Duel (1971) – 50th Anniversary Blu-ray Review

Duel is a must watch if you’re a fan of Spielberg or even if you’re just after a fantastic and taut thriller. From the acting to the directing to the sparse Billy Goldenberg score; everything about it is pitch perfect. Despite it’s original TV movie trappings, the film is pure, edge-of-your-seat cinema. Duel deserves to be remembered as one of Spielberg’s greatest.

Lost – Season 6 Rewatch and Review

Season 6 of Lost is where (most of) the questions throughout the show’s 6 year run get answered. It follows on directly from the explosive season 5 finale, as we see the gang wake up on the island in the modern day and also a flash-sideways reveals a world where we are shown what would happen if the island was sunk

From the very beginning it’s clear that this season is intended to wrap up the show and provide the audience with some closure. Whether it manages that or not though is going to differ from each person but I really, really like the ending of Lost, even if season 6 does stumble occasionally.

Lost – Season 5 Rewatch and Review

Season 5 of Lost is, with out a doubt, the absolute best season of the entire show. This might be a slightly controversial opinion to some – especially those that prefer the more grounded island survival tone of the first 3 seasons. But for me, season 5 develops the mythology of the show into new and exciting places and, despite some of the show’s most outlandish stuff taking place this season, it does so in way true to the original spirit of the show.

Cinema of New Zealand: Sleeping Dogs (1977) Review

Sleeping Dogs is a landmark film for the cinema of New Zealand. It kick-started the countries very own new wave cinema movement and it heralded the arrival of two new voices with director Roger Donaldson and star Sam Neill.

But away from all that, it’s also just a really good thriller. The pacing is occasionally uneven but the film is certainly never boring. The beautiful cinematography and explosive action sequences disguises the film’s low-budget roots while Donaldson’s passionate direction shines throughout.

Lost – Season 4 Rewatch and Review

Season 4 as a whole is one of the strongest seasons of the show, with no real weak points. I feel it’s the turning point for the show, between the first three seasons with their survival thriller vibes and the last three, more outlandish, science fiction and fantasy seasons. This change will polarise some watchers but I love it and believe these final seasons to be the best in the entire show. And season 4, with it’s tight scripting, fantastic characters, and it’s wonderfully realised science fiction concepts, might just be the best of the lot.

Lost – Season 3 Rewatch and Review

Here we are, over half way through Lost, on the downward slope. I don’t necessarily mean that in terms of quality – some of my favourite Lost stuff comes in the final 3 seasons. But season 3 was where the show runners decided they needed to begin to wrap things up. You can see in season 3 where the writers meandered, unsure where the show was going and padding out the run time with questionable storylines. For the most part though, season 3 does what Lost does best and pushes the story forward while simultaneously giving us the stuff we have all come to love. And in a lot of ways, it’s the strongest season yet.

The Walking Dead – ‘Here’s Negan’ Review

This week The Walking Dead adapts the fantastic stand alone volume of Robert Kirkman comic book series, ‘Here’s Negan’. It’s something that’s been long awaited in TWD community, pretty much since the volume released in 2016, and it was easy to imagine Jeffrey Dean Morgan slipping into the role of pre-apocalypse Negan. And despite this adaptation being part of the run of COVID episodes, no sign of filming hindrances causes by pandemic precautions are on show here. In fact, ‘Here’s Negan’ is not only the best episode of this recent truncated season, it is one of the best episodes of The Walking Dead ever.

Lost – Season 2 Rewatch and Review

Lost season 2 picks up from pretty much exactly where season 1 ended. The survivors on the mysterious island have finally got that damned hatch open and are about to go inside. I’m not sure what the prevailing theories were at the time of airing, about what exactly was in the hatch. But I’m betting nobody guessed it’d be a Scottish man (with more than a passing resemblance to Jesus) and a doomsday button needing to be pressed every 108 minutes. The season meanders a little bit, here and there, treading water and buying time to pad out the overlong 24-episode long season. But even the unnecessary stuff is loads of fun. And the more out-there elements of the show introduced in season 2, like the various other stations on the island and the beginning of the Dharma initiative, is some of the absolute best stuff the show ever did.

The Walking Dead – ‘Splinter’ Review

The Walking Dead’s COVID episodes continue this week with what is perhaps the smallest scale episode the show has ever done. It’s a quintessential bottle episode; having a limited cast, only one location, and very little effects work. Unfortunately for The Walking Dead, these smaller, less flashy episodes usually don’t go over too well with fans and ‘Splinter’ is an episode focused around a controversial comic book character, a relatively new one at that, and features no zombie or human kills (a first in the shows history). Is it really that bad though?

The Walking Dead – ‘One More’ Review

The Walking Dead continues to knock it out of the park with these smaller, more character focused episodes. I read opinions online complaining about the lack of a wider cast, about each of this COVID-19 episodes only featuring a handful of characters. And I get that, I too miss the season 5 days when all of the 20+ central cast members were interacting together. But these unfortunate precautions have meant large casts aren’t feasible, which has forced the writers to turn inwards and instead make these smaller but much more tightly scripted episodes. ‘One More’ follows the high standards set by the previous two episodes. It’s one of the smallest episodes in the history of TWD yet it’s also one of the most engaging.