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MOVIES: Rose of Nevada - Review: Ghost Ship

2025-10-15T15:42:00.000+01:00

Rose of Nevada is a twisty ghost story of a time travel movie that explores Mark Jenkin’s continued love affair with the Cornish country that he was raised; intent on telling their own stories. 30 years after vanishing – a boat arrives in a small fishing village – empty but with remnants of the past; photos of loved ones and hats that people used to wear. The new crew – George McKay’s Nick and Callum Turner’s Liam board it – only to find themselves transported back in time to the early 90s and the peak of the thriving fishing village; mistaken for the original crew with seemingly no way to get home.

Capturing the spirit of 80s independent cinema with charm and a ghost narrative that works in its favour; the film focuses on a society needing to move on but never really being able to do so – stuck in the past; a metaphor for the current state of South West provinces like Cornwall and Devon today. The film is rhythmic and repetitive whilst never being dull – we settle into the daily routine of Nick and Callum’s fishing trips be that in the 90s or the present day and the clanking vibes of being at sea are really captured; you buy both men as fishermen and you buy the atmosphere as kind of the closest Jenkin has come yet to recreating say, gothic horror in the past. Once stranded in the past Nick and Callum’s lives are uprooted – Nick has a connection to the present, but Callum quickly embraces his new life- and Nick discovers a way in which something is wrong from the off – the village – now deserted and empty, is crowded and full of life. People are in the pub happy, dancing and engaged – it’s something that Nick knows cannot be.

I love how Rose of Nevada keeps its structure relatively lowkey and avoids being a typical big-stakes time travel narrative and instead becomes big because of how small the stakes are – it’s just two men, trapped out of time, with seemingly no way to return. It becomes a ghost story with a metaphorical framework – could we not live as we did before, just several years earlier? There are differences of course but there are differences then – the remote village is not quite the technological beacon of present day London – it feels off the grid before and that the townsfolk are living in the past, in the 90s – when times were better and the fishing was current. It’s looser than Enys Men and connects to the cultural structure of Bait, a study on modern Cornish identity through the framework of the past. Jenkin exists to tell those stories: far too many filmmakers today would use the locals of the South West as backdrop for say, main characters moving out from London to the capital, but it’s here they feel wholly surrounded in Cornwall to the point you can’t imagine them anywhere else: it’s something that is lacking across the board to the point where only a select few filmmakers like Steven Knight and Ken Loach are capable of recreating this unique selling point of life outside of the big cities; or outside of London.

McKay and Turner are both naturalistic in their roles and embracing the life already written – Rosalid Eleazar able to foil Turner superbly both in the past and present, and Francis Magee’s experienced, veteran captain adds a no-nonsense approach to the plot and just gets on with life as he sees it – what will be will be. This is akin to say, The Leftovers – if you were looking at the mystery as a riddle to be solved you’re looking in the wrong place – it instead works as a movie that’s never quite clear about whether its characters are alive or dead; instead watching Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone. It’s the characters’ story about whether they exist in that world watching Cornwall’s economics depart around them, a folk horror with a gripping commentary as much as a folk horror itself. There are no witches, no spirits, no supernatural force – but that doesn’t stop Mark Jenkin giving us one of the best films since The Wicker Man.

The film feels like it exists in a world of post Brexit Cornwall, a case study of its ramifications – this is a ghost story where Cornwall itself is a ghost - the county voted predominantly to leave the European Union and then had everything that they had before removed one by one.

MOVIES: The Mastermind - Review: The Masterpiece

2025-10-15T12:56:00.001+01:00

Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind is a slow-burner of a heist movie that calls to mind the likes of Bresson and Melville in a distinctively American drama that takes place in 1970s Massachusetts and follows Josh O’Connor’s JB, an unemployed carpenter who takes up art thieving and looks to get into the business in a way that’s quietly doomed to failure. It feels like a French crime drama as much as a uniquely 70s American film – slow moving, uniquely so by Kelly Reichardt standards.

Anyone who’s seen any Reichardt film before will know what you’re getting here: a meditative deconstruction of an entire genre. Its jazzy opening is a quiet piece about a character who has it all already, sans the job, and is looking for that thrill in his life that isn’t there. We later learn that he had rich parents – so he even has the advantage that most don’t, yet he still turns to thieving anyway – O’Connor hiding the painting in the pig stall is a touch of comedic genius that Reichardt gives a lengthy amount of time to – the painstaking climbing of the ladder only to lose it is worth the ultimate payoff in a movie that takes its time as much as this.

It's a dissection of the lonely man seeking a purpose archtype and he’s doomed from the get go by the greed of his own actions: you watch his carefully laid plans fall apart at every turn with an upbeat, jazzy score that makes the whole thing feel like a well planned comedy of errors. Josh O’Connor; excellent in Wake Up Dead Man, is fantastic again here in a completely different and dishevelled, entirely unsympathetic way – for those who say this is slow are missing the point: it’s a Reichardt movie that moves at the speed of Night Moves and Meek’s Cutoff, and all the better for it. These people wouldn’t survive Old Joy.

Too many movies have ignored the reality of being “meant for greater things” and it takes a deadbeat dad who wants to be a protagonist in a genre film but has it play out with real world consequences and his actions that aren’t repurposed. It feels like there is no way this film could be made in the modern day, it had to be a 70s film – the production rivals say that of The Holdovers from last year – a period piece transported to the present with exceptional commitment to authority. Reichardt makes her ideas and specificity into her characters that make them wholly unique – the whole set-piece at the house that JB is staying at the end of the film in the final act is pure gold – the difference in opinion of the people looking after him get him to face the reality of his actions – and the film is as much about what happens to the people who try to turn to the life of art crime as much as those who don’t.

The film is perfectly paced, meditated and a real exercise in character study in a genre piece. O’Connor is sympathetic as much as you want to hate him – you can’t help but want him to succeed. He has that Bob Dylan/Springsteen look of the ‘60s and ‘70s nailed down to a T and Reichardt arguably finds a way to make one of the most French American films ever made – her influences laid bare in New Wave canon.

MOVIES: Frankenstein - Review: Man Made Myth

2025-10-15T12:36:00.002+01:00

Throughout his career, Guillermo del Toro has made a history of proving that it is the monster who is good and it is men who are evil. Here he returns with Frankenstein – perhaps what he was building towards his entire career – the ultimate example of this narrative. All the heart and soul is poured into this gothic epic; lavish and ultimately spellbinding. We open on a boat stranded in the ice in the far north; a wounded man and a mysterious figure that cannot be cowed by guns or any mortal weapon. The man – Doctor Victor Frankenstein – has a story to tell – of the monster he created and enslaved and the power that drove him made.

This is the film that pours all the same and guilt into Frankenstein’s creation – we watch as he sees himself corrupted in the idea of cheating death. The loneliness of man and his desire for more; a connection – del Toro plays with the fundamentals of what would inspire such a man to go to such lengths that he did – it shows Victor’s doomed ambition; the death of his mother at a young age and an uncaring father who spends more time interested in his brother, William. The creature design and set production is of course fantastic but this is as much a performance piece as any; Oscar Isaac pours his heart and soul into Victor’s performance and is able to really capture the character’s greed and desire. Isaac rivals Mia Goth and Jacob Elordi makes a mark as the unsettling creature molded by fate more than circumstance.

Mia Goth and David Bradley stand out as terrific characters – Goth as a doomed bride of William, Elizabeth, who is caught in the battle between both Frankenstein brothers and the monster’s creation. It’s done with care and precision even in the Netflix del Toro era which is saying a lot – Elordi feels on paper like the typical Netflix stunt casting but his performance as the monster is fantastic – the sequence after he escapes Victor’s gothic, lavish tower of nightmares to find a home in the woods looking after a blind David Bradley is heartbreaking and a real mediation on the circumstances that you are created in making the monster: he is immediately treated as the other; different and hunted. But yet he wants to belong – he wants to learn – and only the blind accept him for who he is because they cannot see what Frankenstein made him.

The gothic opening on the ice and the captain driven by pursuit of a quest that will kill his men reminds Frankenstein of himself – the two share a kindred spirit. Del Toro uses his framing device of the Doctor; and then the monster; both telling their stories to the Captain. It’s great getting both perspectives: you can see the point where the film switches its attention from being sympathetic to Frankenstein and you turn against him with the audience – it comes long before the spectacular birthing of the monster; a real ode to the labyrinthical brilliance of production values that Del Toro creates at every turn. It’s stunning – the lightning strike; the moment of madness – the horror and the beauty that follows – up there with his magnum opus – everything that he was building towards over his career as a filmmaker. Can you imagine a world where Del Toro didn’t direct a Universal Monsters film at some point in his career? It would feel odd – almost alien. It feels like the next progression from the director behind The Shape of Water and Nightmare Alley; a culmination of his entire output up to this date.

His Netflix output feels like Del Toro pushing at the horizons and making his own mythmaking stamp on the already laid-down world. Like Pinocchio it’s distinctively his own take – it could come from no other filmmaker. Isaac is manipulatively brilliant, Elordi the victim of his own world; Mia Goth the film’s beating heart. I love the brief role that David Bradley has here – everybody coming together to film a masterpiece that shouldn’t feel redundant because it’s on Netflix rather Netflix itself should be redundant for a film like this: it plays at its best on the big screen in a crowd. Imagine watching this at home on a small screen – it couldn’t possibly be me. The experience is radically different.

MOVIES: Fwends - Review: A Platonic Before Sunset

2025-10-14T08:46:00.002+01:00

Fwends is a platonic; entirely improvised comedy from Australian director Sophie Somerville that pairs up the mismatched career-driven but on a break Em and the permanently chill, relaxed and uncaring Jessie. But as the pair stroll around Melbourne on their reunion weekend and run into one incident after another: a strange encounter with a clown; a hunt for coffee, leaving the house and forgetting the keys – as well as key differences on science and fact vs. opinion – what follows turns into an entirely improvised farce that is one of the better Before Sunset homages, and almost feels as good as Richard Linklater’s classic itself.

That’s no small accomplishment. Emmanuelle Mattana and Melissa Gan are the beating heart of Fweinds, their natural chemistry embracing in the script like good company together. Somerville gets them on the same page and you see their differences and what makes them friends just as much what drives them away.

It’s a cutesy; endearingly honest film that feels a result of what would happen after Somerville just decided to go out and shoot the movie; getting the two actors together as they stroll around in an authentic way that is rarely captured on screen. Resentment is key here as building blocks come out – both envy the others’ ideal of a life to some degree but Jessie and Em have secrets and more than they let on that comes out over the turbulent weekend – it’s one of the more well-realised depictions of female friendship on screen; the randomness chance encounters with random people on the street that come from a night on the town is captured more realistically than most scripted encounters – they found Jason Resoort’s Clown Dude on the street whilst filming and just invited him back for the rest of the movie; and he acts as a mentor/companion for the best drugs-induced hallucination sequence since last year’s Kneecap faux biopic; culminating with a fancy voice over from a French man that pokes fun at the entirety of the French new wave canon in the space of ten minutes.

