Movie reviews of Eric Hillis

Following on from Eli Roth's Knock Knock, this is the second time in a row we've witnessed Reeves and de Armas deliver impressive performances in an otherwise awful movie. Exposed really shouldn't be. To anyone. Review

This is no martial arts flick. The fights are very much of the playground variety - sweaty, out of shape men meeting their demise on a patch of suburban Dublin wasteland. It would be interesting to see what could be achieved with this intriguing premise on a more accommodating budget. Review

The film has been described as 'giallo-esque', seemingly because it can't be bothered stringing together a worthwhile story, but it lacks the visual audacity and laudable insanity of the great Italian horrors. Review

It's difficult to decipher which audience the film is attempting to court. Horror fans will be bored senseless by its sensibility, while Austen devotees will need more than a little persuasion to view this as anything other than blasphemy. Review

If you were cryogenically frozen in the early '90s as a 12 year old boy, you'll be blown away by Deadpool. For anyone who lived through Tarantino, The Matrix and Shrek, or has enjoyed intercourse at some point in their lives, this is the low point of the seemingly never-ending superhero fad. Review

This scandal is quite recent news, and Concussion was clearly rushed into production for a timely release, but had the filmmakers shown less haste, we'd likely have a more satisfactory examination of this landmark moment in US sports. Review

A western is only as engrossing as its characters, while a horror movie relies on the threat of its villains. Writer-director Zahler nails both elements here to give us a rare hyphenated genre piece that succeeds in satisfying both camps. Review

The Survivalist is an exemplary piece of low budget filmmaking. Experts will tell you to make the most of a tight budget by confining your action to a single, easily accessible location and a handful of characters. That's just what we get here, and writer-director Fingleton makes the most out of his limited means. Review

The further it enters genre territory, the more the film begins to resemble something the notorious Spanish exploitation guru Jess Franco might have knocked out over a long weekend in a borrowed villa, albeit with an all-star cast, all dizzying camera moves and damp pubic hair. As such, it's a lot of fun, if maybe not in the way Guadagnino had intended. Review

John Goodman steals his scenes as producer Frank King, who is all too happy to work with a communist as long as he's cheap. At one point, King admonishes a scriptwriter for injecting politics into a sci-fi screenplay; he wouldn't have any such problem with the politically vague script for Trumbo. Review

Strangerland does have two undoubted assets - a quality central cast and a striking location. Kidman, Weaving and Fiennes do their best to flesh out their characters, but there's not a lot for them to work with beyond the stereotypes of horny wife, grizzled cop and uptight husband. Review

Hakonarson does an admirable job of keeping the storytelling visual, yet at the same time the ambiguity regarding the brothers' animosity is ultimately unrewarding. We never learn why they hate each other so much, and despite fine performances, this reduces them to bearded Spy Vs Spy players. Review

To call 13 Hours propaganda would be an insult to that particular school of manipulative cinema. Bay simply doesn't have the skill to sell a political stance. To view the movie as anything more than a bad Assault on Precinct 13 knockoff is to give its director far too much credit. Review

Here, we're asked to accept French (Juliette Binoche), British (Naomi Scott) and Irish (Gabriel Byrne, whose Chilean accent sounds like a Dublin comedian riffing on Pacino's Tony Montana) actors as natives of Chile. With the diversity issue gaining mainstream headlines, Hollywood needs to give audiences more credit, and non-white stars more credits. Review

Paquet-Brenner's script boils the story down to a series of bland, expository conversations, and despite her best efforts, Theron fails to make anything of a character that should have been a lot more compelling than the one that made it onto the screen here. Not so much dark as dull. Review

Caine's Ballinger is a classic Sorrentino protagonist - an aged, well off, white male suffering what could be dismissed as 'first world problems' - but this time the Italian director has the good sense to dial down his flashy camera tricks and allow his leading man do the heavy lifting. Review

McKay's protagonists mostly come off as characters that failed to make the final cut of one of his comedies, all fake tans and comedy haircuts that belong in 1988 rather than 2008. It's difficult to invest in his subprime drama. Review

The buddy cop movie is a winning formula. It's drama at its simplest. You shouldn't be able to get this wrong, yet the folks behind Ride Along somehow have. Twice. Review

Technically, this is an awful movie, but damn if I didn't have a blast with it. Hopefully we get a '6th Wave', as we need a bonkers movie like this every now and then, especially in the midst of 'awards season'. Review

Our Brand is Crisis is the sort of film that sells us a loveable rogue and asks us to embrace and revel in their corrupt ways before spanking our bottoms with a climactic lecture on morality. Be they Bolivian voters or cinemagoers, the people deserve better. Review

Watching The Assassin is like taking a childhood trip to your grandparents; you don't understand much of their speech and you're unsure of their rules, but the alien and archaic sensual delights are intoxicating. Review

For all its insight and thoughtfulness, Creed ultimately has us on our feet rooting for its hero in a thrilling action climax, and when that famous theme finally kicks in at a crucial moment, no movie lover - from the 'one trip to the cinema a year' casual viewer to the snobbiest of critics - will be left unmoved. Review

Bettany dedicates his film to "the couple that lived outside my building". The fact that he's unable to name said couple provides more insight into the plight of the homeless than anything in his film. Review

This is the sort of film that believes it's an extra tragedy that someone with great hair ends up losing it due to cancer, just as Still Alice suggested Alzheimer's was being particularly cruel in latching onto a professional linguist. Of course, a balding plumber wouldn't be bothered by such afflictions. Not at all. Review