Mark Conroy 147 posts 0 comments

Bob Viddick, the grunting, grizzled and scruple-light hitman from the frenetically fun Copshop, informs us at one stage that he received a degree “from the university of common sense”. Is this a good line? It would be a struggle to…

Technological anxieties concerning relationships with artificial beings really have had something of a stranglehold on the world of grounded, sci-fi dramas recently. Spike Jones’s Her, which concerned a lonely Joaquin Phoenix and his…

Remember when Captain Marvel was set in the 1990’s for some inexplicable reason? I say inexplicable, it at least gave the filmmakers lots of chances to make so-so jokes about video rental shops and dial-up internet. Now, it’s the turn of DC…

Talking Heads, perhaps then the most critically lauded band in the US, released the concert film Stop Making Sense in 1984. While some relationships were beginning to fracture, the new-wave four-piece were riding high on an imperious streak…

The live-action family film has not had a great few years, it must be said. Paul King’s excellent Paddington films were two of the few bright sparks during a time when the genre was beset with rapping chipmunks and an endless supply of…

Christopher Nolan has a habit of using projects to cleanse his palette of the more typically populist outing that preceded it. Following each entry of his massively successful Dark Knight trilogy, he gave us admittedly large-scale but…

Mark Conroy indulges in his annual act of oracle-like analysis with his Oscar predictions for 2020. Best Picture What Will Win: Parasite What Should Win: Parasite Yes you are correct. You do not have to scream at the screen in…

We’ve had enough of stuffy, aggressively faithful adaptations of beloved literature in recent times. John Crowley’s The Goldfinch was too in love with the messy multi-stranded melodrama of its source material. Richard Linklater’s Where’d…

Do we all remember 3D? Ten years ago, it was all the rage in blockbuster cinema. At a time when larger studios were increasingly fearful of the threat of piracy, the “extra dimension” was regarded as sure-fire way to disrupt the practice…

It’s interesting the upstate mansion has become a symbol of prejudice in the cinema of Trump’s America. Opposition to the “elites” was a rallying cry of the man’s incendiary presidential run. Yet it’s the not-so-humble abodes of the upper…