Dan Says its Alright

Like its shape shifting titular character, Clayface attempts to be many things. Billed as DC's first horror movie, it is also a supervillain origin story, a modern-gothic romance, a tragedy and a crime drama. With all this in the pot, what it actually ends up feeling like is a throwback to the '90s/early 2000s era of comic book adaptations. A time of modest budgets for the genre, when studios cared less about shared world continuity and were prepared to let filmmakers have some fun with weird characters.  Tom Rhys Harris stars as Matt Hagen, an actor who got out of the Gotham City slums and is now Academy Award nominated. His high flying life comes crashing down when he has a one night stand with the girlfriend of a prominent Gotham mobster and is left hideously scarred by the scorned gangster's vengeance. With his career in ruins, he finds showbiz loyalty in short supply as his manager, lawyer and possibly even his best friend quickly abandon him. Scientist Dr. Caitlyn Co...

Heart of the Beast is a man and his dog against nature film. As such, it requires a lead who can be tough but also vulnerable and has the screen presence to draw the audience in without dialogue. This film has such a lead. It also has Brad Pitt. See, the star of the show really is ex-army dog Odin (played by a German Shepherd named Uber, with three of his sons helping out). Odin has metal teeth, an artificial leg and suffers from PTSD but soldiers on with the joyous spirit only a dog can muster. It's just as well, since he is the only thing holding his human, retired Special Forces Command Sergeant Major James Belmont (Pitt) together. Belmont is himself haunted by nightmares of the mission that left him and Odin as sole survivors and it's safe to say he isn't a people person. The pair are exploring the Alaskan wilderness when a potential heart attack leads to Belmont crashing his little plane and leaving them with an arduous and dangerous trek back to civilisation. That thi...

 Bad Apples opens with a colourful procession of apples making their way through a processing facility. There is a problem, though: stowing away is a solitary child's trainer, hidden amongst the apples and about to jam up the machine and bring the whole enterprise to a halt. Turns out a bad kid can do the same to a classroom, as poor Miss Maria Spencer (Saoirse Ronan) knows only too well. This darkly comic satire doesn't go much deeper than the above metaphor but it entertains and is propelled by a trio of strong performances. The offending trainer belongs to Danny (Eddie Waller),  a disruptive pupil whose out of control behaviour has the timid Maria on the verge of losing her job. When Danny seriously injures another pupil and gets suspended, Maria goes to see his dad but ends up in a scuffle with the troublemaking youngster that leads to her imprisoning him in her basement. With the rascal out of the picture and nobody missing him much, things start to look pretty rosy for t...

  Despite its singular name, Resident Evil is actually the eighth film to be based on the long running video game franchise. Unlike Paul W.S. Anderson's decade plus running series and 2021's failed reboot, Welcome to Raccoon City, this new effort from Weapons helmer Zach Cregger uses none of the game's characters or plot lines. Ironically, ditching the baggage has allowed Cregger to craft something that comes much closer to matching the camp terror of its source material and is easily the best film to wear the Resident Evil name. The entire film follows medical courier Bryan (Austin Abrams) on the delivery from hell. Despite being in the middle of a phone argument with his pregnant girlfriend, Brian accepts one last job for the day; a drop-off in remote Raccoon City. The icy roads he is ill prepared for turn out to be the least of his worries as something has gone very wrong in the mountain city. After running a woman over in the town outskirts, things quickly escalated and...

  Insidious has always been a fairly low tier horror franchise. The Conjuring's budget cousin, if you will. If you look at it that way then Insidious: Out of the Further is actually fairly good. It's certainly the most entertaining the series has been since the first instalment. Like that first breakout hit from back in 2010, Out of the Further has a much stronger first half than it does second. We start with a fairly harrowing scene of a young girl named Gemma witnessing the grisly death of her erratically behaving mother. We then fast forward a couple of decades to find the adult Gemma working as a dentist while raising a young girl of her own, yet still living in her childhood home. Spooky things begin to happen as some unfriendly OAPs start stalking the neighbourhood and Gemma tries to keep her daughter safe while worrying she is becoming like her mother. In typical Insidious fashion, things become more silly than scary as the plot is revealed and we build towards a ludicr...

Everybody has their own version of Robin Hood, whether it's Errol Flynn, Kevin Costner or a dashing cartoon fox. There have also been attempts at taking the tale in a more grounded direction, most notably from Ridley Scott and Russel Crowe in 2010, but nobody has shot an arrow through the neck of the legend quite like Michael Sarnoski does with The Death of Robin Hood.  The film begins with an ageing Robin (Hugh Jackman) tormented by false stories of his own making and filling up his own personal graveyard with the bodies of would be assassins. When the last surviving member of his outlaw band, Little John (a typically chameleonic Bill Skarsgard) asks for his help in reclaiming a stolen farm, he senses the chance to finally receive his "good" death. Instead, he ends up gravely injured and in the care of Jodie Comer's healing Prioress.  Many films have done "realistic" medical violence but the opening act here is on a whole other level. Within minutes of the ...