Like a T-Rex impotently scrabbling its undersized arms, unable to reach the handle to flush its waste away, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom fails to overcome its own terrible design. This is a loud and overlong chore, with a potentially watchable movie buried deep in its first act. Bryce Dallas Howard returns as Claire, brazenly character-tweaked into a … Continue reading Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
After directorial swapping and rumours (or outright reports) of production issues, Han Solo swaggers onto our screens again – or is that a limp? Ron Howard’s rescue job is a creditable and, most importantly, likable affair, but it drags in places and shows its seams in others. Alden Ehrenreich (you’ll know him from Hail, Caesar! or not … Continue reading Solo: A Star Wars Story
Revenge is a film in two parts - a hyper-saturated nightmare followed by a bleached and ultraviolent fever dream. Its politics are straightforwardly progressive and its rage deeply felt. What it lacks in substance it largely accounts for in style, and certainly in venom. Jen (Matilda Lutz) is an apparently callow young woman, the beautiful consort … Continue reading Revenge
The MCU started to feel like hard work years ago. Film after film aping the same narrative arcs, slightly snarky humour and intermittently satisfying fight scenes have created a homogenised spread of competency. Yet, however long it’s taken, we were being slowly led to this point, to Infinity War, the Avengers’ long-teased showdown with Josh Brolin’s … Continue reading Avengers: Infinity War
Fresh on the tail of Tomb Raider, Rampage arrives to demonstrate that there is no easy route to videogame movie success. Where Alicia Vikander's vehicle attempted to ape the thematic success of its complicated source, Rampage aims to drop Dwayne Johnson into a situation as preposterously stupid as the arcade game it was "inspired" by. Its success is extremely limited. … Continue reading Rampage
Silence is a risk factor for the modern mainstream film. Used well, it can be atmospherically transformative, and tension-ratcheting. Given audiences’ current predilections toward chat and crunchy foods, however, the prospect of a film primarily steeped in total quiet, as promised by A Quiet Place, is itself a stress-inducing one. When this assured debut from John … Continue reading A Quiet Place
Spielberg is a banker, common sense dictates. Whether telling procedural spy stories, emotional war tales or evocative family yarns, he churns out the good stuff. Ernest Cline has demonstrated that this theory has a limit, and with a tired script based off that author's hateful novel Spielberg has produced the nostalgia-ridden and flimsy Ready Player One. … Continue reading Ready Player One
Wes Anderson, we can credibly speculate based on the title of his latest film, loves dogs. In Isle of Dogs, running with this clear affection for man's best friend, he takes the strengths of his first animated outing, Fantastic Mister Fox, and improves on them all, while telling a charming tale in a dystopic Japan. Megasaki, a fictional … Continue reading Isle of Dogs
It is a strength of the new Star Wars saga that John Boyega's leading man credentials haven't been fully verified yet - those films have shared the limelight around. With Pacific Rim Uprising, he demonstrates that his wit and charm can carry a movie - a shame, then, that this one is reluctant to let him do so. … Continue reading Pacific Rim Uprising
The fruits of a titanic individual effort are rarely conventional. Chinese animator Liu Jian's independently conceived and created Have a Nice Day is a brief, stylish noir thriller that the Chinese tourism board is unlikely to love. Our story is centred around a bag of illicit cash, the proceeds of racketeering and mob rule. At first stolen … Continue reading Have a Nice Day
