-an OD of Toughts-

There are films you watch. Then some films grab you by the collar, throw you into a DeLorean at 88 mph, hand you a lightsaber, a Rubik's Cube, and an Atari joystick, and say, "Good luck keeping up."  Ready Player One isn't just a film. It's a full-throttle assault on your childhood. Steven Spielberg somehow managed to make a movie that feels like spending Saturday morning in the 1980s while simultaneously living in the year 2045. Every frame is a treasure hunt. Blink, and you've missed something. Pause it, and you'll probably find five more things. Watch it a second time, and you'll discover that the thing you thought was an Easter egg was actually hiding another Easter egg behind it. The opening race alone is enough to make any self-respecting geek spill his drink. The DeLorean from Back to the Future . The Batmobile. Akira's motorcycle. King Kong trying to flatten everyone. The T. rex from Jurassic Park reminds us that dinosaurs still haven...

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed sounds less like a television series and more like something scribbled on the side of a van that has definitely been parked behind a nightclub since 2008. Yet somehow, against all odds and common sense, it turns out to be a cracking little thriller — all blackmail, murder, moral panic, and the sort of suburban chaos that makes you think every school gate conversation should come with a warning label. At its heart, the show is about a newly divorced mother who stumbles into a nightmare involving a cam boy, a suspiciously large amount of bad decisions, and youth soccer, which is apparently now one of the world’s most dangerous criminal ecosystems. I don’t know who came up with that premise, but they deserve either a medal or a very long sit down with a therapist. It’s the sort of plot that starts as “just one tiny mistake” and rapidly becomes “oh no, the entire police force, a couple of corpses, and everyone’s dignity are involved now.” Tatiana Maslany is terr...

Obsession is the sort of indie horror film that sneaks up on you, taps you on the shoulder, and then proceeds to rearrange your thoughts for the next hour. I’m not even a horror fan, which is rather like saying I’m not keen on being chased by a swarm of angry hornets, but this film had me hooked from the opening stretch and never once gave me the luxury of switching off. It does not merely aim to unsettle you. It lingers, it nags, and it leaves a rather nasty little splinter in your brain. What makes it so effective is that it does not behave like a cheap scare machine. It is not interested in shouting “boo” every five minutes like some theatrical brat demanding attention. Instead, it builds something slower, stranger, and much more intriguing. It takes a premise that sounds almost familiar, then twists it until it feels deeply wrong in a way you cannot quite explain. And that, frankly, is where the film becomes dangerous in the best possible sense. There is a point in Obsession where ...

There are moments in history that expose what power really looks like. Not when it's smiling for cameras. Not when it's shaking hands or making speeches. But when it is frightened.   Because frightened power doesn't argue. It silences. On a small island in the middle of the Mediterranean, one woman became something the most powerful men in the country could not control. Her name was Daphne Caruana Galizia. She wasn't backed by an empire of newspapers. She didn't command an army of reporters. She sat at a desk, opened a laptop, and wrote. That was enough. Enough to make ministers lose sleep. Enough to shake governments. Enough to terrify men who believed themselves untouchable. Malta is small. Everyone knows everyone. Secrets don't stay hidden for long. Unless the people keeping them have money, influence, and power. Daphne made it her life's work to drag those secrets into the light. Every day, she published investigations that named politicians, businessmen...