Day: 4 February 2025

Tracking down the cherry blossoms of New York City: Why late April is the best time to visit

Around 800 cherry blossom trees wither over the water in the hip, canal-centric neighbourhood of Nakameguro in Tokyo; their spines ain’t what they used to be.  From mid-to-late March, the canal is dressed as its festive best, the cherry blossom trees shedding over the narrow 3.8-km stretch, floating in the water to create a memorable…

Read More

Death runs in the family in (nose) piercing teaser for Final Destination: Bloodlines

25 years ago, a rejected X-Files plot and a morbid sense of humour came together in the most glorious (and gory) fashion for Final Destination.  At a time when the horror genre was heavily reliant on the slasher subsect, Final Destination dared to go beyond conventions, taking the pin-up cast of its contemporaries and offing…

Read More

Film Review: Widow Clicquot; Fitting for its namesake, true story telling is poised and tastefully made

There’s a certain period-piece sexuality billowing through Widow Clicquot that brings to mind other such similarly-set efforts as Atonement and Pride & Prejudice.  And given that those films’ second-unit director, Thomas Napper, is at the helm here, it makes perfect sense that such detail and intimacy is adhered to; fittingly, Joe Wright, director of the…

Read More
Daughter of Calamity

Book Review: Daughter of Calamity boasts an exquisitely expressed setting and dark atmosphere

Daughter of Calamity by Rosalie M. Lin is a darkly atmospheric, surreal historical fantasy with themes of colonisation, class, feminine power and sisterhood. Set among the streets and cabaret clubs of 1930’s Shanghai, Lin has created a city that feels like a mix of steam and cyber punk with its neon lights and mechanical wonders…

Read More

Sauna is a nuanced, inclusive telling of a very human drama: Sundance Film Festival Review

Sensitively handling the queer love story at its core, Mathias Broe‘s Sauna explores the fluid possibilities of connection, further exacerbating its impact through the filmmaker’s own relationship with his transitioning partner. The sauna of the title refers to the place of work for young Johan (Magnus Juhl Andersen), a barely-legal, zero body fat-type twink who…

Read More

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II delivers a fantastic medieval romp

We recently had the pleasure of previewing Kingdom Come: Deliverance II and apologise if we repeat anything here by chance. That being said, we must reiterate that when the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance was released in 2018, we were pleasantly surprised with the amount of freedom given to players, to explore a detailed and vibrant…

Read More