Frightening Strikes

Having seen no small measure of praise for Personal Shopper, I went in not sure what to expect in the way of a relationship between haute couture and the afterlife. In any event, I was expecting more than I found - there's slow burn with simmering tension and then there's just slow - and this was the latter. An American in Paris We meet Maureen (Kristen Stewart), a young American living in Paris and working as a personal shopper for Kyra, a demanding supermodel, in a job she clearly hates. She’s grieving for her twin brother, Lewis and her boyfriend is away in Oman, leaving her in sorrowful isolation. Maureen is also a psychic medium who visits her childhood home in the hope of contacting Lewis and fulfilling the pledge they made to each other - that when one dies, they will try to contact the other from beyond. This mission doubles as a job: she’s tasked with determining if the house has a “presence” by the potential buyers, though the rationale for why she was asked to undert...

Alien  has to be one of the all-time great sci-fi horror films. As old as it is, it has stood the test of time, still admired by generations of fans more than 40 years on. I remember when it was first released - the hype was tremendous, and the tagline was enthralling:  “In space, no one can hear you scream.”   The teenage me and my equally excited friends queued right around the block and, as there was only one screen at the local cinema in those days, I was anxious that we wouldn’t get a seat.  And yet, despite all the excitement, I came away a little disappointed. I thought it was a very good film, but maybe as an overexcited teenager, I was expecting more action, gore and shock value. I came to realise, when I watched it again a few years later, that Ridley Scott delivered a slow-burn masterpiece. Since then,  Alien  has become one of those rare films I return to for repeat viewings. Here are ten things, in no particular order, I loved about  ...