MovieMuse
Born in the mid-70’s, Mat ‘Witchfinder’ Corne grew up as part of the Star Wars generation, and to be honest he’s still stuck there! If there’s some kind of geeky hobby that can be pursued then Mat is almost certainly interested, be it Retro Gaming, binge-watching Cult TV shows, collecting vintage Star Wars toys or checking out the latest action films at the cinema.
With an encyclopaedic knowledge of movies, TV, games and music, Mat is never short of something to say on any topic and is partial to a good rant about most things. Aside from the nostalgic hobbies he’s also a fan of football, rollercoasters and travelling the world, which he combines at regular opportunities! He lives in Stoke-on-Trent with his incredibly patient wife and a ridiculous Romanian rescue dog called Luca.
Mat is responsible for MovieMuse’s weekly Freeview Movies of the Week article and is co-editor of the MovieMuse podcast.
Mat's favourite things...
| Films | Games | TV | Music |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Empire Strikes Back | Bubble Bobble (Arcade) | The X-Files | Master of Puppets (Metallica) |
| Die Hard | Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS2) | Twin Peaks | Songs for the Deaf (Queens of the Stone Age) |
| Back to the Future | Wizball (Commodore 64) | The Walking Dead | Appetite for Destruction (Guns n Roses) |
| Star Wars | Fallout 3 (PS3) | Breaking Bad | Earth Vs The Wildhearts (The Wildhearts) |
| The Terminator | Chuckie Egg (BBC Micro) | 24 (Seasons 1-4 only!) | Rust in Peace (Megadeth) |
| Rocky | Rock Band 3 (PS3) | ||
| Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring | Star Wars (Arcade) | ||
| Halloween | Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Megadrive) | ||
| Fargo | Donkey Kong (Arcade) | ||
| Pulp Fiction | Golden Axe (Megadrive) |
Mat’s Reviews
| Poster | Movie | Year | Comments | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
Mission: Impossible - Fallout | 2018 | Packed with fantastic action sequences, clever tricks and and enjoyable performances from most of the cast, but the running time is almost interminably long and the pacing suffers as a result. | 7 |
 |
Nell | 1994 | The actions of the medical professionals involved in the story are questionable to say the least, but Jodie Foster gives an amazing perfomance as the lead character and her story is compelling from start to finish. | 7 |
 |
Onward | 2020 | It may not be as clever or thought-provoking as some of Pixar's more recent output, but if you want a comical animated adventure film that wears it's 80s movie influences proudly then this is about as good as it gets. | 7 |
 |
The Prodigy | 2019 | A fairly typical creepy child movie and to be fair the kid does his job well, but the actions of the adult characters are frankly ridiculous and the bleak ending brings no satisfaction at all. | 5 |
 |
Queen of Katwe | 2016 | A Disney production unlike any other, showing both the vibrancy and hardship of the Ugandan slums and an unlikely rags-to-riches story that is sure to warm the heart. | 8 |
 |
Red Hill | 2012 | It may take place in modern-day Australia but this is a classic Western at heart, with characters, cinematography and music that typify the genre. A brutal revenge story with a twist and the usual grit and black humour you'd expect from the Aussies. | 7 |
 |
Sicario | 2015 | The cinematography and score are brilliant and the plot is reasonably interesting, but the sometimes muffled dialogue, lack of likeable characters and overall grim tone of the film make it hard to enjoy. | 6 |
 |
Tolkien | 2019 | It may not be quite as magical as his stories, but this film covering Tolkien's formative years is well acted and reasonably engaging, with some clever visualisations of events that stimulated the author's imagination. | 7 |
 |
Unhinged | 2020 | It was odd to give away just how psychotic he was in a pre-credits scene, but Russell Crowe plays the antagonist well in a relentless film that borrows heavily from Falling Down and Duel but should convince us all to try and be a bit nicer to each other. | 7 |
 |
Wonder | 2017 | As an uplifting tear-jerker about facing adversity this movie hits all the right notes, but it barely scratches the surface of the kind of hardship somebody with a facial disfigurement would truly have to deal with in the real world. | 7 |
 |
XX | 2017 | An anthology of female-directed horror shorts may seem like an interesting idea, but like all collections of this type the quality of the four parts varies significantly and none show the female influence to be much different to their male peers. | 5 |
 |
Velvet Buzzsaw | 2019 | Quirky and bizarre, this film satirises the pretentiousness of the art world in amusing fashion before turning itself into a crazy horror movie that doesn't really explain itself very well and ends up a muddled, pointless mess. | 6 |
 |
My Octopus Teacher | 2020 | An amazingly-shot and fascinating insight into the life of a creature with more intelligence than you'd expect, with extra drama created by the relationship between two beings that should never interact in this undersea domain. | 8 |
 |
The Yards | 2000 | A decent cast does their jobs well in this film, but the abundance of slow-paced scenes, dated cinematography and dull subject matter render the whole thing incredibly tedious. | 4 |
 |
Zero Dark Thirty | 2012 | Hard to watch at times due to the torture scenes, this is a reasonably gripping study of the patience and persistence required in probably the biggest manhunt of all time, with excellent attention to detail and a suitably tense finale. | 7 |
 |
Spontaneous | 2020 | A high school romance set against the backdrop of a spontaneous combustion epidemic is certainly an original idea and the early stages of the film offer an engaging mix of tension and black humour, but it gets a bit too heavy and serious for the last act. | 6 |
 |
The Silencing | 2020 | Starts off well with some great locations, gritty performances and a few surprising moments, but sells itself short for the finale with the lazy, incomprehensible reveal of the antagonist. | 6 |
 |
Munich | 2005 | Possibly Spielberg's grittiest film, with some brilliant acting and cinematography and bags of tension, but the endless attrition between the different parties is exhausting and nobody comes out of the story with any sense of achievement or honour. | 7 |
 |
Nowhere to Run | 1993 | Van Damme violently escapes from prison and creepily spies on a vulnerable woman and yet still ends up the hero in this ludicrous and unintentionally hilarious film that has way more cheese than action! | 5 |
 |
Villains | 2019 | Another entry in the 'home invasion gone wrong' sub-genre, this one is actually quite amusing to begin with but takes a very weird turn mid-way through and loses its way despite a couple of inventive scenes. | 6 |
 |
Black Water: Abyss | 2020 | This killer crocodile in a cave movie is totally predictable yet fairly tense and the acting is better than expected, but the bizarre relationship triangle sub-plot thrown in towards the end just adds ten minutes that would have been better left out. | 5 |
 |
Deep Rising | 1998 | Aliens meets Titanic in this cheese-laden thriller with some awfully one-dimensional characters. The action sequences are well done though and the biggest surprise is that most of the CGI effects have aged quite well. | 6 |
 |
Ingrid Goes West | 2017 | Aubrey Plaza is brilliant as the unhinged woman that goes way too far trying to be friends with a Social Media influencer, but this satire is so close to reality that it eventually stops being funny and becomes uncomfortable to watch. | 7 |
 |
Innerspace | 1987 | A few scenes could have been left on the cutting room floor but otherwise this combines a great Sci-Fi story, Martin Short's brilliant physical comedy and some decent action and SFX sequences into an entertaining 80s film that has aged remarkably well. | 7 |
 |
In the Line of Fire | 1993 | John Malkovich is in good form as the villain and there are some good action sequences, but the out of place touches of humour and Eastwood's cringeworthy romantic scenes with Rene Russo make this much less than what it would have been without them. | 6 |