Both women have chosen different paths and the love and resentment that comes out from that in an instant; and the microbudget that this movie is filmed on couldn’t be clearer. There was a seventeen page treatment and some rough character sketching that anchored the film together – and considering the actors only really knew each other two months before shooting; the natural friendship that comes between Mattana and Gan is incredibly honest and genuine. It’s a very talky film that feels real and not forced – it takes you a bit of a time to slow down and – as Jessie would put, just vibe with it – it starts out with the audience fast paced and rushing, as Em would – but by the end, you’re Jessie – relaxed and embraced in the moment. Not every friendship has to be perfect and things get a bit too raw at times – you see what made them friends and you see them what drove them apart. One of my favourite – and most realistic depictions of friendship – is a heated argument over a microphone in Jessie’s apartment that is quickly resolved and brushed over in favour of simply moving onto the next sequence. This is the branching point for the film to get deeper – more real. What follows is the first half being expanded on and corrected to get to where it’s what it actually means – a turning point for a deeper understanding.

The jokes are funny, engaging and the film exists on a quiet mediation of the beauty of friendship and how quickly it can change; for better of for worse. Fwends is an artform of subtleties and complication, playfully expanding the medium and revelling in its ability to push boundaries.

MOVIES: Resurrection - Review: Best of the Decade?

2025-10-10T20:17:00.002+01:00

Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night was one of the formative films of the last decade; opening with a dazzling 30 minute long shot take before dropping us right into the title cards in a way that no other film has really done before – breathtakingly brilliant and completely unique in ambition. It comes as no surprise that Resurrection is just about as one of a kind as you’d hope a Bi Gan-directed science fiction epic existing outside the memory of time and space would be; a fragmented descent into Chinese history through the leering framework of a camera – brave in its vision: the opening 20 minutes this time are silent as we see a monster entranced by the visions of a dreamworld at a time where humanity have lost the ability to dream.

Told across six chapters and already nearly three hours long; thirty minutes was cut from a screening earlier in the year to make it tighter and more focused. It works in its favour – the final few chapters are where the storyline is at its mystifying peak – the card-game scam tricks fading into a vampire-centric storyline at the turn of the millennium with breathtakingly beautiful firework shots, this film moves you from a decade of history in a similar way to what Zhang Yimou tried to accomplish with One Second, or say; what Godard tried with his late period work. This here is an ode to life as the master – it’s not a love letter-to cinema, far from that; but the difference between life and cinema, art as an understanding in a way that’s just about unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

Would you rather die and dream than live forever and not? That’s the question that propels Bi Gan’s story towards its conclusion – it’s the most Bi Gan film that has plenty of skin-crawling violence when it gets going. His movements and explorations of the different genres and eras of history are fascinating to watch as the film takes its turn through all of them – noir one second; vampire horror the next – the final chapter where the two doomed lovers are on a boat is one of the most heartbreaking scenes I’ve seen this year – and it’s completely rewarding staying to the end. The kind of film that evokes memories of Aleksandr Sokurov’s Russian Ark, which I’d bet was used as an inspiration for capturing different times and places; presented in a visually appealing way unlike no other.

The best film of 2025 – and a shoe-in for any year, it’ll make you laugh and cry, sometimes both at the same time – it does everything cinema exists to do; an assault on the senses – I was alerted specifically to the way Bi Gan uses sound in this film; heightened than ever – and a stirring and formally ambitious work capable of inspiring entire generations if it’s ever given a platform to do so. I struggle to think of anyone else being able to put together something as compellingly rich as this – the longer it stays on your mind, the more it lingers – the more you warm to its ambition and where it’s going.

Masters like Méliès and Murnau are given their dues here, Méliès in particular; Bi Gan’s love affair with the labyrinth of history is easy to fall in love with for anyone obsessed with film and there are shades of Wong Kar-Wai when a more contemporary framework is reached. It’s a puzzle box of rapid emotions, a real onslaught – formally ambitious and genre-defying (and defining) in every sense. Actors Jackson Yee and Shu Qi are fantastic in their multiple roles; able to offer up a sense of surprise as the story switches and turns, and the chapters each could be their own film in their own right – it’s like Bi Gan saying these are movies that I’d love to make but wouldn’t be able to make entire features of – let’s combine them all for an effort of the human language and a love-letter to humanity as a whole; as much as cinema itself – to call it just a love letter to cinema feels like it almost makes Resurrection weaker than it is – it’s a meditative study on dreams and character.

In an out of urban slums, rich mansions, lucid train journeys; noir detectives investigating cold cases, con artists teaching a young girl tricks for a big score, and a punk falling in love with a vampire; the film exists as an exploration of the senses – sound, sight, and more – industrial landscapes all shown with astounding beauty by DP Dong Jingsong. He’s worked on Wild Goose Lake as well as Long Day’s Journey Into Night and you’d be hard pressed to argue against a better of photography currently operating in cinema – each shot is beautiful enough to be a museum centrepiece in its own right; the whole film together – a masterpiece – the fog – I want to know how they did the fog. The best movies leave you questioning how they were made and Resurrection does so much more than that - it breathes the essence of life into cinema is a medium.

MOVIES: Father Mother Sister Brother - Review: Robert's Your Uncle

2025-10-10T17:37:00.003+01:00

Father Mother Sister Brother is a new Jim Jarmusch film that’s very much more the Paterson Jarmusch than the Dead Man Jarmusch; retroactively introspective, a multi-narrative chronicle that tells the story of multiple families in different walks of life navigating emotionally distant parents and the situations that they find themselves in.

There are overlaps, of course. Always overlaps. In the first story, an estranged sibling pair Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik go to visit Tom Waits’ reclusive Father in the remote wilderness outside New York City. But Father is hiding something from them – posh cars, a sinister edge – his ramshackle house isn’t as ramshackle as it first appears. The meeting is tense and awkward; between the well-off sibling pair and Father – and the two leave after a short space of time; debating the metrics of toasting to tea or water; the definition of bob’s your uncle, and the increase in skaters that run across all three of the narratives.

The next chapter switches to Dublin – two estranged daughters visit their mother for their yearly catchup – Vicky Krieps’ pink-haired Lilith and the uptight, stagey Cate Blanchett’s Tim – both operating under the motherhood of Charlotte Rampling’s parental figure who is blessed for a catchup yearly but has nothing to say to her daughters, and doesn’t want to discuss the books she writes with them – as drawn to the covers as they are. To them, Robert is their uncle – a lot more posher a turn of phase; but it’s unclear, if like Tom Waits’ father, all is as it seems, Lilith has her friend/lover act as her uber driver to avoid her mother’s judgement, and things are stilted between Tim and Lilith as much as them both and their mother. The awkwardness of nothing to say couldn’t be more evident.

The third chapter – Skye and Billy; non identical twins, have just lost their parents, played by Indya Moore and Luke Sabbat, and the actors carry the shared grief of losing them on an unknown flight completely seriously. It’s harsh; devastating – yet they embrace their death as they did in life; with closer a bond than any of the pair above. To Father Mother Sister Brother, they are the heart of the story and the one that makes it the most rewarding – in Paris; making the most out of one last trip to their parents’ home.

Who or what are our parents and does our parents action define who we are? Do we know everything about them? Father Mother Sister Brother asks this with the meandering fatality of a Jim Jarmusch film; headed towards self-discovery. The calmness and simplicity of its narrative and the delight in the day-to-day forces you to slow down and admire its restraint; there’s no scenery-chewing, Oscar moment to be found – just a contemplative nature that Jarmusch revels in. Mystery Train, Night on Earth and Coffee and Cigarettes have all been anthologies that he has tackled in the past – and this new one is his quietist yet. Deeply personal, refreshingly honest – searingly unique.

Father Mother Sister Brother feels more as a whole than as an individualistic narrative; the silence of being unable to connect with family and the heartbreaking nature of you not being able to chose what family you are born into. For anyone with distant siblings I imagine this will hit like a train. As always, Tom Waits is superb and there are echoes of Ozu at every turn – spiritualistic guidance, never a family, just people born under the same roof.

MOVIES: The Ice Tower - Review: The Snow Queen

2025-10-10T13:26:00.001+01:00

The Ice Tower is a bold, daring and ambitious film by Lucile Hadžihalilović that pushes the boundaries of film to new horizons in a homage to Powell & Pressburger’s The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus that taps into idolisation of celebrity and obsession with the status that comes from it. The mirrors of 15 year old Jeanne and celebrity Snow Queen Cristina, played by Marion Cotillard in an adaption of the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale; are similar from the off – Cristina takes Clara Pacini’s Jeanne, now going as Bianca, under her wing – and the two’s emotions flair in a study of character and control; and the myth of the Snow Queen – those closest to her are demanded a sacrifice.

The drama is cold and unwelcoming and appropriately insane – Hadžihalilović has a unique touch that few directors can rival. Pacini is instantly established as a rising star – the next Cotillard feels like a lazy comparison given they’re both in the same film; but the compulsive repetition with the ice queen that Bianca seeks out in looking to find her own; new mother – is fascinating – visual skills with a camera and practical sets really adding a degree of ice and cool winter air that make the whole film feel all the more unwelcoming. Is the film set in the ‘70s or just in a space that echoes that time period – it’s a fact that’s never made fully clear and the film operates outside of time and space; feeling appropriately genre-less. The mythic of Andersen’s The Snow Queen is given a dash of Christian Petzold-esque realism, leering and incestuous in equal measure: is the relationship between Cristina and Bianca one of mother/daughter obsession or that of sexual desire? Hadžihalilović unlocks a rabbit hole of Freudian tendencies.

Both Cristina/The Snow Queen and Jeanne/Bianca have different roles and their back and forth revolves around a mentorship that quickly escalates ala Black Narcissus as Jeanne starts upstaging extras on set and coming into her own as the next heir; the next Snow Queen. It’s Cristina who makes the first move: they can be together or leave tomorrow and not look back – and from their power dynamic changes forever; inescapable lust and doom overriding The Ice Tower as it hurtles towards its earth-shattering conclusion. Cristina holds all the power – one second inviting Jeanne to drinks and the next leaving several hours early and leaving her in the cold. But Jeanne in turn worries Cristina that she’s looking at her eventual replacement – the Snow Queen demands a sacrifice from those closest to her; after all.

Dreamlike and tense with a trance-inducing unforgiving experience that’s best watched on a cold winters’ night, Hadžihalilović pulls you under her spell and keeps you hooked, gazing on the Ice Tower and the kingdom of the Snow Queen as though it’s imposible to escape from. Hypnotic and cold, calculated with understated performances – don’t expect scenery-chewing here; everything Cristiana and Jeanne do is designed to match the other’s energy – and the battle of wills between mentor and apprentice feels textually engrossing – Cotillard and Pacini both the victim of many a close up, and there are echoes of David Lynch and Powell & Pressburger at every turn; direct callbacks to The Red Shoes and the surrealism at the heart of Mulholland Drive is matched. Trailers bill this as Frozen meets Lynch’s magnum opus and they’re not far wrong. A fever dream that feels utterly unique in a way that few other experiences have created.

