Movie reviews of Eric Hillis

As any good boxing promoter will tell you, sometimes it's best to just give the public what they want, even if it is a cliché. Review

What sets Cage of Gold back is how it squanders the potential of its mystery plot, which it only really dives into in the final act. Jack Whittingham's script does a fine job of establishing the core players but the mystery is wrapped up far too promptly and neatly to generate the expected late suspense. A silver melodrama then, but a bronze thriller. Review

Subservience's plot beats are overly familiar as it drapes a sci-fi shawl around erotic thriller shoulders. But there's some fun to be had in seeing played-out thriller tropes rejigged in this way, and the movie does a convincing job of portraying its near-future world on a relatively low budget. Review

As a show reel for its leading man's talents it shows he can do comedy and drama with equal conviction. Review

Harris and Stevenson are as great as you'd expect from such established veterans of the British screen, but it's Doherty who proves the film's revelation. Review

It's the restraint that makes Rebel Ridge stand out as more sophisticated than the average revenge thriller. Review

Unfortunately we spend most of the narrative in the company of the one-note Katherine, who is played in pulseless fashion by a miscast Vikander. Along with struggling to disguise her Swedish accent, Vikander never gets to the heart of the character, which is largely the fault of a script that doesn't really know what to do with Katherine. Review

There are some interesting ideas and concerns raised in AfrAId, but they're all half-baked, resulting in a movie that ironically resembles a piece of unstable tech rushed out to consumers when it's badly in need of an upgrade. Review

It's a genuinely heartfelt piece of romantic filmmaking that skilfully balances the epic with the intimate. Review

We're never explicitly told that Sophie is pregnant, but there are plenty of clues that suggest that's the case, from the way Nolan pats her belly at one point to the repeated sonic motif of what sounds a lot like an ultrasound on the soundtrack. Review

Suffice to say they're both gifted roles that allow them to display their range, often on the turn of a phrase, charming one moment, terrifying the next, charismatic throughout. Review

While obfuscating the details of what exactly is afoot in its sinister milieu, Cuckoo is a lot of fun, especially for devotees of Euro-horror. Review

Skarsgård looks bored throughout, and in several scenes his usually serviceable American accent slips completely as though he can't be arsed concealing his distinctive Swedish brogue. Review

Blink Twice is a classic case of a rough around the edges directorial debut. Review

Devino and Yohe presumably collaborated on an equal basis throughout the production, but there's such a gulf in quality between the first and second halves of their film that it plays like both halves were made by different filmmakers... Review

The result is a film that passively documents a horrible little man on his way to becoming a horrible big man with very little to stop him along the way. Donner just doesn't seem to realise how dark and depressing this material really is. Review

Despite its more solemn tone, Who Saw Her Die? is unmistakably a giallo. Review

Kane captures the ethereal emptiness of Los Angeles in a way not seen in horror cinema since Thom Eberhardt's unsettling supernatural thriller Sole Survivor... Review

Where Hostile Dimensions falls down is ironically not in the FX or visual departments, as you might expect, but in its writing. The characters never quite feel real, often reacting to terrifying and bizarre scenarios in far too casual a manner. Review

But perhaps the biggest problem here is how the comedy is integrated. It only really becomes a comedy in the splatstick sequences. Review

In space no one can hear you scream, but your fellow cinemagoers might hear you snore during Romulus. Review

Hall doesn't simply use her dialogue to dole out plot points, with much of the storytelling coming from her actors' faces, their expressions often contradicting their words. Review

Evoking prior works of American fiction isn't enough to make Skincare stand on its own, and we're left to settle for surface thrills as the film never quite explores its characters or themes with enough depth to make it anything more than a mildly entertaining time-passer. Review

There simply isn't enough to keep horror fans engaged, and with its preference for lore over gore, The Curse Begins is a bit of a bore. Review