Tony Stamp

An attempt to marry a crime thriller with an ensemble comedy, it succeeds mainly due to a pleasantly convoluted script by Mark Perez.

While the parallels Del Toro is drawing will be too clunky for some, the film’s huge heart and good intentions are always on display.

The Commuter doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s a solid enough thriller, writes Tony Stamp.

It’s a fairly pleasant little excursion, albeit as inconsequential as a puff of (campfire) smoke.

Tony Stamp reviews Takashi “Miike’s lovingly crafted tableaus of severed limbs and blood splatter.”

‘Groundhog Day meets Halloween’ is an interesting pitch, and to its credit the movie keeps the plot relatively twisty.

Denis Villeneuve is some kind of cinematic magician. He bounces between genres, masters them all, and has now resurrected a 35-year-old classic and made it his own. It’s like he soaked in the essence of Blade Runner and channelled it into this new story, which continues the original’s themes regarding sentience, expands on them, then […]

Sofia Coppola’s Civil War drama sees an injured Union soldier played by Colin Farrell at the mercy of Nicole Kidman and the inhabitants of her boarding school. It’s fertile ground for a modern-minded bodice-ripper, and the psychological dance between Farrell and the various women (and girls), is quietly thrilling. The Beguiled is Coppola’s most accessible […]

The Trip series is hard to categorise. You can expect a lot of comedic riffing, some nice-looking meals and scenery, with a smidgen of emotional depth. They’re mostly inert plot-wise, but they’re nice to hang out in for a few hours. And not necessarily because Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are good company. Everyone knows […]

You might know the feeling: you’re walking along, ear buds in, enjoying a favourite song. Before long your pace is in time with the beat, and your surroundings start to feel in sync with the music. That’s the concept behind Baby Driver, told from the perspective of someone whose buds never leave his ears, and who’s less […]

Forget your usual blockbuster fare like cities getting flattened or aliens punching each other, the greatest special effect in War for the Planet of the Apes is a close-up of a chimp’s face. The collaboration between Andy Serkis and the digital artists that create Caesar is still miraculous, and watching him silently grapple with a decision […]

All Eyez On Me is hobbled from the start by a clunky framing device. Tupac Shakur gives an interview to a documentary crew during his 1995 prison stay, and we episodically flash back to his life as he goes from a kid in Compton to a star in LA. It’s a corny approach, saddled with […]

Ridley Scott makes it clear from Alien Covenant’s first scene, a dialogue between Michael Fassbender’s ‘synthetic’ David and his creator Peter Weyland, that it will continue Prometheus’ theme of gods and monsters. Scott revisiting a franchise he started 40 years ago to subvert its history is fascinating, but is it what viewers want from an […]

At first glance Personal Shopper is a bit of a tonal mishmash, as we follow Kristen Stewart’s character Maureen through encounters in Paris both mundane and supernatural. It’s a character study that doubles as a ghost story, a fable about wealth, a pulp thriller, and involves a lot of scenes focused on text messaging. But primarily […]

In an era when super-heroics dominate the multiplex, Logan manages to offer something unique. For a start, Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart have been playing these characters for 17 years now, bringing with them the full weight of that history. Also, Logan is easily the dourest super-hero film in history, surpassing even the Dark Knight […]

Paul Verhoeven’s first full length film since 2006’s Black Book see him paired with Isabelle Huppert, a union primed for maximum moral ambiguity. Elle does not disappoint in that regard, but does see Verhoeven dialling down his more lurid impulses, delivering a complex, layered drama inside the body of a thriller. Huppert is ideally cast […]

Weird, magical details loom at the edges of Paterson, but they aren’t its main consideration. Director Jim Jarmusch is more concerned with celebrating ordinary people and the rituals that make up their days. Adam Driver carries the film on his broad shoulders as Paterson, a bus driver who lives in Paterson, New Jersey. He writes […]