Simon Ramshaw
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simonramshaw.bsky.social
Simon Ramshaw
@simonramshaw.bsky.social
he/him

Film critterings and witterings.

https://thegeekshow.co.uk/author/stramshaw/
FRANKENSTEIN: del Toro’s itch is finally scratched! Extravagantly silly and sentimental, packed with fleshy cadavers and jaw-ripping grue. Elordi follows in the footsteps of Doug Jones as a pretty, lanky, pale beastie among del Toro’s finest. Isaac does a Ruffalo in Poor Things voice. #LFF
October 13, 2025 at 10:33 PM
the wake of an event that nearly wiped us out, that should have shown us how to cope with the worst and cherish what we have left. When one threat has vanished, how do we deal with the suspicions that another isn’t just around the corner? 6/7
June 22, 2025 at 3:32 PM
The toxic codes of yesteryear kept by its sects of uninfected and the permanent states of rage found in everyone else are going to be the real terrors going forward, as isn’t our post-pandemic reality just that? Big ideas and entitled powers vying for dominance still, even in 5/7
June 22, 2025 at 3:32 PM
All this leads me to think DaCosta and Garland are going to serve up a second instalment where the trouble isn’t the virus any longer, but the calcified cultural codes that have turned stale and gaudy in the three decades since the world froze. 4/7
June 22, 2025 at 3:32 PM
The “magic of the placenta” seemed too convenient to me; surely the flesh and blood of two infected people would be more than enough to make their offspring as such too. If babies can be born in our world with addictions and viruses, it stands to reason they should here too. 3/7
June 22, 2025 at 3:32 PM
We see plenty of near-misses: Spike splattering his mother’s forehead with blood and quickly wiping it off; Isla linking hands with the infected woman in labour; Kelson being nearly smothered by Samson’s huge hands; the baby born without the virus at all. 2/7
June 22, 2025 at 3:32 PM
#28YEARSLATER spoilers
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Not wanting to stoke any irl conspiracies here, but I left questioning if the virus was actually infectious anymore. In fact, this is a film where the only transmission of the virus happens in the initial outbreak in the prologue. 1/7
June 22, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Friendship first half vs Friendship second half
June 12, 2025 at 10:48 PM
The Irishman has been officially renamed ‘I Heard You Paint Houses’.
May 5, 2025 at 9:09 PM
April 21, 2025 at 6:40 PM
I was intrigued, moved, alarmed and provoked by @joshuaoppenheimer.bsky.social’s #TheEnd, which is, for my money, the most interesting thing currently playing in theatres. Here’s why 👉 thegeekshow.co.uk/the-end-2024...
April 4, 2025 at 4:46 PM
The man who liberated my sense of what art could be more than any other, a pitch-dark sunbeam straight to the psyche, is no longer sharing the planet with us. I feel privileged to have existed when he did, and to experience his art in real time is a treasure I cannot relive. Rest in peace, Director.
January 16, 2025 at 9:31 PM
I’m somewhat craving the dark and thorny return of #Andor, but as trifles go, Skeleton Crew is a good one of intricate structure and unexpected flavour. 17/17
January 15, 2025 at 11:34 PM
Resourcefully priced at $136 million, it’s great to see the money on the screen like this too, spent on cracking sets, dynamic CGI and even a Phil Tippett-esque stop motion crab from hell. Vitally, the balance of spectacle and heart frequently makes it more than the sum of its parts. 16/17
January 15, 2025 at 11:34 PM
By its inevitable pew-pew, lever-pulling finale, the whole adventure mapped out by Skeleton Crew is a nice, well-earned indulgence in the world outside Star Wars, while remaining true to the style and craft of its own brand. 15/17
January 15, 2025 at 11:34 PM
Add to that the most endearing cute little guy in the entire Star Wars canon (Robert Timothy Smith’s kind-hearted blue elephant Neel), and you’ve got some strong emotional anchors for this pirate ship escapade to use to great effect along the way. 14/17
January 15, 2025 at 11:34 PM
While the status quo remains mostly intact, the show otherwise breaks new ground with organic diversity, particularly around disabled character KB and her vulnerable turn in episode 6, finding strength in her condition and communicating clearly how she can be helped by others in a tough spot. 13/17
January 15, 2025 at 11:34 PM
AKA that’s a very Disney way of looking at the distribution of wealth; Star Wars daren’t get counter-cultural again after vitriol provoked by The Last Jedi’s view of the
money war machine and the rebels fighting to undermine it, and this is another example of them playing their cards safe. 12/17
January 15, 2025 at 11:34 PM
In its final stretch, it tries to deal with the idea of limitless wealth, supervised and controlled by pencil-pushing bureaucrats and lusted after by misfit outlaws, and never really reckons with the consequences of coding its downtrodden ‘villains’ as anything other than greedy scumbags. 11/17
January 15, 2025 at 11:34 PM
It does get there in the end, thank goodness, effectively utilising the pleasant but sanitised home planet as a diving board into Mos Eisleys of many shapes and sizes, from junky spaceports to corrupt pleasure planets that guard dark, lucrative secrets beneath their gentrified exteriors. 10/17
January 15, 2025 at 11:34 PM
‘The Goonies in Space’ is a great logline for a Star Wars show, even if the familiarity of At Attin as a planet (with its manicured lawns, bike-riding pre-teens and boring high schools) feels like a step too close to mass appeal, when the franchise’s greatest assets are forever its weirdest. 9/17
January 15, 2025 at 11:34 PM
With that hardwired connection to ripping adventure yarns of old comes more nods to other beloved texts drawing from the same well, particularly in the show’s concerning opening episode that sees our heroes’ planet bear a crazy resemblance to the Spielbergian suburbs of E.T. and The Goonies. 8/17
January 15, 2025 at 11:34 PM
Also in the mix is malfunctioning pirate droid SM-33, voiced with full-throated sea dog growling from Nick Frost, whose unreliable memory and mood swings feel directly drawn from Treasure PLANET and Martin Short’s scatty robot B.E.N. 7/17
January 15, 2025 at 11:34 PM
It should come as no surprise that his Captain Silvo is as unreliable a crewmate as Long John Silver himself, and Law’s mercurial charisma is more than enough to make up for the obvious backsliding into bastardry he undergoes along the way. 6/17
January 15, 2025 at 11:34 PM
Robert Louis Stevenson and the shadow of Treasure Island loom long over this venture, not only in its digressions to booby-trapped lairs and twists around double-crossing pirates, but even in character names; plucky protagonist Wim is so close to Jim Hawkins it hurts, and as for Jude Law? 5/17
January 15, 2025 at 11:34 PM