Hot on the heels of the stratospheric success of Wicked: Part One (it bugs me every time that title card appears since the sequel was renamed For Good), this return to Oz brings us back down with a bump and, once again, highlights the dangers of splitting stories up in the name of money. We rejoin Elphaba (Cynthia…
With the trailer released for the live action Moana, it feels like the nail in the coffin for Disney’s originality. We’ve been plagued by these live action remakes for a decade now and whilst at first they felt like a relatively harmless novelty, now, with a remake of a film not even a decade old, they…
Edgar Wright returns to our screens with a re-adaptation that seemed poised to bring us back to the thoughtful action thrillers of yesteryear, but ultimately ends up as a somewhat entertaining disappointment. Based on Stephen King’s 1982 book horrifyingly set in the dystopian future of 2025, the film centres on Ben Richards (Glen Powell), an…
Returning with a belated threequel, nine years after the second film, the ‘magicians pulling off heists’ franchise is back with more of the same, now with an attempted tinge at nostalgia and a clear aim to revive the series for more iterations. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t quite manage to pull off the trick. The film…
Lynne Ramsay returns with a hypnotically-constructed journey through one new mother’s mental health crisis, boasting an extraordinary central performance from Jennifer Lawrence. Based on Ariana Harwicz’s book, the film follows Grace (Lawrence), a writer, who moves into a remote rural home with her partner, Jackson (Robert Pattinson). After the birth of their son, Grace becomes…
Just one year after the double whammy of Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness, Yorgos Lanthimos is back with his own particular brand of weird and another great collaboration with Emma Stone. A more contained story than their previous efforts, Bugonia is nonetheless full of big ideas. We meet Teddy (Jesse Plemons), a beekeeper with a burning vengeance against a…
Every filmmaker’s dream is to receive the glowing reviews bestowed upon Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, but every rose has its thorn and sometimes critical acclaim can be the downfall of an audience’s experience. One Battle After Another rolled into cinemas on the back of seemingly near-universal five-star reviews and proclamations that it wasn’t only the…
Springsteen finally joins his iconic peers in getting the biopic treatment and, to its credit, Deliver Me from Nowhere decides to take a less common approach to the genre. It is an admirable effort but doesn’t dive deep enough to justify itself. The film chronicles the making of Springsteen’s (Jeremy Allen White) album Nebraska, a decidedly unusual left…
After an incredible run of films of the calibre and ilk seldom seen, Luca Guadagnino returns with After the Hunt, which arrived with a provocative premise, stellar cast and a presumed great directorial match, but faded quickly into one of the year’s biggest disappointments. The film centres itself on Alma (Julia Roberts), a philosophy professor at…
The comedic trailers and posters for Roofman make it seem like a stark departure from Derek Cianfrance’s tragedy-skewing filmography, but don’t be fooled. The emotion of Roofman sneaks up on you; for all the feel-good fun, when the rug gets pulled out from under these characters, you’ll find Cianfrance’s capacity to twist your heartstrings is…
