American cinema stretches from the silent comedies of Buster Keaton, The Cameraman among them, through to the sharp, funny indie work of films like Booksmart. It's a tradition wide enough to hold big-studio spectacle, low-budget horror, and everything in between. Browse Macca's reviews below.
Rating: 3.5★
There are documentaries that succeed on craft, and then there are documentaries that succeed because they take you somewhere you would never otherwise go. Dark Days is firmly the second kind. The moment you understand what Marc Singer has actually done here, you are already half-hooked: he spent an
Rating: 3.0★
The Great Escape, but with chickens. I'll be honest: that is not a bad pitch at all. And in the hands of Aardman, the studio that built its reputation on meticulous, lovingly hand-crafted stop-motion, it should be an absolute home run. The result is good. It
Rating: 3.5★
The most surprising thing about Bride of Frankenstein is how much heart it has. I turned up expecting a lurching-monster picture, a 1935 horror sequel picking up exactly where the original left off, more of the same gothic atmosphere and pitchfork-wielding villagers. What James Whale actually delivers is
Rating: 2.5★
There is a particular horror in hearing mass death described as a job well done. Operation Dominic is essentially an hour of exactly that, and the discomfort never really lets up, even when you know going in what you are dealing with. This is not a documentary in any ordinary
Rating: 3.0★
What if the killer was not a masked slasher with a grudge, not a monster from some shadowy mythology, but Death itself? That was the question Final Destination turned up with in 2000, and credit where it is due: nobody had really asked it quite like that before. The setup
Rating: 2.5★
I came to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang blind, as I like to, having spotted it on the "They Shoot Pictures, Don't They" list of the century's best films. For a while, I genuinely thought I understood the fuss. It opens strongly. I warmed to
Rating: 3.0★
I adore the original Die Hard. It is one of the finest action films of the eighties, the one that turned Bruce Willis into a superstar, and for years I carried around a memory of the sequel being even better. Sharper, bigger, more fun. So when I finally sat down
Rating: 3.0★
There is a lovely, wistful idea sitting at the heart of The Purple Rose of Cairo, and for a good while it is enough. Woody Allen's 1985 film follows Cecilia, a downtrodden waitress in Depression-era New Jersey, played by Mia Farrow, who escapes her miserable reality the
Rating: 3.5★
The Last Detail hangs on a small, quietly infuriating injustice. A young sailor, barely more than a boy, has been handed eight years in a naval prison for stealing forty dollars from a charity box. Two hardened Navy men are tasked with delivering him there: Nicholson's foul-mouthed
Rating: 3.5★
Sometimes you just want a lean, punchy, no-nonsense bit of classic noir. No grand ambitions, no bloated runtime, no second-guessing itself. Just sharp dialogue, hard shadows, and a plot that knows exactly where it's going. Pickup on South Street delivers all of that and then gets
Rating: 3.0★
You have seen the bones of Man on Fire before, probably several times over. A burnt-out, hard-drinking former operative reluctantly takes a job protecting a young girl; they clash, they bond, she is snatched, and he sets about a merciless campaign to get her back. It is the
Rating: 3.5★
River Phoenix is the reason to watch this film. That much is clear within the first few minutes, and it never stops being clear. As Mike, the narcoleptic street hustler drifting through the Pacific Northwest in search of a mother and a home he can barely picture, he is raw
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