Maggie isn’t a traditional zombie movie… it’s more of an art house zombie drama. There are no car chases across a post-apocalyptic America of zombie hordes and for the most part, everything takes place in one location. The pacing is slow, the style is understated to a fault, the focus is on drama and it […]

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A Walk in the Woods is just like its movie title: breezy and understated. That’s the inherent charm of this adaptation of Bill Bryson’s novel, it’s an easy-going and amusing adventure drama that ambles along, never straying too far from the path. The path is the Appalachian trail, a 2000 mile hike and six month […]

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Bridge of Spies is a biographical and historical drama thriller starring Tom Hanks and directed by Steven Spielberg. By now, you’ll already know if this film is for you, heralding two of the biggest and best names in Hollywood… ever.

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The Kray twins, Ronnie and Reggie Kray, are two of the most notorious gangsters in history. The English crime bosses operated in the Lower East End of London in the ’50s and ’60s and were involved in armed robberies, racketeering, arson, assaults and murder. It’s surprising that in an age where Guy Ritchie Brit gangster […]

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A woman is raped every 26 seconds in South Africa. That statistic doesn’t carry enough weight… even if you get Charlize Theron to follow it up with “Real Men Don’t Rape”. This isn’t surprising when you consider we’re living in a culture, where sexual harassment and coercion are viewed as normal male behaviour. In South […]

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Black Mass is the true crime story of James Joseph “Whitey” Bulger, Jr., a notorious American criminal, who haunted the world’s most wanted list for years. The violent South Bostonian crime boss, and brother to a state senator, became an FBI informant to crack down on the Mafia family, whose operations were getting in the […]

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Necktie Youth is a black-and-white drama with a documentary feel that attempts to capture the Zeitgeist of South African youth culture. We’re thrown into an experimental haze of young, affluent and disillusioned South Africans, whose journeys intersect with the deeply affecting live-stream suicide of a local Jo’burg girl.

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The Martian is a Ridley Scott film. While the director is best known for Alien, and less so for Prometheus, he’s gone for a much more scientific space film, undertaking the adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel. It’s been accurately described as “Apollo 13 meets Cast Away” as the realism of the NASA lunar misadventure is coupled […]

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Rolling Stone magazine is a pop culture institution, which has sculpted the landscape of American media since its inception in 1967. Through the ages, from Hunter S. Thompson’s political reporting to becoming a cultural loudspeaker for youth-orientated lifestyle, getting the Annie Leibovitz treatment and gracing the cover with an interview story has been the stamp […]

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South Africa is home to many prime surf spots including: Long Beach, Dungeons, Dunes, Cape St. Francis, Eland’s Bay, Jeffrey’s Bay, Nahoon Reef, Wild Coast, Muizenberg and South Africa’s surfing capital, Durban. It’s birthed a growing number of surfing movies including: Otelo Burning, Blue Crush 2, The Perfect Wave, Ocean Driven and now Die Pro.

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Dark Places is a movie with a personal slant for lead actress, Charlize Theron, who witnessed her mother kill her father in self-defense after he arrived home drunk in 1991. Gillian Flynn’s novel has been adapted to film by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, after David Fincher did the same for Gone Girl. Instead of a married couple, […]

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Hitman: Agent 47 is a video game adaptation from up-and-coming director, Aleksander Bach. While explosive and visually stimulating, this action thriller starts with great promise and then becomes increasingly dull as we try to connect with stilted performances and insubstantial characters.

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Impunity (Freedom from Punishment) is a South African outlaw romance thriller based on a story by Trish Malone and adapted to film by director Jyoti Mistry. We trace the exploits of a love-struck, ultra-violent, on-the-run couple, who are connected to the murder of a politician’s daughter, as Impunity tries to get by on titillation and experimental style.

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The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is now a Guy Ritchie film adaptation of the cult TV series of the same name, which ran from 1964 to 1968. Ian Fleming contributed to the show’s concept by suggesting a TV-friendly version of James Bond, which became Napoleon Solo. While Solo was intended to be the main focus, Illya Kuryakin’s […]

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Fantastic Four was a film with serious potential featuring:Chronicle’s exciting director, Josh Trank, accomplished screenwriters including X-Men’s Simon Kinsberg and an up-and-coming cast with Whiplash’s Miles Teller, Fruitvale Station’s Michael B. Jordan, it-girl Kate Mara, Toby “Koba” Kebbell and even that kid from Billy Elliot. When stars collide… it’s either a magical union or a black hole.