LFF 2025: Wake Up Dead Man - A Knives Out Mystery - Review: A Question of Faith

2025-10-08T21:22:00.000+01:00

Rian Johnson operates in the space left behind by Agatha Christie by taking Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc from an island of rich influencers to a small-town church parish ruled over by a harsh, ruthless, Josh Brolin-played pastor with an iron grip on a small but devoted band of followers; turning those newcomers away in favour of his loyal flock. When Jefferson Wicks is killed mid-sermon, suspect number one is immediately Josh O’Connor’s Jud Duplenticy, who has killed a man in a boxing ring in the past and threatened Wicks hours before. Blanc is not so sure: every one of the flock has a motive, and every one of them must be questioned. Be they Glenn Close’s loyal bookkeeper Martha Delacroix, Kerry Washington’s Vera Draven, Andrew Scott’s sci-fi writer Lee Ross radicalised by Wicks into becoming a right-wing lunatic, Jeremy Renner’s scorned divorced dad turned alcoholic Doctor, or Daryl McCormack’s failed right wing politician returning from a stint with the GOP to his small town intent on launching a YouTube Channel. As ever the cast of suspects is eclectic – and there’s no easy answer, even for Blanc – who has the case of the locked room. Will this be the case that Blanc can’t solve?

For this one Blanc takes a backseat and this is a movie that is Josh O’Connor’s role first and foremost; Blanc doesn’t show up until the beginning of the second act and when he does, it’s with that swagger that Craig comes in and makes it his own. It’s to O’Connor’s skill as an actor that he can keep up with Craig’s wit and brawn, the audience playing with the expectations of what a Benoit Blanc-type celebrity detective is as much as the characters who are aware of his existence. He tells them of stories that have happened off screen, and everyone is aware of his weighted reputation which here, is used against him. The mystery is one not just of murder but of a crisis in faith; Johnson tapping into rich religious themes that undercut this film – making Blanc a central character here would almost feel wrong, he’s on paper the very opposite of everything the religious Jud stands for – an atheist, problem-solver who applies logic to his deductions. Like every Knives Out film before it Blanc finds himself having to operate in a pre-established world where all of these characters have existing relationships – there’s a lot of jokes at the expense of the Netflix deal but it never establishes itself into too self-aware territory, and it’s very online – all the characters have some degree of social commentary running through them, the more that progresses the more you see how Wicks is weaponizing their loyalty into something sinister.

This feels like what you wanted A Haunting in Venice to be; Kenneth Branagh’s third Poriot mystery that was; whilst the strongest of the three, still significantly lacking. Here the whodunit genre may have been well-trodden by now – you need only look at the adaption of Richard Osman’s on The Thursday Murder Club debuting straight to Netflix to a collective shrug of indifference earlier this month, but the charm of Blanc, the social commentary and the rip-roaring thrill ride that Johnson is able to deliver from his blockbuster experience of working on the best Star Wars film; The Last Jedi, acting as such a stark contrast from the light-soaked nature of Glass Onion that it operates in a different field completely; borrowing as much from the gothic nature of Edgar Allen Poe as much as Christie. One of the interesting decisions was to cast Jeremy Renner – who was the butt of a joke in the second film, but instead, plays it straight here – and the film feels almost refreshingly removed from the 2020s state-of-the-nation drama that the last one was. Whilst the online sphere and social commentary is very much a thing – this is no Eddington – it’s almost timeless in comparison.

And it’s all the better for it, Johnson using Brolin’s Wicks as a Trumpian figure on a rampage of selfishness of power doomed to be able to do any real good is the perfect foil for Blanc even though the two never meet. His presence is felt everywhere in the story and the mystery remains a yarn from beginning to end. If you enjoyed the first two of course you’ll be there for the next one. And of course - if there was ever any doubt, the music bangs - this is Tom Waits territory we're talking about here.

MOVIES: One Battle After Another Review: Just a Few Small Beers

2025-10-06T15:18:00.002+01:00

One Battle After Another is a masterpiece of the highest order from Paul Thomas Anderson – whose chameleonic like ability has seen his films earn a reputation as some of the best of the last decade – be they struggling oil barons in There Will Be Blood looking to make it rich; or a washed up cult believer in The Master trying to survive – he’s capable of keeping it fresh and this movie is no different; opening with a revolutionary takeover of an ICE-backed institution where the freedom fighters of the French 75 launch a liberation campaign. No real world politics is mentioned – there’s no direct stand in for MAGA; Trump or Obama the same way Eddington was a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic escalation in extremist politics; but it might as well be – it feels timely, there isn’t anything to suggest that this is a dystopian sci-fi military; the US military oppressors act and behave much like how the ones who exist in contemporary America do.

It's a clear difference between the last days of Obama and the Trump administration – youthful ambition; revolution replaced by washed up paranoid alcoholics with a broken dream. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob is already under weather when the film starts – positioned opposite the chaotic free-spirited energy of Teyana Taylor – Perfida, a much more charismatic comrade who is the heart and soul of their revolutionary group. Bob’s job is a fireworks divisionary expert – able to create chaos amongst the ranks of the soldiers in the war to come. Their nemesis is Colonel Steve Lockjaw – Sean Penn’s sickening soldier who gets off on the whole affair much to the shock factor of the early twenty minutes – but it’s something that Perfida quickly takes advantage of and things escalate from there in a cat and mouse thriller where the hunter becomes the hunted – this is a super-charged action thriller of the kind that Paul Thomas Anderson hasn’t really made before; a real departure from the hangout young love movie of Licorice Pizza. Smash forward several years later – Bob is bringing up his daughter; Willa – played by the incredible Chase Infiniti with his only confident the delightfully odd Benicio del Toro; and Lockjaw comes after them again.

This is a film about the daughters of the revolution; of war and chaos. Bob is a side character in his own movie – bumbling around without a clue. DiCaprio plays the loveable idiot remarkably well; with a paranoid edge that only develops with age – Taylor and Infiniti are both equally terrific opposite him – a real clash of characters – and Penn watching over them all, like Margaret Thatcher reincarnate. Chase sequences are hypnotically beautiful and appropriately tense – pulling you in with an urge to keep you there; you’re drawn to the up-and-down nature of the endless road; the life-cycle never ending. This is one battle after another – repetitive in theme but never in scope. Del Toro crops up like a breath of fresh air – his line-deliveries across the board are excellent and there’s no wasted opportunity at any given turn.

The soundtrack is bombastic – really good across the board. American Girl soars – evoking a style of Steely Dan and the 1970s aesthetic – Greenwood’s music drawing form Dirty Work for the centre of the theme tune. It’s a shame that Jonny Greenwood’s politics are the antithesis of the principle them of One Battle After Another – but the music operates much better in a world without him; the tunes for example when the army are looking for Willa at a high school dance leave a mark; and it feels appropriately nerve-shredding across the entire film like a lightning in a bottle moment – everything comes together brilliantly to ensure maximum impact across the board. No expense is spared – movie stars operate in the same frame as the next generation of them – never are you once considering that that’s just DiCaprio playing a role – it’s one of the best performances of his career. It’s his Big Lebowski moment – class at every turn – bumbling idiot was a role that suits him best.

I didn’t think Eddington was going to be beaten for best movie of the year. Turns out One Battle After Another has that high honour.

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About the Author - Milo

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Milo is a SpoilerTV writer who enjoys going to live music shows at pubs with the capacity of 200 people and starting a pit. His favourite shows are Twin Peaks, The Wire and Battlestar Galactica and he loves Arctangent festival!

Recent Reviews (All Reviews)

10 Films To Watch at This Year's London Film Festival

2025-09-03T14:39:00.005+01:00

With the program going live today at last featuring some of the best films coming out over the course of the next year centered around premiere screenings in the captial, it looks set to be one of the biggest and best London Film Festivals we’ve had – what better cause to celebrate than its 69th edition? With packed names everywhere you look - It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle - a real representation of the global talent in the film industry. Here’s 10 films that are worth keeping in mind; big and small alike - showcasing a variety of genres, mediums and talent - and some of my most anticipated movies of the two weeks the main festival runs for.

ROSE OF NEVADA (dir; Mark Jenkin)

Mark Jenkin has been one of the premiere directors out of the South West making films that establish him as a true talent worthy of recognition among the bigger names – Bait, about a small village under threat by tourism, and Enys Men, a 70s-styled folk horror following a solitary isolated woman, establish the grit and provocative nature of Jenkin’s style – and this time it’s a haunted time travel odyssey that follows a fishing vessel lost three decades earlier, reappearing in its harbour and taking on new crew only to find themselves pulled back into the past. George MacKay and Callum Turner are rising stars – and this looks set to be a visionary masterpiece like no other.

THE TESTAMENT OF ANNE LEE (dir; Mona Fastvold)

New Mona Fastvold is a must watch and the fact that reviews out of Venice have been divisive makes it even more compelling. Anchored by Amanda Seyfried following Ann Lee’s journey from her childhood in Manchester to pre-revolutionary America, this explores the founder of the Shaker movement in a movie destined to resurrect Lee’s story in public consciousness. Expect something as powerful as The World to Come and you’ll be in for a treat.

MIROIRS NO. 3 (dir; Christian Petzold)

New Christian Petzold klaxonnnn. Working with regular collaborator Paula Beer, he tells the story of a woman adopted by a family in the middle of a car crash, physically unhurt but deeply shaken, and taken in with motherly devotion by her newfound family. Originally welcomed presence turns sinister in what looks set to be a peak Petzold drama unafraid to pull the emotional punches. Any new Petzold will be on my radar after Phoenix and Transit, but the director can keep things afloat right the way through his prolific career. This time out, expect a study of loss and existential crisis wrapped up in a small psychodrama.

IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT (dir; Jafar Panahi)

What starts as a simple traffic accident reunites two men with a shared past in Jafar Panahi’s new film from the director of No Bears and Crimson Gold, an open critique of a regime from a director in hiding from his own country – having been given a 20 year ban on filmmaking in 2010 but continued to make them despite this - and the calling for consequences of the dystopian nightmares of that regime couldn’t be any more relevant in today’s world. As a moral case study this feels essential.

DIE MY LOVE (dir; Lynne Ramsay)

New Lynne Ramsay is a call for celebration; and her bold, brave drama explores the brink of madness that new mother Grace descends into just after giving birth. Darkly comic and exploring the complex lives of women, Jennifer Lawrence steps into the spotlight acting opposite Robert Pattinson in what’s sure to be a winning combination of two of the finest actors of their generation.

BROKEN ENGLISH (dir; Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth)

This time getting the Pollard and Forsyth treatment is Marianne Faithfull, cultural icon responsible for the hit As Tears Go By and one of the lead female singers of the British Invasion into the United States. This is an odd quasi-documentary approach – a fictional ministry fronted by Tilda Swinton question Faithfull about her career, from 60s IT girl to art scene doyenne – in a towering way that’s sure to impress. 20,000 Days on Earth was an all-timer of a documentary – so expect this one to have marked attention from the documentary fans.

SCENERY “DECORADO” (dir; Alberto Vázquez)

Unicorn Wars was a title that aired at LFF a few years ago and caught my attention with its bold and abrasive animation and this follow-up looks set to do the same – Arnold, a middle aged mouse in an existential crisis, lives in suspicion that his whole world is unreal and fake, like a scenery. Can he overcome the sinister evil corporation of A.C.M.E. (A Company that makes Everything) and start a new life?

