has earned a reputation as a deeply disturbing and confrontational work. Its graphic content and relentless tone make it a challenging and potentially distressing viewing experience, best avoided by those sensitive to extreme subject matter.

Unsurprisingly, due to the violent scenes, on-screen drug use, nudity and also inclusion of hardcore pornography, Thriller – A Cruel Picture (1973) was either banned outright or heavily censored on release. I had heard so much about this film on various YouTube videos expounding the shocking nature of the themes and scenes. Allied to this, Quentin Tarantino has also “championed” the movie and it’s star, Christina Lindberg. With this in mind the film I got tempted and purchased the recent Blu Ray version released in the UK. This version DOES NOT, thankfully, include the pornographic scenes which were filmed by the director with a Swedish couple who did live sex shows.

So, is Thriller – A Cruel Picture (1973) actually any good? Well, it is safe to say that it is a relentlessly harsh watch. That said, it would be unfair to dismiss the film outright as mere grindhouse provocation. Vibenius employs striking stylistic flourishes that elevate certain sequences into something oddly hypnotic. Most famously, the extended slow-motion shotgun reprisals—henchmen blasted backwards in balletic, almost operatic fashion—are staged with a visual patience that borders on the surreal. These, as well as the lengthy final act car pursuit sequence, are technically memorable, even as their brutality remains confronting.

Where the film becomes almost nightmarish is in its internal logic. Once Madeline (Christina Lindberg) is captured and brutalized by the sadistic drug dealer Tony (Heinz Hopf), the narrative takes on a dreamlike, disjointed quality. Despite being forcibly addicted to heroin, she somehow manages to train herself in hand-to-hand combat, driving, and sharpshooting—preparing an elaborate revenge while still under the grip of addiction. The plotting feels less realistic than hallucinatory, as though the film operates on the logic of trauma and fantasy rather than grounded cause and effect.

A great deal of the film’s lasting impact rests on the striking screen presence of Christina Lindberg, as well as her character’s grim journey. Already known internationally in the late 1960s and early 1970s for her work as an erotic actress and glamour model, Lindberg brings an arresting, almost statuesque quality to the role. Her icy stare—especially once framed by the now-iconic eyepatch—gives the character a mythic, comic-book intensity. At the same time, the creative decision to render her character mute inevitably shapes how that performance is perceived. Silence becomes a stylistic device, amplifying the film’s cold and detached tone. The director’s choice to sidestep the demands of more dialogue-heavy dramatic scenes actually works in the film’s favour.

Overall, Thriller – A Cruel Picture (1973) is a film that oscillates between exploitation rawness and stark, almost avant-garde stylization. For hardened genre enthusiasts, it may be a grim curiosity with undeniable visual audacity. For many others, however, its graphic content and relentless tone will make it a deeply uncomfortable, even distressing experience. Proceed carefully.

Articles, Cinema, Reviews

Cinema Review: Pillion (2025) – a fantastically acted and directed erotic rom-dom-com!

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Cinema Review: Pillion (2025)

Directed by Harry Lighton

Written by Harry Lighton – Based on Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones

Produced by Emma Norton, Lee Groombridge, Ed Guiney &
Andrew Lowe

Main cast: Harry Melling, Alexander Skarsgård, Douglas Hodge, Lesley Sharp, Jake Shears, etc.

Cinematography by Nick Morris

Edited by Gareth C. Scales

There’s a tender audacity to Pillion (2025), an erotic rom-dom-com that sneaks up on you with the gentleness of a confession. What begins as an off-kilter meet-cute blooms into something far more vulnerable: a rites-of-passage story about sexual awakening, self-recognition, and the courage it takes to accept pleasure without apology.

At its heart is Colin, played with exquisite restraint by Harry Melling. Melling has always been an actor of intelligence, but here he finds a new register—soft-spoken, watchful, quietly aching. His performance never reaches for easy beats; instead, it accumulates detail. A look held a fraction too long. A smile that arrives late. Colin’s desire isn’t announced; it’s discovered, moment by moment, and the effect is deeply empathetic.

Opposite him, Alexander Skarsgård’s Ray is all smoulder and swagger on first impression—an insouciant masculinity that seems effortless, almost cocky. But Skarsgård is doing something more interesting beneath the surface. The sexuality is undeniable, yes, but it’s armoured. Pain leaks through the cracks, giving Ray a bruised romanticism that complicates the dominant energy he projects. The push and pull between the two men becomes the film’s most potent charge.

Director Harry Lighton deserves enormous credit for navigating this tonal tightrope. His direction is fantastically nuanced, allowing intimacy and humour to coexist without deflating either. The film understands that eroticism can be funny, awkward, even faintly ridiculous—especially when it’s new—while still honouring its emotional stakes. The explicit moments are handled with confidence rather than coyness, lacing the heartfelt beats with risqué shocks that provoke gasps, laughter, and the occasional wince. The physical opposites of Harry’s mild-mannered traffic warden versus Ray’s macho biker also add characterful humour to the mix.