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The classic sci-fi adventure, The Incredible Shrinking Man, wowed audiences in 1957 for its cutting edge blend of otherworldly proportions. Now more than 50 years later, we’re getting another little-big sci-fi adventure with a hero named Scott, which is just as spectacular and entertaining.

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Thina Sobabili translated as The Two of Us is a brave, gut-wrenching and realistic drama about the exploits of a brother and sister in the Alexandra township of Johannesburg, South Africa. We’re introduced to Thulani and his sister Zanele, who become the focus of this shoestring budget production, which was self-funded and shot in the space of a […]

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Ex Machina is a sci-fi thriller and drama from Dredd, Sunshine and 28 Days Later… screenwriter Alex Garland, whose directorial debut is eerie, beautiful, sparse and thought-provoking. It’s a wonderful piece of science fiction, delving into the arena of artificial intelligence with unsettling, provocative drama and keeping an air of suspense with mysterious motives and […]

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Cut Bank is one of those small town ensemble crime thrillers you’d expect to be set in a snowy North American Winter. Although that would probably make it a bit too similar to films like A Simple Plan, Fargo, The Big White and Thin Ice.

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After a mesmerising movie poster, a marketing stunt where Arnold Schwarzenegger pranked people at Madame Tussard’s in Hollywood and an endorsement from James Cameron that this film would be the actual third film in the series, there was much excitement and anticipation around the release of Terminator: Genisys.

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While We’re Young is a film by Noah Baumbach, the writer-director who brought us The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding, Frances Ha and Greenberg, which also starred Ben Stiller. Baumbach’s got an unconventional approach, tending towards comedy dramas and the uncomfortable “dramedy” genre, delivering honest, humorous, heartfelt and meaningful films about complex people and the human condition.

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San Andreas is the sort of film you’d expect from Roland Emmerich. It’s big, loaded with CGI, studded with stars and is completely over-the-top. It’s like 2012 meets True Lies, pitting spectacular disaster movie visual effects and Hollywood action against the charm of its stars in a gut-wrenching yet heartwarming tale of survival and redemption in adverse conditions.

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Kurt Cobain is an icon of the ’90s. The Nirvana frontman’s music lives on… long after his alleged suicide, perpetuated by a strong cult following, conspiracy theories and his enigmatic spirit. Montage of Heck is a documentary that assimilates Cobain’s art, writing, vocal recordings and home videos into a raw, honest and intimate biographical music film.

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Jurassic World is one of those movie sequel throwbacks that channels ’90s nostalgia and theme park curiosity into a weird tribute to dinosaurs. We’re living in an age where films like Sharknado have an audience, which helps explain the theme park roller-coaster ride meets Jurassic Park tribute tone of Jurassic World.

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The Riot Club is an adaptation of the stage play Posh, which follows two first-year students at Oxford University, who are recruited by the infamous Riot Club, where reputations can be made or destroyed overnight.

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Treurgrond is a South African film about farm murders, directed by Darryl Roodt and starring controversial pop star and actor, Steve Hofmeyr. According to the film’s website, the most frequently asked questions address its political agenda, entertainment value for non-extremists and whether it features racial discrimination. While it answers these questions as you’d expect, it’s interesting […]

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A Most Violent Year is another film from J.C. Chandor, whose previous efforts Margin Call and All Is Lost have already earned him a spot as an ambitious writer-director with a melancholic disposition. It stars Oscar Isaac from the equally melancholic Inside Llewyn Davis, who finds himself similarly poised in Hollywood. Both director and star are about mood and subtlety, which […]

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Mad Max: Fury Road is a piston-pumping action extravaganza from George Miller, who has reinvigorated the Mad Max franchise. To find some humourous context, the director’s previous films include Babe: Pig in the City, Happy Feet and Happy Feet Two. Mad Max: Fury Road is the antithesis… burning with rage and fuming with eye-popping visuals […]

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Will Ferrell is a comedy kingpin. His over-the-top, loud, brash, incredibly manly, irreverently funny trademark comedy has become his empire, racking up a series of memorable performances and characters in the process.

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Avengers: Age of Ultron follows some typical sequel procedure. There’s much more conflict. The Avengers team is put to the test by various personal demons, making them self-doubt and re-examine their priorities. The characters have grown – we get more back story to several of the characters, especially Hawkeye and Black Widow, and discover greater depth. Joss Whedon […]

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