ORPHAN “ARVA” (dir; László Nemes)

Son of Saul is one of the most harrowing, raw and powerful films of the last decade. Expect something similar from Nemes who is returning with his third film on the back of Sunset, about a young boy discovering the truth of his mother’s survival after the uprising of the Communist regime in Budapest 1957. Expect gorgeous cinematography from The Iron Claw DOP Mátyás Erdély, and a formative coming of age journey.

BELOW THE CLOUDS (dir; Gianfranco Rosi)

Taken from Jean Cocteau’s “Vesuvius makes all the clouds in the world,” Rosi weaves a documentary of war and violence at the heart of Naples following a normal life and that of the spiritual in Italy, shot in black and white and avoiding the usage of camera narration in favour of fixed positions. The film spotlights the threats that face Naples from Vesuvius and Campi Flegrei, amid increasing tremors and the warnings of Pompeii, Below the Clouds feels like a real wake-up call.

PALESTINE 36 (dir; ANNEMARIE JACIR)

Filmed by Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir – responsible for Salt of This Sea - and set in 1963 following a group of Palestinians rising against British colonial rule, Palestine 36 looks set to focus on the largest and longest uprising against Britain’s 30 year dominion with powerful repercussions on the present day occupation of Palestine by Israel. Key figures in the current resistance like Liam Cunningham star, anchored behind the role of Saleh Bakri. Given the current genocide in Palestine it’s about time the film industry caught up to the provocative statements of the music scene; and Palestine 36 looks set to be just that.

Find out more and explore the full program here

Superman: The Real Rom-Com

2025-08-10T15:02:00.001+01:00

THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS.

Superman is the romcom we’ve been searching for all year; perfectly balanced action and romance to the satisfaction of all viewers.

Superman: Legacy, like the others before, is a reboot of the Superman film series; though these beloved characters have been known to us for decades, each iteration provides a different feel through the storytelling, plot, and the actors’ chemistry. The romance between Clark and Lois has long been a staple of Superman media, and David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan are recent additions to this tradition.

When asked about his casting decisions, Director James Gunn said about David and Rachel: “They auditioned together…I wasn’t just casting Lois and Clark, I was casting Clois. I needed to believe that this was a guy, that a woman this intelligent would actually fall in love with. And the sexual chemistry that they have is so palpable.” Once you see the pair together onscreen, it’s immediately obvious why these two work so well and why Gunn chose them for the roles.

David is easily able to switch between three personas: one of the bumbling, charismatic Clark Kent that the world sees, the cape-donning Superman with his heart on his sleeve, and then the real Clark who can take off the proverbial mask around the people who know his identity and be vulnerable, mainly with Lois.

What makes Clois work?

David and Rachel can play off of one another’s chemistry so well that it feels incredibly authentic to watch. He’s the most powerful man in the world, a man of steel, and yet this headstrong, cynical, skeptical woman can bring him to his knees and make him feel deeply.

The twelve-minute talking scene, which James Gunn refers to as his biggest risk in the movie, had a major payoff and lent so much to not only establishing but endorsing the chemistry between Clark and Lois. We are teased with the aforementioned sexual chemistry, and we are shown just how well Clark and Lois can keep their relationship private at work, and just how romantically compatible they are at home. It’s domestic fluff, and Clois fans will forever be grateful for its inclusion.

Long-time fans of Rachel’s will know the ease with which she can handle fast-paced dialogue and quips, given her run on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

The scene takes a dramatic turn once Lois offers to interview Clark as Superman, to which he hesitantly agrees. The two initially banter and then argue over the ethics of Superman’s actions with regard to his intervention between the conflict of Boravia and Jarhanpur. The fight comes to a head when Clark announces his intention to leave, and Lois mutters, “I knew this would never work”, which annoys Clark, who eventually leaves.

The film is not only an exploration of Superman’s ability or the limits (or the lack thereof) of Lex Luthor’s disdain, but the depth of the love between Clark and Lois. In the scene where Lois blurts to Mr. Terrific that she was planning to break up with Clark, we all called her bluff on that one. You don’t enlist the help of the Justice Gang, risk being arrested by the US government, enter a pocket universe, fly a spaceship to help Clark/Superman recover from injuries, and work tirelessly to bring Lex Luthor to a halt just for a guy you’re “seeing”.

Her fear of intimacy is understandable due to her ultimate focus on her career and due in part to the length of time for which she and Clark have been dating. And though he confesses his love for her before turning himself in in the hopes of finding Krypto (swoon!), she is hesitant and reserved. On his return, however, she asks ‘Superman’ for an interview where they kiss and she also confesses her love.

Maybe their love is the real punk rock.

It’s safe to say we’d love to see more of David and Rachel playing these characters, and with the recently confirmed Superman sequel, our hopes are higher than ever.

MOVIES: Superman - Review: Best Since the Original

2025-07-14T12:30:00.003+01:00

Superman is a game-changer; and proves that nobody, really understands comic book movies better than James Gunn. He’s made the best of the MCU three times over and now he’s made the best comic book movie since arguably, the Richard Donner film that started it all. It’s a Superman that makes his world feel lived in and alive as much as anyone - a film that plunges Clark Kent into the middle of a geopolitical crisis and asks “what would Superman do if he was around to stop Israel committing genocide?” Having him beat up your Benjamin Netanyahu stand-in isn’t a bad way to start your cinematic universe – and the film directly addresses the consequences of those actions viewed by the United States and Lex Luthor, professional hater, back home.

The central trio is excellent. David Corenswet is believable as Superman and honest to the core, a boy scout who gets mad when questioned about intervening just because people were going to die. Whilst the Justice Gang would rather grab the spotlight after killing a giant kaiju, Superman is there to rescue squirrels, make sure the children are okay and do his best to try and save the kaiju from being killed. It’s a testament to how poor some of the adaptions of Superman have been at getting this character right that he doesn’t just save people, he inspires them that it feels a breath of fresh air – the clear difference between Superman and the Gang is evident – he’s an alien, he’s not from Earth – yet he’s more human than they will ever be.

Corenswet’s chemistry with Rachel Brosnahan is the gold standard, or the best since Kidder and Reeve. The journalist narrative that runs through Superman has Lois and Jimmy Olsen – played charmingly by Skyler Gisondo – anchors the script amongst its human characters and has their heart in the right place. Gunn makes this movie an ensemble piece and uses their lense to make Metropolis feel real, lived in and alive – rather than starting with another origin story that we all know, only in 2013 Man of Steel debuted, this feels like we’re dropped into the middle of a third series of a television show around the halfway point. Everyone’s lives are built and established, we’re a few months into the Clark/Lois relationship but they’re still feeling each other out – and the personal touches that Gunn brings to this film, the charm of Krypto – the arc about Superman being cancelled – all something that he had to experience himself, after the faux right wing backlash led to him being dropped from the MCU. Their loss.

The film moves from workplace comedy to screwball 50s romance and keeps the spirit of the 50s silver age comics all over its script. Jimmy Olsen gets the most Jimmy Olsen plot since his solo comic run – and Mr. Terrific steals the scene with a wonderfully serious deadpan performance by Edi Gathegi, a real contrast to Nathan Fillion’s cocky, suave Guy Gardner. Out of all the Green Lanterns to introduce and with that haircut, Guy is a bold choice – but Gunn gets what makes Fillion’s charm work so well. The Justice Gang may not be as involved as Superman in the main storyline but they help show he can inspire everyone just by doing good day in, day out – and as much as he’s Superman, he can’t be everywhere at once. He needs others to help him.

Nicholas Hoult is the second Skins actor on the back of Jack O’Connell to play a great villain this year and the performance Hoult gives as Lex is terrifying. He’s a man obsessed and the character arc that his Lex gets is great – being someone who tolerates the metahumans, but can’t stand Superman because he’s alien. We already have an inbuilt rivalry between the two, Lex has been studying Superman for years. He’s a stand-in for Trump and Musk, a rage-fuelled weapons dealer trying to get his own piece of fictional Palestine when fictional Israel conquer it; so he can be king there. Sound familiar?

Hoult chews scenery like the best of them – and it’s hard not see his character feel threatening especially in one particular gunshot scene that is capable of having a very big impact. But that’s not surprising, anyone who’s watched the Guardians films will know Gunn is capable of doing the big emotional impacts. It helps that Lex is actually evil for the sake of it here, and not just because the movie tells you he is. Gunn has been good at getting villains right from almost day one – his take on Ego was exceptional, to this day one of the MCU’s best.

I like the shakeup to Krypton lore and the decision to cast Ma and Pa Kent as relatively unknown actors – it felt too jarring when Kevin Costner was Superman’s Earth Dad, and Russell Crowe his Space one. The emphasis on the Kents being important to his life and him learning to accept that who you are told to be doesn’t make you who you are is a fascinating touchdown of Superman, that Neva Howell and Pruitt Taylor Vince pull off perfectly, believable salt-of-the-Earth types that raise a good hearted son.

The lack of set-up and plunging you straight into Superman makes it feel authentic and more like a real movie than just a mandatory part of a five year phase four, or whatever you call it. Gunn has made Metropolis feel like a real and lived in city, with members of the public having character arcs of his own – with Clark, a goofy, 50s-type charming and positive character that didn’t feel forced. He’s a character who was made to be a champion of the oppressed and Gunn makes that evident from day one. Braham’s cinematography really gets the best out of the script – it breezes past throughout the film and it feels like at times, the movie borrowed influences from The Matrix sequels for its fight scenes and is all the better for it.

The film ultimately feels earnest, heartfelt, and not overly corporate despite being incredibly corporate. It feels like Gunn’s vision first and foremost and it gets Superman right – a breath of fresh air compared to the misused Routh and the stale Cavill that we’ve had in the past. This is a movie that knows what Superman should be, and knows that he inspires others into doing good – and is all the better for it. That’s five out of five for Gunn. Nobody does superhero movies quite like him. The biggest mistake Marvel made was letting him go – they’ve got some competition on their hands now.

MOVIES: 28 Years Later - Review: One of Danny Boyle's Best Yet

2025-06-25T10:09:00.004+01:00

The last final minutes of 28 Years Later is the most British a major blockbuster has got since the first fifteen minutes, which flashbacks to the initial zombie outbreak; a ravaged family watching Teletubbies, and the end of the world. Or – the end of the UK as we know it – in quarantine with the outbreak contained the rest of the world are continuing living normal lives; whilst the British survivors are plunged into a post-apocalyptic, dystopian hellhole. Think The Walking Dead, but good. Think A Quiet Place Day One, but better. This sequel to 28 Days Later is set in the same world but doesn’t use any of the same characters and barely any of the same plot. Instead – Boyle introduces us to Spike, a boy on a small island community off the coast of the UK – and his first mission out into the mainland in search of his first kill.

28 Days Later was about the initial horror of the zombie apocalypse; the panic and the unknown and how quickly humanity could fall. This is more about what happens to humanity since; those that stay trapped in the past, how they remember their dead – and where they go from there. It’s proper messed up Boyle drama – Ralph Fiennnes is fantastic in form as ever; and delivers an appropriately menacing threat where you’re not sure he’s the villain or not. The stakes are high – there are more than just the good guys and the bad guys – everyone has gone through hell and everyone is just trying to survive. These characters feel like who Ellie and Joel would meet in The Last of Us but with more nuance. Spike – played by the brilliant Alfie Williams in one of this year’s best performances – journeys into the dark heart of the mainland with his mother, Jodie Comer’s Isla – but first must face the evolution of the zombies to get to his goal.