The contemporary setting, rooted in the London suburb of Bromley, is another inspired choice. This is not a glossy, aspirational London; it’s resolutely unglamorous, familiar, and quietly stifling. That ordinariness makes Colin’s awakening feel all the more radical, a private revolution unfolding in plain sight. Furthermore, strong support comes from Lesley Sharp and Douglas Hodge as Colin’s parents, whose love is real but imperfect, shaped by generational discomfort and unspoken fears. Their scenes add texture rather than judgment, grounding the film in a recognisable family dynamic.

Be warned: Pillion (2025) doesn’t shy away from explicit sex scenes or moments of leather-adorned domination (including BDSM), and those elements may provoke strong reactions. But they’re not there for provocation alone. Lighton uses them as part of the emotional grammar of the film, insisting that tenderness and risk, humour and heat, can occupy the same frame. Ultimately, Pillion (2025) reveals itself as something quietly radical—a deeply touching romantic comedy that treats sexual self-discovery with empathy, intelligence, and a disarming lack of shame. It lingers not because of what it shows, but because of how carefully it listens to its characters while they learn who they are.

Mark: 8.5 out of 11

Articles

Films That Got Away #17: Hardcore (1979) / Cruising (1980)

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Films That Got Away #17: Hardcore (1979) / Cruising (1980)

There are certain names in American cinema that carry an immediate gravitational pull, and Paul Schrader and William Friedkin sit firmly among them. Between them, they’ve helped define the moral anxieties, obsessions, and contradictions of postwar America—Schrader with his austere spiritual torment and lonely men on the brink, Friedkin with his raw, confrontational plunges into chaos and corruption. Their filmographies are stacked with stone-cold classics that feel permanently etched into the cultural memory, the kind of movies that film students, critics, and cinephiles cite as foundational texts.

And yet, despite that towering reputational weight, there are blind spots. For reasons that are more circumstantial than intentional, I’d never seen Schrader’s Hardcore (1979) or Friedkin’s Cruising (1980)—two of their most infamous, divisive, and provocative works. Both films sit at a fascinating crossroads in late-’70s American cinema, emerging from an era obsessed with moral panic, sexual liberation, and the fear of subcultures existing just beyond the edges of polite society.

What makes the pairing especially compelling is how eerily similar their narrative engines appear to be. Each follows a protagonist forced to descend into an alien world—sexually charged, dangerous, and coded with threat—in search of answers. These are men out of their depth, navigating unfamiliar terrain where desire, violence, and identity blur together, and where the rules they live by no longer apply. In both cases, the journey isn’t just external but psychological, raising uncomfortable questions about voyeurism, repression, and what it means to confront a hidden darkness.

** MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS **

HARDCORE (1979)

Written and directed by Paul Schrader

Main Cast: George C. Scott, Peter Boyle and Season Hubley

Hardcore (1979) is arguably one of Paul Schrader’s most abrasive and fascinating films—a work that feels both deeply personal and deliberately confrontational. The setup is pure father’s nightmare. Jake Van Dorn (George C. Scott), a devout Calvinist businessman and single father in Grand Rapids, Michigan, sees his world collapse when his teenage daughter Kristen disappears during a church-sponsored trip to California. Months later, a Los Angeles private investigator (Peter Boyle) produces devastating evidence—an 8mm stag film bought in a sex shop, showing Kristen performing a sexual act with two men. Convinced she has been abducted and forced into sex work, Van Dorn heads west, dragging his rigid moral certainty into a world he neither understands nor believes should exist.

Hardcore (1979) functions as a grim reworking of The Searchers (1956), filtered through the urban decay of Taxi Driver (1976). Schrader replaces the western frontier with peep shows, porn theatres, and back-alley sex shops, turning Los Angeles into a hostile moral wilderness. The journey into hell is not only about rescuing a daughter but about testing the limits of Van Dorn’s faith. Further, the performances are uniformly excellent. George C. Scott is volcanic as Van Dorn, embodying righteous fury in a way that makes the character both frightening and tragic. Season Hubley brings unexpected vulnerability to sex worker, Niki, while Peter Boyle is unforgettable as the sleazy private dick—equal parts comic and repellent.

Ultimately Hardcore (1979) is uncomfortable, morally thorny, and visually steeped in neon-lit grime. It stands as one of Schrader’s most uncompromising statements: a film less interested in salvation than in forcing its audience to stare directly into the abyss between religion and reality.

