Cinema Scope

Happy New Year, Colin Burstead

ollowing on the heels of his two biggest-budget films to date, (2015) and (2016), Ben Wheatley has made something of a homecoming with , which is appropriate considering that the film centres on a family reunion. Whereas Wheatley’s two previous pictures were highly conceptual and oriented around stylized set pieces, is closer to the films that first marked the director as a serious talent, and, indeed, proves that this is a mode he’s far more comfortable with. Back is the punchy, semi-improvisational quality of (2009) and (2011), as well as the latter’s leading man Neil Maskell playing the eponymous Colin, whose predicament—while less grim than that of the actor’s jowly hitman Jay in —is nevertheless far from enviable, as he wrangles

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