The zombies are fast now; and appropriately terrifying. The digital technology and the unlicensed stealth shooting at dawn gave 28 Days Later a fantastic unique, revolutionary feel in London and the fierce filmmaking that was all over the brash; raw energy of 28 Days Later – it’s not exactly subtle to say that the decision to keep the rest of the world normal was a Brexit allegory taken to the extremes and the prevailing themes that run through this film are the influence and the weaponisation of nostalgia – just from the off you see what happens when children spend too much time watching television – and the encounters between the old world and the new feel very much like a complete clash of styles – it’s like dropping someone from the 21st century into the medieval era – so little has society evolved; and the next generation have no knowledge of what was ‘before’ – only ‘after’. Those that left behind are old enough to remember what the world was before shape and change their views – and we get to see the school system at the heart of this new society reflect that.

The folk horror influences are everywhere; as well as the little-England satire that pokes fun at those who would look inward rather than outward at the rest of the world – it’s about the mythmaking and the storytelling that we tell ourselves, the stand-in for the post-Blitz nostalgia and the secluded aesthetic.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Jamie plays a key role in the first act as Spike’s father, but it’s fascinating to watch Williams grow and evolve as an actor before our eyes – the opening scenes where he’s first brave enough to stand up to Spike are fascinating. Hearing the rumours of Ralph Fiennes’ Doctor living on the mainland – whose reputation is viewed as him having lost it for burning corpses – the growth is transformative for him. He has hope now – hope that he can save his mother. His reaction to seeing the mainland is believable and Williams is absolutely outstanding across every scene here – a real tour-de-force that you’d be hard pressed not to overlook in the Oscar race at the end of the year. There are daring decisions across the board – Boyle never shies away from making choices that would give Star Wars fans a heart attack; risk-taking and daring at every time – shot on iPhones to create an intense digital-camcorder look of old, and ferocious in its approach at doing so – the chase scenes are stark, gripping and no holds barred.

As a character study and evolution 28 Years Later keeps the scares – the train sequence is a fantastic bit of tension and the opening montage of Spike and Jamie going out onto the mainland is set perfectly to Young Fathers’ terrific score – one of the best of the year; and one of the best of the decade – the band put on a show live and seeing them transition to stuff like Boots creates the tension perfectly and the montage deployed with real-world soldiers in training throughout history in conjunction with clips of famous films airs to a nostalgic feel that can’t help but be ignored. There are also funny moments too – Spike’s reaction to Eric’s girlfriend is a particular highlight; for context of which I won’t spoil here – and the film pushes the boundaries of need to understand British culture in major films to get the most out of 28 Years Later - it’s basic references that will fly over the heads of most Americans; but the final odd 20 minutes is the biggest curveball I’ve seen in a major blockbuster since; I want to say at least The Mist?

Give me a Young Fathers live in concert screening of 28 Years Later, give me the sequel, give me more Danny Boyle – the hyperkinetic filmmaker is back and this is one of the best movies he’s made so far in his career. The Garland/Boyle combination is firing on all cylinders again – and we were all the poorer without it.

MOVIES: Predator: Killer of Killers Review: The Ultimate "What if?"

2025-06-23T15:35:00.004+01:00

Predator: Killer of Killers is a straight to Disney+ stop gap designed to fill the gap between Prey and Badlands. It’s an animated film which allows director Dan Trachtenberg to go nuts, not constrained by the budget of a traditional live action film and flex his creative muscles to tell a story that fans have been cheering for since Prey dragged the franchise back to life kicking and screaming. What if future instalments of Predator took place throughout different time zones? From the perspective of the Native Americans we jump to Vikings; Samurai, and even World War Two pilots – all scenarios that make you think they looked at the last few Assassin’s Creed games for inspiration. Each are blended together culminating in a conclusion where the survivors of all time periods must fight in a contest of champions.

At a breezy eighty-five minutes, Killer of Killers never overstays its welcome. There continues to be an association that animation is just for children and it’s not helped by the fact that that most people; when they say ‘animation isn’t just for children’, they offer up family-friendly films as examples. Killer of Killers shows the boundary of the violent and creative kills that Trachtenberg can introduce – the gadgets are creative and the deaths are more violent than anything that you can get on screen. It’s a franchise designed for animation that we never even knew it was – it should’ve been told this way from the very start. The creativity of the settings are fantastic – I loved watching a Viking raider guiding her young son on a quest for vengeance navigating the harsh wastelands of Scandinavia, and the ninja in feudal Japan who turns against his samurai brother provided for a fascinating family conflict. The switch in style again made it all the more promising that Killer of Killers was consistent as it was – kept its tone from not feeling too disjointed across the three different eras – and the fourth, the final era – the Badlands of the alien homeworld.

“who would win in a fight?” is the primer for Killer of Killers and it’s answered here in style – Predator or Samurai? Predator or a WW2 soldier? The springboard ideas that the film bounces off on are simple what if? Questions but for something that fans have been championing for long after Prey it feels a miracle that when it actually got here; it’s this good. The choreography is fantastic and the brawls are glorious – creative and appropriately cinematic. It’s almost a shame this never got a cinema release – yes Badlands is coming, but Killer of Killers feels made for the big screen just as much as Prey did.

It's very video-game cut-scene-y at times and the story that connects the characters could’ve been more drawn out and they could’ve been braver with switching the animation styles, even if that’s partly what led to this film feeling so consistent. It’s not quite a proper anthology but the different split in the setting makes it easy to like the characters; and you never stay away from them for too long. Some fates are also answered around Prey. It’ll be fascinating to see whether in the long run this is a springboard for more Predator animated films or just a prequel for Badlands – and what connective thread the three have.

MOVIES: Ballerina - Review: Wick-ex-Machina

2025-06-23T13:56:00.002+01:00

Ballerina is the latest in the John Wick saga and the first to act as a spinoff outside of the main franchise on film; and it arrives as a bit of a dud. Famous franchise-killer Len Wiseman is bizarrely given another shot at resurrecting a career that includes famously bad movies like the Total Recall remake or Live Free or Die Hard. If you wanted to kill a franchise hiring a guy like Len Wiseman should be your go to move and it’s what Ballerina has done. To its credit – it’s largely serviceable but lacks the fun and the sheer action-skill craftmanship of the original Wick movies, there was something about the action in the first four and its hyperkinetic craftmanship that’s missing here.

Taking place during the events of Chapter 3, Eve Macarro is Ana de Armas’ protagonist who finds herself enlisted into the shadowy ballerina-style assassins and protectors who exist in a world of law and order where actions have consequences – or rules, and consequences – are very much stock in trade. Eve has escaped from an evil cultlike organisation with the help of a younger Winston – handler of the Continental Hotel in New York – after her father is killed. The cult thrives off chaos and disorder and exist as the opposite to the organised assassin world that is Wick’s unique asset. It’s blunt and the whole script feels like it arrives with subtlety of being hit in the head with a sledgehammer – to the point where a garden of Eden reference is mentioned when referring to Eve by name – but Wick has never been a subtle franchise. It’s an action-heavy one.

The film’s biggest weakness is the fact that it needs to be part of the Wick franchise, when it could’ve easily stood alone. It did not need to take place during the events of the middle of a franchise; it did not need John Wick to show up during the protagonist’ final showdown against the cultlike figures and get involved for her. This is Eve’s story – not Wick’s so – why is Wick so front and centre? An Eve-Wick showdown felt like the only way that might have been acceptable; but Wick instead getting to save Eve multiple times almost robs her agency. It’s like having Iron Man show up and save the day in the finale of say, Captain Marvel or Black Widow.

As an action thriller Ballerina works and there are some neat fights especially in the final mountain location which uses a snow village as the backdrop. The fire/water fight is cheesy but cool, and the concept of a cultlike village where all its members are trained assasins leads to a constant guessing game of whether or not this guy is going to attack Eve; even though you know deep down he probably is. It’s intense, brutal – and notably at its best in the final act, with the big problem of John Wick front and centre. Wick is the movie’s biggest weakness – he robs Eve of her agency and focus from the main narrative – everyone is expecting the bogeyman to be the bogeyman – and he does; which gives Eve less to do. This would be a harder and more interesting battle for Eve if she was on her own. Instead – it feels like a deus ex machina.

The frantic and brutal anger of Eve feels less refined than Wick’s experience and the flamethrower ballet is incredibly entertaining. Keaton gets a cameo too – it’s all good across the board. Norman Reedus gets to play a role that isn’t Daryl for once – but it’s hard to see him not locked into that haircut and not think that he shouldn’t be fighting zombies. By the time the film ups a gear it feels like The Final Reckoning – too little; too late. Much of Ballerina is dead on arrival.

MOVIES: The Fountain of Youth - Review: Tired and Washed Up

2025-05-31T08:42:00.004+01:00

The Fountain of Youth is Guy Ritchie’s latest global treasure hunt movie that’s one part Uncharted, one part National Treasure and all parts bad. Centred around a brother/sister pairing; washed up treasure hunter John Krasinski is forced to work together with museum sellout Natalie Portman to protect their father’s legacy by finding the mythical fountain of youth. It’s Ritchie in autopilot; lacking the flair of his 90s British gangster films or even the recent blockbuster work like The Man from UNCLE and The Gentlemen. It just feels dull – from the start; and that’s largely due to the casting – Krasinski has negative chemistry with anyone that he's involved with and him and Portman don’t feel believable as brother/sister.

The plot twists are too predictable and you know what’s coming a mile off; the location scavenger hunts are dull and a way for Ritchie to throw Apple’s millions up the wall – this is Apple showing how much money they have again by getting an Oasis needle drop and using it in the most eye-rollingly way possible at the end credits. It’s dull. It’s flat. It’s cliché – every part of this is stolen from better movies and better video games; there are set-pieces straight from Uncharted. The characters have the most threadbare characterisation – there’s a gifted kid musical prodigy – why is he there, really? Nobody knows – and no real character arc is done with him – Portman is reduced to telling Krasinski that he’s wrong the whole time and Krasinski then finally admits that he’s wrong. The movie attempts to force a enemies-to-lovers romance between Krasinski and Eiza Gonzalez; who plays a character intent on stopping Krasinski from finding the fountain of youth – but Krasinski comes off as creepy more than charming in their initial encounter and for some reason, Stanley Tucci is there for five seconds? The plot feels like a torture to get through. It begs the question – why was Krasinski ever allowed to escape beyond The Office and turn into a movie star in the first place?

At best; he’s miscast here. A rugged glory hunter – Luke Purdue is no Indiana Jones – not convincing when he’s the assshole and not charming enough to look enthusiastic when coming face to face with the mythical fountain of youth about it being; the mythical fountain of youth. The dynamic between Krasinski and Portman is threadbare at best – Domhnall Gleeson barely registers as a dying billionaire looking for the Fountain; and the film just becomes dull – there’s no sense of adventure; no sense of gravitas – no real risk or daring that the Indiana Jones movies had – Ritchie’s camerawork is safe, formulaic and predictable. Everything looks old and tired before it even arrives on screen - and it’s arguably; the weakest Ritchie movie to date. Which – after Aladdin, is saying something. With dozens of tv shows in the works – maybe he’s stretched too thin?