Mark: 8.5 out of 11

CRUISING (1980)

Directed by William Friedkin

Screenplay by William Friedkin – Based on Cruising
by Gerald Walker

Main cast: Al Pacino, Paul Sorvino and Karen Allen

Cruising (1980) remains one of William Friedkin’s most troubling and unresolved works—a film whose reputation is inseparable from the controversy that engulfed it. Loosely based on the novel Cruising by Gerald Walker, a New York Times reporter, the film follows a serial killer preying on gay men connected to New York’s leather scene in the late 1970s. From its earliest production stages, the project was met with fierce objections from gay rights protestors, and even its star, Al Pacino, later described the film as “exploitative,” a criticism that has clung to it for decades.

Watching it now, divorced from some of its original cultural shockwaves, Cruising (1980) plays as a strangely compelling B-movie detective whodunnit. Friedkin leans hard into the sleaze and menace of the underground clubs, bars, and back rooms, presenting them as shadowy labyrinths of danger and desire. On the surface, the film often seems to revel in this grime, exploiting its setting as lurid texture rather than fully interrogating it. Yet beneath that pulpy exterior, there’s a more interesting, if underdeveloped, psychological study trying to claw its way out. Seen through the eyes of Pacino’s “virgin” cop, Detective Steve Burns, the film is not just about catching a killer and more about a man destabilized by prolonged exposure to a world that awakens desires he cannot comfortably name.

Friedkin arguably doesn’t quite get the script or character dynamics right, and those thematic ambitions often feel half-formed. Pacino, while committed, also feels miscast; his star persona never fully dissolves into the role. Still, what Cruising (1980) undeniably achieves is mood. Its oppressive sound design, pounding club music, and nocturnal visual texture generate a creeping dread that lingers. Lastly, there’s a strong sense that Friedkin was hamstrung—by studio interference, censorship demands, and mandated cuts—which may explain why the film feels fractured, particularly in its famously ambiguous ending. The result is a movie that feels incomplete, but also strangely haunting: a compromised work whose unease, confusion, and moral instability scratch under the skin in ways more polished films manage.

Mark: 8 out of 11

Classic Movie Scenes, Cult Cinema

Classic Movie Scenes #16- They Live (1988) – the really long fight scene!

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Classic Movie Scenes #16- They Live (1988) – the really long fight scene!

Directed by John Carpenter

Screenplay by John Carpenter

Based on: “Eight O’Clock in the Morning” by Ray Nelson

Produced by Larry Franco

Main cast: Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster, etc.

Cinematography by Gary B. Kibbe

Music by John Carpenter & Alan Howarth

** CONTAINS SPOILERS **

They Live (1988) is the kind of action sci-fi film that only John Carpenter could turn into a cult classic. On paper, it’s gloriously bizarre: a nameless drifter called Nada—Spanish for nothing—wanders into Los Angeles looking for work and instead stumbles into a hidden alien occupation. The key to the whole rotten system? A pair of hacked sunglasses that reveal the truth behind billboards, TV, and smiling authority figures. OBEY. CONSUME. CONFORM. No metaphor required.

Nada is played by professional wrestler Roddy Piper, whose performance is all flint-eyed suspicion and working-class fury. He’s not a chosen one or a scientist or a cop—he’s a guy at the bottom of the ladder who starts noticing the ladder itself is rigged. When Nada puts on the glasses, the world drains of colour and illusion, revealing a bleak black-and-white nightmare of propaganda and skull-faced elites hiding in plain sight. It’s one of Carpenter’s smartest tricks: truth isn’t glamorous, it’s ugly and exhausting.

The film’s low budget sometimes shows—rubber masks, stripped-down sets, and a finale that feels like Carpenter had to sprint to the finish line before the money ran out. But that rawness is also part of They Live’s (1988) charm. It plays like a B-movie manifesto, a midnight scream against a world quietly selling your soul back to you at retail prices. And yes, the legendary alleyway fistfight is absurdly long, but it also feels like the point: waking someone up hurts, takes effort, and nobody thanks you for it.

Carpenter has been clear that They Live (1988) is a critique of consumerism, Reagan-era greed, and the way capitalism anesthetizes resistance. But watching it today, the film has mutated—like all good cult cinema—into something more unstable and more dangerous. In the age of culture wars, algorithmic outrage, and weaponized paranoia, They Live (1988) can be read in a dozen conflicting ways. Is it anti-corporate? Anti-elite? A warning about media manipulation? A Rorschach test for conspiracy culture itself? That ambiguity is why it endures.

They Live (1988) doesn’t tell you what to think—it hands you the glasses and dares you to look. And once you do, it’s hard not to feel a little like Nada: broke, angry, awake, and deeply suspicious of anyone telling you everything is just fine. As someone who has recently been researching a lot about conspiracy theories or apparent truther activists, I have my feet dangling above the rabbit hole while simultaneously holding a red pill in my hand. Yet, I am hesitant to jump in. How do I know the so-called “truthers” are not lying or serving their own agenda or career too? Which is why the fight scene is so good. Because, it shows the struggle one can have as to what to believe and who to trust. In this case, Nada is telling the truth and he is prepared to fight to reveal it.

