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Reviews

Reviewing can be a tricky balance between questionable fawning and unnecessarily cruel character assassinations. My approach is to first consider what the artist was setting out to achieve and then whether or not that aim was successful. I've written reviews for Filmhounds, Dork, Under the Radar, Skiddle, and The Ransom Note.

Filmhounds Magazine •

Film Review: The End of Civilization: Three Films by Piotr Szulkin

In what's already been a great year for underappreciated Polish auteurs comes the latest box set from Radiance, The End of Civilization: Three Films by Piotr Szulkin. The three films collected here, all taken from Szulkin's loosely connected 1980s Apocalypse tetralogy, are science fiction at their most grimy and grounded, a distant cry from the fantastical whimsy of the post-Star Wars sci-fi boom occurring in contemporaneous America. And while the omission of the first entry in that tetralogy, Szulkin's feature debut Golem (1980), seems odd, this set still marks the best way to see Szulkin's unsettling visions of life under oppressive police state rule.
Filmhounds Magazine •

Film Review: One False Move

There's a certain irony to be found in reviewing a home release of One False Move, given that the film in question was originally intended for the straight-to-video wastebin. Directed by Carl Franklin in his feature debut, at a time when Franklin was most known for his run as an actor on The A-Team, and premised on the kind of generic culture clash that bargain buckets are weighed down with—two sardonic LA cops get paired with a small town yokel police chief to solve a brutal series of drug-related murders—it's remarkable that it was successful in securing last-minute theatrical distribution. That it's also one of the finer examples of ‘90s neo-noir, lifted by its well-observed character moments and Franklin's deft touch behind the camera, is most remarkable of all.
Filmhounds Magazine •

Film Review: Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers

In many ways, the circuses of the early 20th Century have a similar allure to pre-Code Hollywood cinema; lawless, illicit, and exotic in spite of their appearing on home soil. That sweet spot between the introduction of sound in 1927 and the enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934 (a self-imposed rule set that banned profanity, sexual innuendo, and interracial relationships, amongst many other bigoted moral edicts) runs firmly against perceptions of older American cinema as stuffy and tight-lipped.
Filmhounds Magazine •

Film Review: The Man on the Roof

Historically, Swedish cinema has been somewhat overlooked, save for a certain Mr. Bergman. With their latest rerelease, The Man on the Roof (1976), Radiance are bringing further attention to Bo Widerberg, a Swedish director, writer, and editor most known for his rigorous dramaturgy and sharp politics. In what was his first foray into the crime genre, the result is a robust if somewhat undaring slice of workmanlike police procedural.
Filmhounds Magazine •

Film Review: Take Out

By building its foundations on a hierarchical structure, the American dream is destined to fail. Sean Baker may have only broken through to mainstream audiences with Tangerine (2015), but that thesis has been at the heart of his work from the offset. Co-directed and written with Shih-Ching Tsou (who would go on to produce nearly all of his later films), his second feature Take Out (2004) digs deep into the inherent lie of the capitalist narrative, holding a social realist lens to the lives of immigrants living under the radar in the United States
Filmhounds Magazine •

Film Review: The Great Dictator

In 1939, Charlie Chaplin was at a professional crossroads. His most recent outing as his beloved bumbling vagrant the Tramp, Modern Times (1936), had been one of the top grossing films that year, but as a mostly silent picture that only used synchronised sound sparingly it was dramatically out of step with the influx of sound pictures. Worse, he’d received criticism for his incorporation of social commentary into what was otherwise a comedy—a rather pressing concern given that his new project was set to tackle the rise of fascism during World War II. The Tramp was out, talkies were in. Enter: Hynkel the dictator.
Under the Radar •

Album Review: Arcade Fire - WE

Arcade Fire have never been cool. In fact, for many wonderful years that was their raison d’etre, each new album of maximalist baroque pop riding that thin line between moving earnestness and outright mawkishness, balanced by an undercurrent of reluctant, aching pessimism. At their best their open-armed orchestral arrangements were sweepingly grandiose in scope while remaining affectingly personal, forever hinging on the lovelorn lyrical interplay of the band’s emotive core.
Under the Radar •

Album Review: Daniel Rossen - You Belong There

The problem faced by artists that come to define an era in music, however populist or niche it may be, is that the same era begins to define them too. For Grizzly Bear, that era was the Brooklyn indie boom of the early millennium, one characterized by soft, even timorous vocal harmonies, and lightly-picked folk guitar; a time where their breakthrough 2009 single “Two Weeks” seemed as unavoidable as tightly buttoned shirts and limp cardigans.
Dork •

Album Review: Denzel Curry - Melt My Eyez See Your Future

Dating back to his breathless, clinical appearance in the XXL Freshmen Class of 2016 Cypher, Denzel Curry has always switched between raising hell and intense introspection. In contrast to his adlib-heavy mumble rapping alums Lil Uzi Vert, 21 Savage, Lil Yachty, and Kodak Black, Denzel felt like a bridge between the old and the new; crisply enunciated and tightly technical, but still at his happiest mobbing out with his Soundcloud rap peers.
Under the Radar •

Album Review: Metronomy - Small World

If there’s one constant in the life and times of Metronomy, it’s frontman and one-time only member, Joseph Mount. Acting as the titular metronome keeping pace through the group’s various iterations, Mount makes for an interesting lead; a constant muser on matters of the heart who can’t help but keep an ironic distance. But not this time. The advent of their latest revamp and corresponding record, Small World, sees a new Mount emerge, one at peace with his role as a romantic, and brimming over with hope for a world working past the last two years. Without his sardonic edge, however, there’s little to differentiate it from its ’90s pop influences.
Under the Radar •

Album Review: Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There

Anyone who’s seen Black Country, New Road (BCNR) play live in the past six months knows that a change is underway with the London-based seven-piece. The once self-proclaimed “World’s second-best Slint tribute act” no longer sound as angry and brash as when they first broke through in 2019. “Sunglasses,” the grinding, sneering rallying cry of a single has all but disappeared from their setlists—and that after an already controversial album version, slower and less barking. On their second record, Ants From Up There, the band take another step forward down that new road.
Dork •

Album Review: Squid - Bright Green Field

Brighton five-piece Squid may have built their brand on post-punk belters, but with their debut album, ‘Bright Green Fields’, they’re trying their hands as architects. “This album has created an imaginary cityscape,” explains drummer and singer Ollie Judge, “A kind of dystopian British cityscape.” Only around 5% of the UK is urbanised, but in the hyperreality of modern Britain, most of us are more likely to see the rolling green hills of a Windows background than we are that other 95%.
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