Movie reviews of Eric Hillis

The Power of the Dog is refreshing in that it gives us a brutally honest examination of how many gay men would have behaved in the early 20th century, transferring their shame and confusion into cruelty, attacking anyone they identify with in the hopes such a display of performative masculinity will cover their own tracks. Review

Pearce is bailed out to some degree by two things - the central performance of Ahmed, who does his best to humanise a wafer-thin character, and the landscape of the American South West, shot here with the fascination of a director making their first movie on American soil. Review

The Last Matinee is clearly a love letter to horror movies of the past, but it's penned with an unsteady hand. Review

But as the story drags on we find ourselves rolling up our well-tailored sleeves to check our designer watches and wishing a Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorsese or Paolo Sorrentino had taken on this story of great potential. Review

While I never bought into Cassandra's predicament, the strength of Wizemann's direction and Saylor's performance kept me involved. Review

The Unforgivable has a card up its sleeve, but refusing to reveal its full hand until its dying moments turns out to be a misjudged play. Review

Mixing Shakespeare with folk horror and the Manson family sounds like a winning idea, but in Lapwing it results in an over-cooked stew that leaves a sour taste. Review

Ultimately this is the Clint Eastwood show, and your tolerance for Cry Macho's geriatric pacing and lack of high stakes drama will depend on how much you enjoy spending time in his company. Personally I can't think of too many faces I'd rather spend 105 minutes looking at. Review

With a little more work on honing the story, West might have created an eye-catching debut. What we get here is closer to an acting showreel for a promising young woman in Mix. Review

This lightness clashes with the title character's impending fate and his deep sense of regret. Yet somehow Hanks and the voice work of Landry-Jones combine to make this work. Review

He may be working within his comfort zone here, but Schrader's idea of comfort is still more disruptive than most American filmmakers working today, and of the Movie Brat generation filmmakers, he's arguably the one who's done the most interesting work in the past decade. Review

If there's little in the way of profound political insight on offer here, there are at least a couple of very entertaining performances from Marmaï and particularly Tedeschi, hilariously embodying the sort of angry woman destined to find her way onto the internet as the Karen of the day at some point. Review

Larrain's film keeps an open mind about its protagonist, but it's truly enamoured of the young woman she's portrayed by. Review

If Audiard occasionally fluffs his lines in a genre he seems ill-suited to here, visually he certainly keeps things interesting. With its bland and brutal architecture, the titular setting is an unconventional one for a romantic comedy, but Audiard and cinematographer Paul Guilhaume manage to find a beauty in the straight lines and sharp edges of the sort of tower blocks usually coded as dangerous in French cinema. Review

The Sanz twins deliver remarkable performances. Review

Sadly, such sequences are few and far between here, and whenever we're stuck in modern day London it's shot with the blandness of an episode of Hollyoaks, with writing to match. Review

Given its favouring of character over action, Azor relies heavily on the strength of its cast. The quiet Rongione, who has something of Truffaut about him, is a perfect foil for the larger than life Argentinian character actors he's pitted against. Review

Along with telling her story in confident visual terms, Hall has mined a pair of equally stunning, but very different performances from her leading ladies. Review

Shepherd establishes Owen as someone who understands how to craft a horror movie, but there's little here that fans of the genre will find fresh or novel. Review

It's strongest in its first half as we grow accustomed to Herbert's fascinating setting and political dynamics. When the big action scene does arrive it gets in and out without a fuss, unlike say the Marvel movies, which drag their dull set-pieces out to an interminable length. Review

Carpenter has always been (unfairly) dismissive of his script for 1981's Halloween 2, claiming he wrote it while drunk on beer. What's Green's excuse? Review

But for all its genre interrogation and visual style, it's the central performances of Poelvoorde and rising star Bellugi that keep us invested... Review

It feels churlish to be so down on a movie that is so lovingly crafted, but for all its visual splendour (and I can't stress enough how visually splendid this film is), The French Dispatch rarely reels you in emotionally. Review

The Beta Test doesn't always work, with the storytelling a little too chaotic and unfocussed at times. But you don’t really watch a Jim Cummings movie for its story. You watch it for his unique screen presence, which keeps you gripped throughout, hanging on his characters' every word. Review