According to IMDb “the big fight sequence was designed, rehearsed and choreographed in the back-yard of director John Carpenter’s production office. The fight between Nada (Roddy Piper) and Frank (Keith David) was only supposed to last twenty seconds, but Piper and David decided to fight it out for real, only faking the hits to the face and groin. They rehearsed the fight for three weeks. Carpenter was so impressed he kept the scene intact, which runs five minutes, twenty seconds. David recounted the event, smiling giddily as he said, “It was good fun! I never felt safer in any fight,” as Piper, a professional wrestler, coached David on how to sell the look of the punches and savage moves in exaggerated form, making it appear more brutal than it actually was.”

Cinema, horror, New Releases, Reviews

Cinema Review: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple – a visceral journey into satanic cults, full of head-ripping gore and fiery devilment!

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Cinema Review: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

Directed by Nia DaCosta

Written by Alex Garland

Produced by Andrew Macdonald, Peter Rice, Bernie Bellew, Danny Boyle, Alex Garland, etc.

Main cast: Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman, Chi Lewis-Parry, etc.

Cinematography by Sean Bobbitt

28 Years Later: Bone Temple (2025) is not a film that eases you in. It grabs you by the throat and refuses to let go, piling atrocity upon atrocity until meaning begins to seep through the blood. This is apocalyptic cinema as ritual punishment, and under Nia DaCosta’s direction, it becomes something ferociously alive.

At the calm, moral centre of the chaos stands Ralph Fiennes, delivering a performance of astonishing gravitas and unexpected tenderness as Dr. Ian Kelson. In a world rotted by infection and cruelty, Kelson represents something almost radical: goodness without irony. Fiennes plays him not as a saint, but as a weary human being who still believes care, cure and compassion matter, even when the world insists otherwise. His presence anchors the film, giving its excess a conscience.

Opposing him is Jack O’Connell’s Jimmy Crystal, a vicious cult leader whose charisma curdles into something genuinely frightening. Crystal preaches violent “charity” in the name of Satan, offering salvation through brutality, and O’Connell leans hard into the performance’s ugliness. Leading his young, droogy, Savile-esque followers, he wages war not just on human survivors, but on the infected as well, collapsing any moral distinction between mercy and massacre. It’s a performance that feels designed to make your skin crawl—and it succeeds. Alas, Spike (Alfie Williams) gets caught up in Jimmy’s insanity and the sense of fear for him reigns throughout.

DaCosta directs with visceral energy, staging sequences that are frequently jaw-dropping in their gore and sadism. This is not a film particularly interested in an actual plot, clean narrative arcs or deep psychological excavation. Instead, Bone Temple unfolds as a succession of brutal set-pieces, each more punishing than the last. Some viewers will undoubtedly find it too much—too loud, too violent, too relentless.

But that relentlessness is also the point. What makes 28 Years Later: Bone Temple so compelling is how it mashes thematic power with B-movie exploitation ultra-violence. Beneath the spray of blood and bone is a furious meditation on false charity, moral absolutism, and the terrifying ease with which cruelty dresses itself up as righteousness. It’s ugly, abrasive, and often overwhelming—but it’s never empty. Indeed, if there is a more stylish and powerful scene in cinema all year than the ‘Number of the Beast’- Iron Maiden-soundtracked-fiery-ritual-sequence then I can’t wait to see it.

Ultimately, this is apocalypse horror as endurance test and sermon, and while it won’t be for everyone, I found it exhilarating. In its refusal to soften its blows, 28 Years Later: Bone Temple (2025) earns its place as one the most savage entries in the franchise, so far.

Mark: 8.5 out of 11

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Cinema Review: Hamnet (2025) – spectacularly emotional with Jessie Buckley delivering a spiritually transcendent performance!

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Cinema Review: Hamnet (2025)

Directed by Chloé Zhao

Screenplay by Chloé Zhao & Maggie O’Farrell – Based on Hamnet
by Maggie O’Farrell

Produced by Liza Marshall, Pippa Harris, Nicolas Gonda, Steven Spielberg & Sam Mendes

Main cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn, David Wilmot, Jacobi Jupe, Olivia Lynes, etc.

Cinematography by Łukasz Żal

There are actors who impress, and then there is Jessie Buckley, who seems to detonate the screen every time she appears. From the feral menace and vulnerability of Beast (2017) to the raw, soul-baring musical grit of Wild Rose (2018), Buckley has proven herself fearless; from the existential unravelling of I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020) to her razor-sharp, unclassifiable turn in Fargo (2020) – Season 4, and the aching restraint of Fingernails (2023), her work consistently redefines what emotional truth on screen can look like. Now, with an earth-shattering rendition of Agnes Shakespeare in Hamnet (2025), Buckley doesn’t just command attention—she claims her place as one of the most electrifying actors of her generation.