MOVIES: Karate Kid: Legends - Review: Full of Nostalgia

2025-05-29T11:26:00.001+01:00

Karate Kid Legends is the legacy sequel to Karate Kid; but also operating in a post Cobra Kai world where a once one-note 80s villain Johnny Lawrence has had six series of development. Who’d have thought that this would happen from a series that started of all places; on YouTube Red (remember that?) before turning into the phenomenon that it is today and reigniting the interest in the Karate Kid franchise that kind of stonewalled after the failed Jaden Smith/Jackie Chan reboot. Here it’s kept to a tight ninety minutes – and loops back in legendary protagonist and mentor Daniel La Russo, played by Ralph Macchio, and Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han – starting with a flashback to Karate Kid II and never letting up the nostalgia.

That’s all this movie is – much of the first act revolves around Ben Wang’s Li Fong; a Bejing native trained in Kung Fu who moves to New York and learns Karate to save the restaurant of his love interest’s father Victor, played by Joshua Jackson – when a cash prize is introduced at the end of a prestigious karate tournament. Li attempts to learn New York culture and finds himself out of his depth – but finds salvage in a potential new partner; Mia, played by Sadie Stanley. Wang and Stanely have next to zero romantic chemistry and the problem is that their arc is problematic at best and creepy; major incel-vibe inducing at worst – Li’s scheme to get her back when she wasn’t even with him in the first place is cringe-worthy and misguided; and set off major red flags. Both Li and Mia are teenagers and believable – they’re not perfect – they make mistakes; but a lot of their fallout could’ve been fixed by better communication that this movie doesn’t allow them to have even after they work out their differences. It’s built around a weak foundation that never really feels as authentic as it does to blossom.

Two Karate Kid legacy characters in a 95 minute movie that aren’t the protagonists just means that Karate Kid: Legends feels rushed, spending much of that time on getting Macchio and Chan to New York and in Li’s corner rushing the development and the stakes that Li has in the build-up to the fight. He gets a tragic backstory, but nothing quite worth commenting on – it’s fairly generic as things go and the plot never feels real. Even the flashbacks when the present mirrors the past is so heavily telegraphed it’s hard not to see coming a mile away; and the fun factor is robbed by just how serious Legends treats itself. I like the premise shifting a bit; where the kid teaches the adult rather than the adult teaching the kid; but that is undone by the third act – Ben Wang is much more likeable when he is interacting with Joshua Jackson than Sadie Stanley and the martial arts montages are never dull no matter how many times they show up.

His dynamic with Jackie Chan is fun too, a welcome addition to the cast in a redemption arc from the 2010 film; but adding Ralph Macchio just feels like a half-hearted nostalgia-bait that never really feels necessary. They get in on an awkward, ham-fisted brief fight scene but bringing Macchio back and barely giving anything for him to do feels pointless – Chan feels more involved in the storyline and ideally; if you are having both characters there, give it twenty minutes for more depth. The film’s decision to shift the narrative focus to the two legacy characters moves the focus away from Victor and Mia; who we actively grow to care about at the start – but Legends ignores them for the third act and suffers because of it.

There’s a brief scene in here that will please the Cobra Kai fans but this is decidedly more a Karate Kid sequel than a Cobra Kai one which is probably a good thing given how recently the series ended. The comedy has touches of Cobra Kai at times from Li’s calculus tutor, and the fight sequences are well choreographed but not without their issues – too many cuts; and too much emphasis on having people fly across the screen cartoonishly like it’s an anime. The predictable set-up for the final act means every beat is telegraphed and never have I laughed this much at a movie that wants to take itself at least semi-seriously; but as an entertaining crowd-pleaser it isn’t *awful*; even if it hits beat for beat the same notes as Ryan Coogler’s Creed.

MOVIES: The Phoenician Scheme - Review: Too Much Detail

2025-05-28T10:59:00.000+01:00

The Phoenician Scheme is the new Wes Anderson film which rapidly is becoming a genre or a distinctive flair in his own right. The auteur’s clear and distinctive style has left a marked impression; but his latest films have not quite matched the ambition, simplicity and flair of his earlier films like Fantastic Mr Fox or Moonrise Kingdom. Instead, Anderson feels like a hollow shell of his former self – running on fumes at this point and The Phoenician Scheme is no different, lacklustre and overcooked with too much going on, too much detail – for what should’ve been a simple plot/scheme/father & daughter bonding exercise as the father tries to keep his collapsing empire together.

Mia Threapleton is a nepo baby done good – Kate Winslet’s daughter out-acts and steals the scene from Benicio Del Toro and Michael Cera; who are excellent in their own right – all three the centre of this airless, eccentric and whimsical comedy that feels very much designed to match what you expect from the idea of an Anderson movie. The screwball for the characters are given the fair share of attention whilst his regulars; Tom Hanks, Willem Dafoe and Scarlett Johannson are limited to cameos in deadpan, walk-on roles – it’s the equivalent of expecting audiences to go “oh, there’s that actor!” every time they show up and they aren’t really given much to do apart from making the plot unique – in fact they slow it down and bog it in the detail that really kills the film before it can move. Zsa-Zsa Korda (Del Toro) is trying to keep his economy of a fictional Middle Eastern nation together by interlocking a series of ambitious schemes; but rapidly the schemes fall apart at every turn. The investors that he has signed a deal with are all Anderson regulars – Jeffrey Wright’s Marty is one of the better ones – but whilst going around on his scheme he’s dragging his heir to his fortune; Liesel (Threapleton), along with a Norwegian family tutor Bjorn (Michael Cera); who is deeply in love with her but also hiding secrets of his own.

The funny running gags about Korda almost being assassinated and a star turn by Benedict Cumberbatch in a rare walk-on role are the closest I’ve come to loving a Wes Anderson movie since The Grand Budapest Hotel, but they’re not enough to detect the same spark that was present in his earlier work. It moves along with the pace of an Anderson movie that you’ve come to expect – it has less heart than Asteroid City but the structure of the piece unfolding at its most rudimentary levels of “Wes Anderson does Succession”. Anderson approaches the nonchalant of the extreme situations with an air of gravitas and control – it’s one of his biggest strengths as a humanist filmmaker and creates a strategy with the purpose of wanting you to laugh – and my audience were in stiches. This is in no small part thanks to Threapleton – who’s terrific throughout – a real star in the making at every turn; able to match Korda’s schemes with the appropriate response to someone who suggests the best way to beat professional basketball players with someone who has never played basketball at their own game.

To watch an actual Wes Anderson film in an age of soulless AI imitators is to be reminded that the spark is there – if fleeting. The humour is in the wordplay, the humour is in the performance – Del Toro’s dialogue is his most prolific vocals on film – to do such a marked change from a supporting role into a leading man is no small feat; yet he owns the screen – whilst at the same time still feeling secondary in turn to the brilliance that is Threapleton. At every turn she puts in an excellent supporting performance that feels like a match made in heaven for someone like Anderson.

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning - Review: Finally, They Made A Bad One

2025-05-16T11:12:00.001+01:00

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning is somehow the best and the worst Mission Impossible, existing both at the same time. It is far too long and spends far too much time as a clip show devoted to showing the greatest hits of Ethan’s past entries – everything from the first all the way through to Fallout is shown here early on, and it can feel daunting. It means that there isn’t enough time for the actual plot of Final Reckoning to get going until the last act, where it’s – whilst delivering two of the greatest action sequences of the decade so far in quick succession, almost feels too little too late. Good action sequences do not a good movie make, and good action sequences does not a good Mission Impossible movie make on its own.

The film is too wrapped up in being a bookend to the whole franchise that it gives a distinctive air of the disasters that were The Rise of Skywalker and Spectre to it before slightly redeeming itself at the end with echoes of The Dark Knight Rises, a cult favourite despite its flaws. It’s a connect-the-dots franchise slop in its first hour that this franchise has never really needed with its standalone entries working so well because they were standalone, and you never really needed to watch any of the others to understand what was going on. Here The Final Reckoning feels like the antithesis of that, bringing back guys who had five second appearances in the first film and almost undoing the Jim Phelps, the hero of the original television series, being the villain all along plot thread of Mission Impossible for good measure. There’s also a distinctive need to connect the Rabbit’s Foot plot device from the worst entry in the series, Mission Impossible 3, to which The Final Reckoning owes far too much inspiration from. See, at the end of the day – it’s all JJ Abrams’ fault.

The Entity is the faceless all-consuming villain of the film and Ethan and his team need to stop the world from launching all their nukes in a pre-emptive strike and triggering the end of everything. It was inevitable the escalation would reach this point; and to be fair, once it gets going, it propels the film forward – searing into its final act with gutso and energy that is unmatched by just about anything in the entire series that came before it. These two sequences involve a spectacular submarine scene – because of course, the action inevitably returns to the craft that started it all, the Sevastopol from which the Entity escaped from – and the gravity-defying old-school plane set-piece where Ethan once again clings onto the outside of an airborne vehicle trying to get to the bad guy that’s escaping with a key. It’s thrilling and the emphasis on this being real as opposed to being a CGI-generated mess really helps add to the danger of holy shit, it’s Tom Cruise doing these things – and it creates a spectacle that has been rarely seen on film. This is Mission Impossible at its purest form, stripped down, insane, designed to be seen on the biggest screen possible.

But I could do without every connection. Characters are tied to each other in a way that echoes the “Rey Palpatine” structure of The Rise of Skywalker and it feels hamfisted, forced. A major moment in the first act isn’t given the weight it deserves because it is surrounded by exposition. Instead, the team of regulars, Benji, now a lot more experienced and almost a proto-Ethan in his own right, real character growth across the course of his introduction from Mission Impossible 3, Grace, pickpocket and love interest for Cruise, Luther, the reliable Ving Rhames, effortlessly cool as ever, are joined by old faces with different roles. After being betrayed by Gabriel, played by a fantastic scenery-chewing Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff’s unhinged killer Paris joins the team in a thrilling opening act and is used for brilliant comic relief, and Greg Tarzan Davis switches sides to round out the team. The sentimentality and the fact that Ethan values his team more than he values his own life adds weight to every situation, and the theme of these characters fighting for people they’ll never know they exist and they’ll in turn never meet lands a mark.

It's just a shame the first so sluggish. The whole first act is devoted to Ethan trying to convince the guys in charge to let him do what he does best. There’s no suspense because we know they’ll cave. Thankfully the guys in charge are all great that guys who look excellent being guys in charge – Angela Bassett is upgraded to the President of the United States, Patton Oswalt, Hannah Waddingham, Shea Whigham, Mark Gatiss and Henry Czerny are either new additions or reprise their roles with great charm – Whigham is given new material but his role is reduced from the madcap chase after Cruise that made Dead Reckoning so fun. Tramell Tillman is a star – perfectly matching Cruise’s tempo as Commanding Officer Bledsoe, a rogue and daring submarine officer – but throughout it all the dialogue seems too disjointed, too awkward. It feels like a rough first draft that never fully takes flight; a great idea that at once feels too heavily edited and not edited enough. Newcomer Katy O’Brian is fantastic and just about everyone on that submarine could make new additions to a new team and I wouldn’t mind were the franchise to evolve and continue.

