Directors: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman Starring: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Jake Johnson, Liev Schreiber, Nicolas Cage This isn’t the first time Spider-Man has taken animated form. There has been a shed load of Spider-Man cartoons, and some of them have been rather good. Yet, Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse might be not only…
Director: Christopher McQuarrie Starring: Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Michelle Monaghan and Alec Baldwin Roger Ebert once referred to a sub-genre of action cinema that he referred to as the “bruised forearm movie”. The kind of film that isn’t just exhilarating, but is relentless in its action to a point where you find yourself grabbing the arm of…
Director: Ari Aster Starring: Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, Gabriel Byrne That a film deserves to be ‘treated with the same respect we have for The Exorcist, The Shining, and Psycho’ is a bold claim, but that is the quote (courtesy of Dazed and Confused) emblazoned across the poster for Ari Aster’s debut feature, Hereditary. Indeed, the…
Director: J. A. Bayona Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, B. D. Wong, Rafe Spall, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, James Cromwell, Toby Jones, Ted Levine, Jeff Goldblum After 25 years and several sequels of, shall we say, variable quality, some of the novelty has started to wear off the dinosaur-delivering Jurassic franchise. Sadly, this latest entry sees the series continue to teeter towards extinction: though director J….
Director: Marc Meyers Starring: Ross Lynch, Alex Wolff, Dallas Roberts, and Anne Heche What if someone you knew at school grew up to be a serial killer? This was what happened to John ‘Derf’ Backderf, whose award-winning 2012 graphic novel My Friend Dahmer told the tale of a teenage Backderf’s acquaintance with a young man called Jeffrey Dahmer, who would ultimately become…
Director: Junpei Mizusaki Starring: Roger Craig Smith, Tony Hale, Grey Griffin, Tara Strong, Adam Croasdell, Fred Tatasciore Batman + Ninjas + Japanese animation… All this goodness must result in one of the greatest animated Batman films of all time, right? Unfortunately, Batman Ninja isn’t quite as good in real-life as it looks on paper. The…
Director: Ron Howard Starring: Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Joonas Suotamo, Paul Bettany With 2016’s release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Disney ushered in an innovative model for the Star Wars franchise: whilst fans could (and can still) rely on a trilogy of sequels to continue the traditional Jedi/Sith conflict, the biennial stand-alone films would…
Director: Nora Twomey Starring: Saara Chaudry, Soma Bhatia, Noorin Gulamgaus, Kane Mahon, Laara Sadiq Animation can help make grim events more palatable for audiences (a live-action Grave of the Fireflies, for example, would surely have been unwatchable). In The Breadwinner, director Nora Twomey looks to do the same, by taking a bleak tale and turning it into something rather entrancing….
Director: David Leitch Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarinm, Julian Dennison, Zazie Beetz, T.J. Miller, Brianna Hildebrand, Jack Kesy Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool is back in Deadpool 2, this time he has to deal with a half-man-half-cyborg time-travelling mutant in Josh Brolin’s Cable who’s come from the future to kill Julian Dennison’s young mutant, Russell. Deadpool feels compelled to do…
Director: Johannes Roberts Starring: Christina Hendricks, Martin Henderson, Bailee Madison, Lewis Pullman ‘Why are you doing this?’ cries one character to their assailant in The Strangers: Prey At Night. ‘Why not?’ comes the reply. You can imagine the same conversation playing out if you quizzed director Johannes Roberts and writer Bryan Bertino as to why they’d bothered with this ultra formulaic…
Director: Anthony and Joe Russo Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Don Cheadle, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana, Josh Brolin, Chris Pratt The Marvel Cinematic Universe has now spanned over 18 movies. That’s almost ten years of Marvel superhero movies, and Avengers: Infinity War very much feels like the movie…
Director: John Krasinski Starring: John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe How to find the words to discuss a film like John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place? Words, or the lack thereof, is very much one of the film’s central themes. A lot of this movie plays out like a silent film; you could describe it…
Director: Steven Spielberg Starring: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, Simon Pegg, Mark Rylance Give us one critically acclaimed, show-stopping novel, and one of the most legendary directors of all time and you’ve got yourself a blockbuster that won’t let you catch a breath. When Ernest Cline’s bestselling novel, Ready Player One, first hit the shelves, the world he conjured…
Director: Roar Uthaug Starring: Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Daniel Wu, Walton Goggins, Kristin Scott Thomas Before discussing Roar Uthaug’s Tomb Raider (awesome name by the way), you have to talk about video game movie adaptations. Up until now, they have not been good. Films that have been directed adapted from video games have always been poor, and…
Director: Sebastián Lelio Starring: Daniela Vega, Francisco Reyes There aren’t too many films that come along and make you feel every single emotion possible. But now and then one just pops along, seemingly out of nowhere, and hits you like a slap in the face by your nearest and dearest loved one, leaving you simultaneously confused and slightly…
Directors: Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman Starring: Martin Freeman, Alex Lawther, Nicholas Burns, Andy Nyman, Jill Halfpenny, Paul Whitehouse Written and directed by Jeremy Dyson (The League of Gentlemen) and Andy Nyman (known for his work with illusionist Derren Brown), the stage play Ghost Stories has enjoyed a successful run since it first opened in 2010, their loving homage to…
Director: Alex Garland Starring: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, Oscar Isaac Annihilation, British writer-director Alex Garland’s follow-up to his superb 2015 debut feature Ex Machina, may herald a new era of film-making but perhaps not for the reasons he hoped for. That’s because, while it’s been granted a full cinema release…
Director: Julius Onah Starring: Daniel Brühl, Elizabeth Debicki, Aksel Hennie, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Chris O’Dowd, John Ortiz, David Oyelowo, Zhang Ziyi Mark my words, The Cloverfield Paradox is an absolute mess of a movie yet, for some reason, I didn’t hate it. I actually found myself enjoying the film despite its many, many flaws. Having said that, I…
Director: Nash Edgerton Starring: David Oyelowo, Charlize Theron, Joel Edgerton, Amanda Seyfried, Thandie Newton, Sharlto Copley Every now and then you just want to watch a silly movie that doesn’t take up too much brain space and is just a good time to spend an hour-and-a-half. I like to refer to these sorts of films as…
Director: Ryan Coogler Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker and Andy Serkis So, on the one hand, Black Panther is a big deal for merely being another instalment of the juggernaut that is the MCU. But then, of course,…