Hamnet (2025) is an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s critically acclaimed novel is a quietly thunderous piece of cinema—one that chooses intimacy over spectacle and emotion over mythology. At its core is the relationship between Agnes and William Shakespeare, charted from their first, tentative connection through marriage, parenthood, and the fractures that emerge when love collides with loss and ambition.

The film is less concerned with the legend of Shakespeare than with the human beings behind it: a scholar and poet struggling to find his literary voice, set against Agnes, a woman of the land and forest, spiritually attuned to nature, instinct, and ritual. Their romance blooms in the space between these worlds, with Agnes’s chanting communion with the natural world acting as an unspoken counterpoint to Will’s search for language and form.

Director Chloé Zhao brings her signature elegance and patience to the material, allowing moments to breathe and emotions to surface organically. Her collaboration with cinematographer Łukasz Żal results in imagery that feels almost painterly—soft, natural light spilling across interiors and fields, rendering the English countryside as something tactile and alive. Every frame seems steeped in earth, wind, and time, reinforcing the film’s grounding in the physical and the elemental.

At the centre of it all is Jessie Buckley, delivering a stunningly embodied performance as Agnes. Her work is raw, intuitive, and deeply moving—she plays grief not as a single rupture but as a living force that reshapes the body and spirit. Paul Mescal brings a quiet intelligence and aching restraint to William, capturing the tension between domestic devotion and creative restlessness, while the incredible, Jacobi Jupe, as the young son, Hamnet, adds genuine emotional resonance, grounding the family dynamic with heart-breaking sincerity.

Hamnet (2025) is ultimately a powerhouse drama about family, grief, and the curative—often painful—power of the creative process. It understands art not as triumph but as transformation, something born from love and loss in equal measure. My one reservation is a personal one: I found myself wanting more of Shakespeare’s journey in London and his struggle toward theatrical success and subsequent writing on the classic, Hamlet. But this absence is deliberate and understandable. The film is weighted toward the emotional interiority of Agnes’s experience, and in centring her perspective—so exquisitely rendered by Buckley—Hamnet (2025) finds its true, devastating strength.

Mark: 9 out of 11

Cinema, New Releases, Oscar Bingo, Reviews

Cinema Review: Song Sung Blue (2025) – a heartfelt celebration of love and music!

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Cinema Review: Song Sung Blue (2025)

Directed by Craig Brewer

Written by Craig Brewer – Based on Song Sung Blue – documentary by
Greg Kohs

Produced by John Davis, John Fox, Craig Brewer

Main cast: Hugh Jackman, Kate Hudson, Michael Imperioli, Ella Anderson, Mustafa Shakir, Fisher Stevens, Jim Belushi, King Princess, etc.

Cinematography by Amy Vincent

** MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS **

Song Sung Blue (2025) is a warm, big-hearted musical drama that wears its love for music—and for people—proudly on its sleeve. Based on the 2008 documentary of the same name, the film arrives as a crowd-pleasing celebration of performance, devotion, and the quietly heroic act of expressing emotion through song. Under Craig Brewer’s direction, the film hums with sincerity, lifted by a strong ensemble cast and the enduring power of Neil Diamond’s music.

At the centre of the story are Mike and Claire Sardina, known on stage as Thunder and Lightning from Milwaukee. They are not presented as mere lookalikes or imitators, but as fully formed performers who carry the Neil Diamond torch with genuine artistry and respect. Their performances are less about mimicry and more about connection—channeling Diamond’s songs as emotional vessels for love, longing, and resilience. The film is at its best when it allows music to speak where words fall short, and Thunder and Lightning embody that truth beautifully.

The acting across the board is excellent. Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson bring warmth, vulnerability, and an easy chemistry that grounds the film’s emotional core. Their characters feel lived-in and deeply human, making their shared journey feel earned rather than sentimental. Supporting turns from Michael Imperioli, Fisher Stevens, Jim Belushi, Ella Anderson, King Princess, and Mustafa Shakir add texture and personality, giving the film a rich, communal feel that mirrors the supportive world of local performance and fandom it portrays.

Craig Brewer’s vibrant direction leans into the idea that music is not just entertainment, but a lifeline. The film’s big-hearted characters use performance as a way to communicate love, heal wounds, and navigate life’s many trials and tribulations. In that sense, Song Sung Blue (2025) doubles as a loving tribute to Neil Diamond’s songwriting genius—his songs serving as emotional shorthand for feelings that are often too large or too complicated to articulate otherwise.

The film is incredibly dramatic too dealing with life themes relating addiction, depression, debt, disability and family trauma. Arguably it tries to cover too much in the two-or-so-hours finding topics such as the adoption subplot skimmed over in favour of maintaining pace and momentum. While this keeps the film buoyant and accessible, it occasionally feels like a missed opportunity to explore those themes with greater depth.