The Final Reckoning’s set-pieces, while great, take a backwards step. The aerial combat echoes Fallout almost beat for beat; and the implausibility that runs through it all is stretched thin to ultimately, carefully and kinetically staged action sequences that feel perfectly timed and interspaced with wonderful gunfire. The comedy is there early on – I love the off-camera beatdown that Ethan dishes out to his would-be captors that we see through the eyes of Hayley Atwell’s Grace, brilliantly traumatised. It’s this pace that despite its length, The Final Reckoning somehow feels shorter than Dead Reckoning – when it cooks it really cooks, as the kids say.

Gabriel and Ethan are Tom and Jerry recreated better than any live action Tom and Jerry movie could ever do, and it has the same thrill as watching a Buster Keaton film. It’s hilarious at times in the most insanely implausible way where you can’t help but laugh. Christopher McQuarrie commands these set-pieces brilliantly but lets his worst tendencies as a director shine through; and that’s what drags it down. The need to at the end of the day, feel like a franchise slop cripples The Final Reckoning before it can arrive. Lots of threads they pull on leaving you questioning whether they have the juice but it’s backed up by some of the greatest people talking in room scenes ever put to action.

It feels probably best to end America’s best action series here as heartbreakingly flat and empty The Final Reckoning is. The change of pace cripples this film by limiting it largely to a boardroom drama than a “rogues on their own” mission – and explains why the franchise has stuck to that in the past, because it works so much better. It’s wearing thin, and I think McQuarrie and Cruise know that. There can only be so many times a franchise can produce all-time classic after all-time classic of the genre before something has to break. Even the good scenes are beaten into the ground by how often they’re used – and how often McQuarrie lingers on them. Finally, after eight films - after EIGHT films - they made a bad one and ended the streak of the most consistent franchise in the game. I don't think I've been more heartbroken that I didn't love this, especially after watching 4-7 in cinemas in a back to back all nighter in preperation, in a while.

MOVIES: Cleaner - Review: Are you Die-Hard in Disguise?

2025-05-09T10:10:00.000+01:00

Cleaner is a new movie from Martin Campbell that has arrived straight to NowTV in the UK as of last week and feels notable in the fact that it stars Daisy Ridley and is directed by the man responsible for arguably; the two best James Bond films – Goldeneye and Casino Royale. That alone deserves any new Campbell film at least a look; even if his latest films have been less than stellar – the Liam Neeson thriller Memory arrived with a whimper and the less said about The Foreigner the better. You don't have to mention Green Lantern because Ryan Reynolds has already told you how bad it is.

Here Ridley plays, you guessed it; a high-storey window cleaner at a major London energy company that’s hijacked by radical activists. 300 hostages are taken, and Ridley’s ex-soldier is the only one positioned to act. It’s very Die Hard in structure, essentially just another Die Hard – the movie; remade with a 2020s coat of paint and themes of activism as the enemy – I want to know what the elevator pitch for this one was and “John McClane was a window cleaner at Nakotmi Plaza”? feels entirely derivative. I always go into Campbell movies hoping to have a good time but this one feels very threadbare and entirely forgettable with Clive Owen wasted as a villain.

There’s no real surprises and the high-stakes location is never really made the most of. It feels a touch of forced, low-stakes, motion-running 90-odd minute stop-start thriller that takes too much time to set up its characters and yet at the same time, never gives you a reason to care about any of them because they’re all cookie-cutter. Ridley relishes a meatier role that lets her throw hands, and she’s an action star in the making here – but her track record post The Force Awakens doesn’t do much to alienate the curse that has bogged most Star Wars actors in their post franchise career.

When I saw Clive Owen’s character I was excited but he isn’t given enough of a meaty role to do and there’s a few twists involving his arc that aren’t surprising and in fact, fairly predictable. It feels like a cameo rather than a role of any real substance and seeing Ridley flex her acting chops against Owen would’ve been a lot more interesting than what we ended up having – his role isn’t a walk-on, but it’s not far removed from it. It feels well-polished, missing the grit and the rawness of Die Hard that made it so special – you feel McClane is in danger but you never get the sense that Ridley’s Joey Locke is.

Locke is someone who you get a good sense of who she is in the opener – flawed, always late, always busy, juggling multiple responsibilities at once – but the film never truly lets her grow as a person beyond the standard action movie development. More depth for Locke was need to make her as memorable as McClane.

MOVIES: Thunderbolts* - Review: Surface Level Charm

2025-05-09T09:25:00.002+01:00

Note: The first section of this review is largely spoiler-free, but spoilers will be discussed here towards the end.

Thunderbolts* is billed as a return to form to the MCU – and to some extent it is; if we accept that the MCU was at best, mediocre to occasionally enjoyable as opposed to genre-defining. Director Jake Schreier (although with this sort of films, how much freedom he had is questionable) introduces us to a bunch of b and c listers from the Marvel Cinematic Universe that fans will only really be familiar with if they can say, remember Ant Man and the Wasp or Black Widow. Marvel’s phase five is full of reclamation projects of past failures – case in point, Captain America: Brave New World is a mismash of The Eternals and The Incredible Hulk – and this one is no different, riffing off The Suicide Squad for a paint-by-numbers team-building movie that lacks half the entertainment value or depth of Gunn’s sole DC feature film so far.

The film’s themes are broad. It’s about depression, mental health and well-being – shone through the eyes of Florence Pugh’s fantastic Yelena, the film’s saving grace and the one who leans absolutely into this role. It’s important for blockbusters to have these kinds of discussions even if they’re only surface level; and it’s still very much a Hollywood themed take on depression, wrapped up nicely in a bow by the last act. Much of the performances here are very hammy – David Harbour has some funny lines but very much playing a “bit” – and the idea of putting a bunch of characters who all just punch and shoot in the same room together is something that the film is aware of; but quickly grows tiresome – Ghost continues to be poorly served with character development wasting an excellent Hannah John-Kamen, and the film forgets that it has one of the greatest comedic actors of her generation – Julia Louis-Dreyfus, by painting her character as a one-note villain.

This is a film that is weirdly structured and it shows with its inconsistent pacing. The first act is where Thunderbolts* is at its peak; as the various characters find themselves in the middle of a secret base realising that they’ve all been sent to kill each other and that they’ve been set up by Dreyfus’ character. This establishes the flaws of them all nicely; has Yelena and her father reconnect well – and there’s also a good introduction for the fantastic Lewis Pullman; the real star of Thunderbolts*, playing Bob with a kind of awkward charm that hints at a hidden past. He’s played a Bob before in Top Gun Maverick and he stole the scene there; he shows that he’s got real talent in Thunderbolts* especially as much of the last act that works is because of his vulnerable, sheltered performance. The chemistry between Pullman and Pugh is great – and key to their dynamic working.

The dialogue feels corporate and paint-by-committee. There’s no natural flow in how the film progresses it just feels like it’s all too neatly structured for characters who are known for their imperfections. It should be messier, more flawed. The first act happens and then we’re bang into the third act, straight away, zero escalation or middle act – like Transformers: Rise of the Beasts which didn’t work for me. Furthermore nothing is resolved here; the ending feels entirely reductive of what has come before and undoes all the goodwill gained from the early start that establishes these characters and their tropes – I’m not talking about the bland mind palace Doctor Strange and Eternal Sunshine-riffs, but the ending with Valentina – it just feels all a tad forced. Because ultimately, Thunderbolts* is a Marvel film.

And like Wakanda Forever, it’s at its weakest when it tries to be a Marvel film – did we really need to return to Avengers Tower; a location that has been overused to death? The film is at its best when it’s far away from this literally operating in the middle of nowhere; the desert – the introduction of Bucky Barnes and his role early in the team in trying to assemble them figuring out how he can operate in a world where he’s running for politics.

It feels forced. Bucky is there again; for the Marvel connections and the familiarity, and also to look like he just stepped out of Mission Impossible 2. He doesn’t really add much to the team once he becomes slotted in; none of them do – even John Walker gets a solid first act but is relegated to largely a background character in the third. To his credit, Wyatt Russell – in a cast full of nepo-babies done good everywhere you look, is fantastic at playing such a punchable character who seems at odds with Yelena from the word go. The conflict is surface-level but fun. Once the film expands beyond the one-location thriller that offers a breath of fresh air in its first act and the locker-room trauma bonding survival struggles, it feels like your usual paint-by-numbers Marvel movie. It feels like a reinvention but it never is, the formula is still there, just painted differently. Better dialogue could’ve made this watchable but like most of the modern marvel cinematic universe, it’s not great – and it wasn’t brilliant to begin with.

What could’ve been something special descends to the punching and kicking action flick that offers nothing in the way of variety and by the end feels a bit too same-y. Harbour’s Russian accents feel like a bloated self-parody long before the third act and it wants to hone in on Yelena and Bob’s past trauma, but can’t escape the fact that ultimately has to be a Marvel movie and ends up feeling like it’s just rolled off the production line; casting aside any of the struggles of these characters to serve up a new team name and a giant advert for the next MCU film – Fantastic Four, coming out in two months. Maybe focusing on something more than just charm could have carried this film through to the end – but despite all it claims to do differently, Thunderbolts* doesn’t have anything new to say. In fact - it's basically just a reskin of 2012's Avengers under a different coat of paint.

MOVIES: The Accountant 2 - Review: Welcome back, The 90s

2025-04-28T14:26:00.002+01:00

The Accountant 2 is the sequel to Gavin O’Connor’s fairly mid action movie that stars Ben Affleck as a Batman-type without the suit, an autistic superhero who has a network across the world working for various mafia organisations as their accountant. The film opens up with JK Simmons’ ex private eye Raymond King, a former FInCEN member, is murdered at a bar leaving behind a cryptic message for Marybeth Medina, played by Cynthia Addai Robinson. Marybeth and Affleck’s The Accountant must work together with Jon Bernthal’s loose cannon of a hitman, Braxton – who’s pulled back into the Accountant’s world when the stakes get higher and missing children are involved.

I find the representation of autism in The Accountant 2 to be very well-meaning but also incredibly skewered. It’s autism as a superpower taken literally and feels very much like a 90s movie portrayal of autism – warts and all, like we haven’t really evolved since then which is a real shame given the lack of good autistic representation in major Hollywood movies, especially at a time when RFK is creating a watchlist for those with autistic people in the United States and the United Kingdom are testing all children who believe they are transgender for autism and ADHD. It’s dire out there – so to get a film like The Accountant could’ve explored autism in a more modern light. There are little difficulties, like the inability to get small talk and conversation, but it doesn’t quite land and feels very, very generic.

There’s no quirks or differences that get autism is a spectrum and just show the most basic tropes for Affleck’s character. I do like that the movie actually says he is autistic – when most Hollywood movies shy away from labelling their character as such, but that’s about it – the protagonist has essentially, the most autism. Everything vaguely associated with autism he has. Autism is a superpower for The Accountant; he can do things that normal people can’t and is almost too impressive. He is essentially, Batman without a cape. And this is a dangerous precedent by forcing unrealistic expectations on autistic people that The Accountant 2 continues with. Affleck brings nuance to the role and does have some moments of authenticity, but it feels like a non-autistic’s idea of what autism is. Much like The Good Doctor.