Still, these minor shortcomings do little to diminish the overall impact. Jackman and Hudson just fly throughout, making Song Sung Blue (2025), a heartfelt, affirming experience—one that understands how music can bind people together and how love, expressed through song, can carry us through even the most difficult chapters of life. It’s a film that leaves you smiling, misty-eyed, and humming a Neil Diamond tune on the way out of the theatre.

Mark: 8.5 out of 11

Cinema, Reviews

The Cinema Fix presents: 12 Favourite Films of 2025!

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The Cinema Fix presents: 12 Favourite Films of 2025!

Happy 2026! I feel like I have watched even more films last year at the cinema and the many streaming platforms.

My instinct is it’s been a decent year overall of quality films, especially from independent or what one would class as indie-minded filmmakers. The bigger budgeted films or traditional blockbusters have been mainly not great or I just didn’t enjoy them. Aside from perhaps the entertaining Mission: Impossible finale.

Of all the genres, horror has really risen to the top in terms of overall quality the last few years, doing big box office and being recognised at awards ceremonies too. Having said that, and this could be my age and is nostalgia-driven, I find myself enjoying older, cult and more obscure film releases than the today’s modern film releases.

Anyway, here my my 12 FAVOURITE films of 2025. Not the BEST films, but the ones I enjoyed the most. There’s a few high quality, critically acclaimed films which do not make the list including Train Dreams (2025), Sorry, Baby (2025), Eddington (2025), Warfare (2025), Good Boy (2025), The Brutalist (2024) and I’m Still Here (2024), but remember these are my FAVOURITE films of the year.

For reference my favourite films of 2024 are below and here.

ALL OF US STRANGERS (2023)
AMERICAN FICTION (2023)
HERETIC (2024)
THE HOLDOVERS (2023)
THE IRON CLAW (2023)
LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL (2023)
MONSTER (2023)
POOR THINGS (2023)
THE QUIET GIRL (2023)
SPEAK NO EVIL (2024)
THE SUBSTANCE (2024)
THE ZONE OF INTEREST (2023)

Twelve Favourite Films of 2025

28 YEARS LATER (2025)

BLACK BAG (2025)

BRING HER BACK (2025)

BUGONIA (2025)

A DIFFERENT MAN (2024)

THE GORGE (2025)

THE LONG WALK (2025)

MARTY SUPREME (2025)

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (2025)

SINNERS (2025)

WAKE UP DEAD MAN (2025)

WEAPONS (2025)

Netflix, New Releases

Netflix Film Reviews including: A House of Dynamite (2025), Ballad of a Small Player (2025) Frankenstein (2025), Jay Kelly (2025) and Wake Up, Dead Man (2025)

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Netflix Film Reviews – Winter 2025

Netflix’s auteur-driven cinema push has seen the platform hand enormous creative freedom—and budgets—to filmmakers like Noah Baumbach, Rian Johnson, Kathryn Bigelow, Edward Berger, and Guillermo del Toro, pairing them with world-class casts and top-tier crews to produce works of unmistakably cinematic ambition.

The paradox is that many of these films—designed with theatrical scale, craft, and seriousness—ultimately premiere to mass audiences via Netflix’s online platform rather than traditional movie theatres, reflecting a fundamental shift in how prestige cinema is financed, distributed, and culturally consumed in the streaming era.

What can you do? Well, pay the Netflix subscription and watch them from the comfort of one’s living room. Here are my reviews with usual marks out of eleven. Happy 2026!

A House of Dynamite (2025)

Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite (2025) is an expertly directed and intriguingly structured disaster movie, unfolding across three interlocking chapters that chart a nuclear attack on the United States by an unknown enemy. Each section reframes the same escalating crisis through a different lens—the White House intelligence apparatus, the military response, and the political sphere—culminating in the perspective of the President, played with sensitivity and gravitas by Idris Elba.

As events overlap and repeat, the script cleverly ratchets up tension, revealing new information through subtle shifts in context, while Bigelow’s command of pacing and scale, combined with sterling filmmaking and a who’s-who ensemble cast, keeps the film gripping on a moment-to-moment level. Yet for all its craft, the film ultimately plays like a fear-mongering piece of propaganda and an implicit recruitment advert for the U.S. government and military. Its refusal to name a perpetrator suggest the U.S. has many enemies thus justifying huge spending on defence and weapons. The abrupt ending could be interpreted as brave storytelling, but for me it undercut the suspense, leaving the experience feeling oddly hollow and non-plussed rather than provocatively unresolved.

Mark: 6 out of 11

Ballad of a Small Player (2025)

The Ballad of a Small Player (2025) follows Lord Doyle, played by a magnetic Colin Farrell, as he lies low in Macau, numbing himself on casino floors with deep debt, bad bets, and the stubborn hope that the next hand will fix everything. Farrell is phenomenal here, turning compulsive gambling into a form of slow self-harm, his performance layered with exhaustion, bravado, and quiet panic. When he’s offered a fragile lifeline by the enigmatic Dao Ming, played with poised restraint by Fala Chen, the film hints at redemption.

Director Edward Berger and his production team deliver a ravishingly beautiful film, capturing Macau’s neon glow and claustrophobic interiors as both seduction and trap. At its best, the film is a melancholy character study about addiction for a protagonist who is often deeply annoying and morally bankrupt. However, the final act falters, introducing fuzzy, unearned twists that soften the film’s harder truths and dilute its emotional impact. While the journey is engrossing and Farrell’s performance alone makes the film worth seeing, the conclusion ultimately cheats the audience out of a powerful Uncut Gems (2019)-style denouement.

Mark: 7 out of 11

Frankenstein (2025)

Is Guillermo Del Toro’s big budget adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic gothic novel really necessary? There are much better versions out there, yet, Netflix and Del Toro certainly thought so. Oscar Isaac is a great actor but miscast or misdirected here for me. Then again, even in Shelley’s seminal novel Dr Frankenstein is a colossal whinger! Thankfully, Jacob Elordi gives a hearty and emotional rendition of the tragic creature, who again is the most interesting character. Safe to say the majestic production values provide a visual and aural feast, but, aside from a scintillating opening in the North Pole, Del Toro’s slog of a script ultimately fails to bring Shelley’s story to life in a sustained enjoyable fashion. Don’t get me wrong, the production and design is of the highest order but I just didn’t connect emotionally or philosophically or even as a horror fan.

Mark: 6 out of 11

Jay Kelly (2025)

Jay Kelly (2025) is a mild, reflective comedy drama that sees George Clooney doing what he’s long perfected: playing a famous film star grappling with past and present relationships while barely appearing to break a sweat. As Kelly travels to Tuscany to collect a lifetime achievement award, the film drifts between memories, regrets, and professional compromises, offering Clooney ample opportunity to deploy his trademark charm—stretching his range (not), but doing so with effortless ease. The more grounded emotional texture comes from Adam Sandler, who is quietly excellent as Kelly’s long-suffering manager, bringing a lived-in, humane quality that feels more emotionally honest.

Director Noah Baumbach has delivered far sharper and more incisive work and Jay Kelly (2025) never quite pushes its Hollywood satire of spoiled first-world creatives as far as it could. Still, there’s an undeniable pleasure in Baumbach’s dialogue and structure, with clear echoes of Wild Strawberries (1957) and 8½ (1963) filtering through in its introspective, memory-haunted moments. The film ultimately has its cake and eats it—content to indulge its characters rather than interrogate them—but it remains a very pleasant cake all the same: soft, well-made, and easy to enjoy.

Mark: 7 out of 11

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025)

Wake Up Dead Man (2025) stands as the clear high point of Netflix’s auteur-driven releases from November and December 2025, confirming Rian Johnson as a post-modern master of the classical whodunnit. Once again drawing from the elegant clockwork of Agatha Christie’s works, Johnson constructs a devilishly complicated mystery centred on the murder of the tyrannical Monsignor Wicks, played with thunderous menace by Josh Brolin. The suspect list is gloriously stacked—church staff and parishioners portrayed by Glenn Close, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, Thomas Haden Church, and a young visiting priest, Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor)—each performance feeding into a puzzle that’s as playful as it is precise.

What elevates the film beyond genre excellence is its sharply observed character work, particularly in the portrayal of Wicks as a Trump-like authoritarian figure ruling his congregation through fear and humiliation. Johnson smartly frames the mystery as a moral clash between Old Testament wrath and New Testament compassion, allowing the film to interrogate power, faith, and hypocrisy without ever losing its entertainment value. The script crackles with brilliant one-liners and sly, witty exchanges, especially when Daniel Craig’s Poirot-style detective peels back layers of deceit with theatrical relish. Among the ensemble, Josh O’Connor delivers a superbly nuanced performance, injecting emotional specificity and intelligence that rise above what could have been more generic material. Clever, funny, thematically sharp, and immaculately engineered, Wake Up Dead Man isn’t just Netflix’s best auteur offering of the season—it’s one of Johnson’s most satisfying achievements to date.

Mark: 9 out of 11

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Cinema Review: Marty Supreme (2025) – a breathless anti-hero journey driven by purpose, anxiety and adrenaline!

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Cinema Review: Marty Supreme (2025)

Directed by Josh Safdie

Written by Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie

Produced by Josh Safdie, Ronald Bronstein, Eli Bush, Anthony Katagas
and Timothée Chalamet

Main cast: Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion, Kevin O’Leary, Tyler Okonma, Abel Ferrara, Fran Drescher, Sandra Bernhard, etc.