As for the film itself, it’s very cookie cutter. It locks in two movie stars and finally remembers to give Jon Bernthal more than five minutes in a movie; and his yappy, annoying macho hitman is lively and really gives the film some life. Affleck is equally brooding and socially awkward opposite him – and Simmons is good in his brief scenes. Robinson plays the standard law enforcement agent caught in over their head and there are some funny scenes in there – that feel very much like dad humour – because like I said, 90s movie.

The opening bar scene with the use of music playing throughout the entirety of its music is terrific. The final shootout in the desert is a western brought to modern life at high noon – guns blazing where you feel like both Affleck and Bernthal are real movie stars - something that The Amateur didn't get. The bar scene hangout where Affleck dances and the cutaway of Braxton jumping in on the action is a moment of character-bonding that makes both characters' relationships more important. However it never fully takes off - partly due to how stuck in the past it really is. Positive steps forward in giving Affleck's Wolff some agency are welcome but very much not the one.

MOVIES: Sinners - Review: Sinks its Teeth into Greatness

2025-04-28T13:51:00.002+01:00

Just this month, Netflix put out a statement claiming that cinema-going was dead, and more people were staying at home as their method of choice to watch movies. Then, Sinners came out and proved them wrong. (also: a 20 year old movie being re-released in theatres the same week also proved them wrong.) It’s a testament to the ability that Ryan Coogler, one of the best directors currently working, has to captivate audiences at all levels – a crowd-pleasing vampire horror that remembers vampires are supposed to be sexy AND scary, and draws as much from black music history as it does the history of vampires to tell a captivating tale that essentially boils down to not trusting the Irish and how the Klu Klux Klan are worse than Vampires.

Michael B. Jordan plays a dual pair of brothers – Smoke and Stack - who have just got out of Chicago and working for the mob. They return to the Mississippi Delta where they hope to create a new juke joint out in the open – buying a barn from a white landlord and bringing in Irish and Italian whisky. With little left to turn they need to cut a deal to survive stealing from both sides of the mob – and the looming threat of the Klan. Enter Jack O’Connell’s charming but mysterious singer Remmick, a man with an Irish brood – manipulative and far more than he appears.

Remmick of course is a vampire, and soon, on opening night, the bodies begin to go missing fast and furious. The stand-off and tension escalates. It’s very Rio Bravo, the callbacks to westerns are as much and as common as they are vampire movie history – the scene where Remmick stumbles across the klan couple hiding from the Mexicans hunting him at the beginning of the film is pure Near Dark to the point where it’s all but missing a Tangerine Dream soundtrack, but music is by far the most important thing about this film because it is for all intents and purposes – a musical. It comes in the form of newcomer Miles Caton, a deep, rich blues singer – capable of wielding a guitair and playing music so transformative it can blend through time itself – in one of the most novel uses of music a film has ever shown. Make no mistake about it – the history of blues is at the forefront here and there’s a scene where Caton’s Sammie plays to a bar and all of time and space happens at once. It’s powerful, transporting and one of the scenes of the decade so far in one of the movies of the decade; the cinematography alone, the location shooting, the sheer talent of the actors involved – it’s a masterclass in cinematography of the grandest scale. Autumn Durald Arkapaw is fantastic as Coogler’s DOP – creating a vision of 30s Mississippi that feels raw and authentic.

Much of Sinners is a slow burn – it spends time getting to know the characters and the place and time they exist in before brutally butchering them all one-by-one. We care about Hailee Steinfeld’s Mary, a white-passing woman who fell in love with Stack and resents him for abandoning her. We care about Delroy Lindo’s Delta Slim, a veteran pianist. Pearline’s supposedly married singer starts a relationship with Sammie and the two get on spectacularly well – the chemistry between him and Jayme Lawson’s Pearline is off-the-charts. There’s also Wummi Mosaku’s Annie – Smoke’s estranged wife with knowledge of the supernatural – and these characters all have interwoven relationships that make you care about each other on top of that. Sammie is looking for an escape – from his father Jedediah, who warns him that the blues is supernatural – and as he’s about to find out, he’s right. Rennick’s vampires are in town.

The night unfolds is one of carnage and beauty. It’s a spirit of both the past and the present operating as one. The shooting on 70mm makes it look like one of the most gorgeous films that ever existed, intoxicating in its seductive beauty, and the soundtrack utilises Irish folk songs like Rocky Road to Dublin in a version that feels appropriately sinister, barnstormingly so and the scene in which it is deployed sends chills down your spine – along with the repeated use of Pick Poor Robin Clean.

It’s a movie that makes these characters feel alive and thriving in the world – the dual roles of Smoke and Stack different enough beyond their different colour caps to let Jordan have his acting talent lay bear on the screen – Smoke is a Tommy Shelby-type suave character whereas Stack is his brother, Arthur, much more violent – and there are shades of Peaky Blinders in the early set-up for the episode that taps into gangland culture. I appreciate that the Asian characters – couple Grace and Bo Chow, played by Li Jun Li and Yao respectively, not just have their own key parts in the film but also have southern accents rather than non-American, when they’ve lived there part of their lives if not all of them. Sinners strives for authenticity and is off their -the-charts insane with its dedication to its craft.

And then comes the final shootout, which is appropriately bonkers, and the mid-credits scene that acts as a real game-changer for proceedings. It shakes the whole film on its head and upends tradition in a way that hasn’t been felt since. I love how Sinners navigates the vampire weaknesses (“they can’t come in unless you invite them”) – and deploys them to only make them more terrifying. It’s such a triumph of Coogler that makes it a mass success in the way that feels like a culmination of his work on Black Panther, Creed and Fruitvale Station. It’d only feel reductive for him to go back to Marvel just as he’s reached blank cheque status. This is the film that cements what has already happened – he’s Nolan-Tarantino tier in the A-Listers of Hollywood fame.

MOVIES: A Minecraft Movie - Review: Hyperactive Soulless Mess

2025-04-20T15:34:00.003+01:00

Last week Pitchfork wrote a review of Benson Boone's performance at Coachella where they questioned whether or not the entire medium of music was was worth it for something that bad. The same question can be directed at film for A Minecraft Movie.

A Minecraft Movie is a movie with an audience of nobody. Who wants to go to a movie about a video game of building whatever you want to watch Jack Black and Jason Momoa play washed up rejects participating in episodes of Garbage Wars and being 80s video game legends? The plot is paper thin, and if you want to watch a movie that spends the first ten minutes on Jack Black narrating the introduction to the world after selling out one of his oldest friends for claiming the assassin shouldn’t miss next time after trying to kill Donald Trump – a fascist war criminal - then that’s on you – it shouldn’t take ten minutes to set-up the plot to Minecraft, a movie built around entirely on memes (“Chicken Jockey” is causing havoc with how crowds react to it in cinemas in the States; prompting discussions around the death of cinema etiquette) and poorly aged jokes that didn’t feel funny ten years ago and certainly don’t feel funny now – and even using words like “unalive” ensure it’s dated on arrival.

The plot is a fairly threadbare one about two kids forcing to move on from their parents and being sucked into a world as part of an oldball team that includes Danielle Brooks’ estate agent Dawn and Momoa’s posing-to-be-cool but actually a loser Garrett. Emma Myers’ Natalie is trying to get Sebastian Eugene Hansen’s Henry to grow up and not be as creative as he should be to fit in with kids his own age, who are sabotaging his jet-packs that he tries to build at school. It’s a simple brother-sister bonding plot where the two estranged siblings have to learn to work together again but for some reason it needed five writers to tell so feels over-stuffed and generic in a way that just doesn’t feel fun for kids and adults – who goes to A Minecraft Movie to watch Jennifer Coolidge’s divorced vice principal Marlene try to date a villager who has moved into the real-world? Why is there a real-world at all?

The ultimate defence for A Minecraft Movie is that it’s a kids movie so it doesn’t need to be good – but counter-point, there are plenty of good kids movies out there. Look at everything Pixar has made. Look at How to Train Your Dragon. It’s also a musical for some reason because you don’t cast Jack Black without having him sing; and sing badly in a way that feels like the movie desperately wants him to be cool. It takes the premise of every single coming-of-age movie to ever arrive in Hollywood and robs the game of any of its identity.

The rag-tag group is separated and has the guys go on an adventure while the girls build houses and look after animals – the boys doing the fighting while the girls sit back and do nothing feels a little odd. It feels borrowed from the recent Jumanji movies and the plots of both will only ensure that we get more like this to come – the quirkiness of Jared Hess’s Napoleon Dynamite feels threadbare and painstaking here, even in a film that is just over a hundred minutes long somehow feels longer than all ten parts of Dekalog. It’s an IP cash-in without a heart or a soul; and it’s a movie that looks and feels like it’s been written by five people. Maybe somewhere out there one of them had a draft with any creative spark or any kind of humour that was actually funny – or a storyline that resonated with the kids of today’s terminally online culture – but none of that even showed in what shockingly – is not the worst film of the year; only by virtue of The Electric State being even worse.

MOVIES: Warfare - Review: Could've Been More anti-American

2025-04-17T09:47:00.001+01:00

Warfare is the new Alex Garland movie that takes place in a single street in the Iraq war. A group of American soldiers find themselves pinned down in an house by unknown fighters when they take a single location – what should have been a normal surveillance mission goes wrong and they have to evacuate with heavily wounded soldiers. It’s tense, a boots on the ground story that has echoes of Black Hawk Down more than American Sniper, taking a ‘war is bad’ story and focusing on the characters whose lives go through hell. They’re worried about every conflict, they’re human, they’re people. We never really get to see more than that, but we know just about enough.

Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland work together here for a droning nightmare-fuel that’s tense from start to finish – not a flashback to American families at home, not any attempt at getting to know these guys more than what Garland and Mendoza want you to know – there’s an opener where we get to witness them watching a dance video; and then it’s all gung-ho from there – questions asked but none given, tense warfare at the smallest level. It’s Black Hawk Down from the director of Annihilation and Civil War, one of the masters of auteur filmmaking. It’s a recreation of a 2006 Navy SEAL operation where they take ahold of a small village but the film instead feels like a Call of Duty mission at times more than a film – action-packed, guns-blazing – you go through all the checkpoints like you would in a boxed in video game.

Sympathies lie with the Iraq innocents more than the American soldiers – a pleading, desperate civilian asks them “Why?” hauntingly when they leave her home a ruined mess. That scene in particular stays with me longer than any focus on the Americans, who volunteered to kill. I like that it does avoid these characters being shown as heroes – they dream of being it; only to end up a wreck by the end, but at the end of the day, it’s their choice – and they can’t be heroes for anyone.

It largely amounts to ninety minutes of nothing and the enemy gets so dehumanised to the point that they’re non-existent NPCs. There is no structure or anchor to the storytelling and the scenes of the characters getting injured feels more for shock value than character growth – that would be novel but we’ve seen it before. Where did Alex Garland go?

I liked Civil War, I’m one of its defenders. I didn’t hate this – I think the bleak tenseness of it all makes it an uncompromising, unrelenting watch – but did I love it? No. Garland’s made much rawer works in the past – and makes the most out of excellent sound design, which is easily the best thing here – but what makes Warfare weak is its inability to commit to the bit about these guys not being heroes – it could’ve humanised the Iraqi population more, could’ve highlighted that no WMDs were found, could’ve and should’ve taken more risks.