Cinematography Darius Khondji

Music by: Daniel Lopatin

Anxiety cinema, though always a part of film history, has seen a surge in prominence in recent years, with directors like Gaspar Noé, the Safdie brothers, Sean Baker and Ari Aster leading the charge. These filmmakers specialize in creating films that push audiences to their emotional limits, heightening tension and discomfort without offering the cathartic release often found in more traditional thrillers or suspense films by the likes of DePalma, Hitchcock, and Spielberg. Rather than resolving the anxiety with a tidy ending or a moment of relief, these films leave viewers on edge, their blood pressure elevated, and their minds unsettled, reflecting the growing cultural sense of unease and existential dread.

It’s important to note that it would appear, with the release of the frantic Marty Supreme (2025), it is Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein, not Benny Safdie, who could be seen to be the driving forces behind the anxiety-driven films like Good Time (2017) and Uncut Gems (2019). Their collaborative work has come to define the frantic, high-pressure style of modern anxiety cinema. In contrast, Benny Safdie’s more recent work, The Smashing Machine (2025), highlights a shift toward more authentic and subtle character development, offering a quieter, more understated take on human drama. While Josh and Bronstein continue to escalate tension to dizzying heights, Benny’s approach focuses on exploring deeper, more introspective emotional journeys.

So, Marty Supreme (2025), is it any good? Let’s just say that this isn’t a Christmas or feelgood film, so I can only think the marketing team are being ironic with the poster tagline ‘Dream Big – Christmas!’ This is a 1952 period set anti-heroic-rites-of-passage rollercoaster journey profiling Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet), a New York shoe salesman with dreams of hitting the big time as a world champion table-tennis player. But rather than being characterised as a Rocky-style underdog sporting personality who the audience can root for, Marty (loosely based on real-life Marty Reisman), is in fact a fast-talking-arrogant-crisis-addicted-confidence-trickster and womaniser who is not averse to “friendly” armed robbery to get what he wants. Oh, by the way, Marty is also a phenomenal table-tennis player.

Having previously cast Robert Pattinson in Good Time (2017) and Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems (2019) as their disaster-prone, masculine leads, Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein took a new direction in Marty Supreme (2025) by casting Timothée Chalamet. Known for his charisma and commitment, as showcased most recently in Wonka (2023) and A Complete Unknown (2024), Chalamet brings an entirely new energy to the table. As Marty, he is nothing short of a force of nature—physically commanding as a table tennis player, yet intellectually and verbally dominating the screen. His performance captivates with a magnetic presence, delivering lines with such intensity and precision that he becomes impossible to look away from. Chalamet’s portrayal of Marty is both memorable and transformative, showcasing his versatility as an actor who can take on the manic, chaotic energy required by a character in a Safdie-Bronstein film while adding a unique layer of depth and intrigue.

Marty’s journey represents a fascinating emotional dialectic, one that leaves the audience both drawn to and repelled by his behaviour. While I didn’t necessarily enjoy his character arc, that’s exactly what makes Chalamet’s portrayal so compelling. Marty is, in many ways, his own worst enemy—he can’t follow rules, he’s a liar, and he cheats to get ahead. Yet, his raw talent and unwavering sense of purpose give him an undeniable charisma, pulling the audience in even as his decisions spiral into reckless, life-threatening situations. The character’s hustle, constant scheming, and pursuit of personal gain lead him into a series of humiliating, violent confrontations that highlight his self-destructive tendencies.

Marty’s a deeply flawed person desperately trying to make something of himself. But he also makes his own bad luck through poor decision-making. Whether it’s falling through a hotel ceiling in a bath; retrieving a missing dog for a psychopathic gangster; locking horns with the table tennis authorities and the uber-businessman he’s seeking patronship from; fighting a cuckolded neighbour whose wife, Rachel Mizler (Odessa A’zion) he possibly loves – not forgetting the scintillating table tennis games – the film is a litany of combative and panic-attack inducing set-pieces. The emotional tension lies in watching Marty repeatedly sabotage his own potential, a cycle of ups and downs that plays out as a cautionary tale. Marty’s journey doesn’t just depict failure; it explores the emotional complexity of someone trapped in their own worst impulses.

Marty Supreme (2025) stands as a masterpiece of filmmaking, with creative choices that not only subvert expectations but elevate the entire storytelling experience. From its striking cinematography to the anachronistic 1980s soundtrack, every visual and auditory detail feels meticulously crafted to immerse the audience in the world of Marty Mauser. The gritty, authentic production design brings a raw realism that grounds the film, while the ensemble cast—many of whom are quirky non-actors—brings an undeniable energy and authenticity to the narrative. In conclusion, the collaboration between Chalamet, Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein, and the entire cast and crew gave me both a nervous breakdown and an unforgettable cinematic experience.

Mark: 9.5 out of 11

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