Movie Reviews
Being the Ricardos Review
Writer/Director Aaron Sorkin’s love for a real-life story with his liberal twist gets the Hollywood treatment in his latest focusing on the American comedic 1950’s comic Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman). A behind the scenes look at one week in the starlet’s life, when tales of her philandering husband, Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem) and her links to communism threaten her...
The Call of the Wild Review
Harrison Ford stars in The Call of the Wild, a shaggy dog tale that will melt your heart with a CGI dog that finds his home in the snowy mountains of Canada. An adaptation of Jack London’s book of the same name, the fifth in a long line of remakes dating back to 1923, sees Harrison Ford lose his tough...
Mary Poppins Returns Review
If you are going to wait long enough for a sequel, over fifty years will just about do it. Disney has dug deep into their vaults to recreate some classic on-screen magic, bringing its 1964 favourite live-action/animation hybrid, Mary Poppins, back to life with eye-popping colour and emotive storytelling all whilst maintaining its loyalty to its original.Set some 20...
Framing John DeLorean Review
A fascinating delve into a visionary dreamer. The DeLorean is more than just the time-travelling machine from ‘Back To The Future’, it was the lifelong dream of its very creator, John Z DeLorean. An American dreamer and lone-wolf who thought his vision could set him up for life. Part biopic, part documentary, directors Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce take...
Dragged Across Concrete Review
A smouldering slow burn which drags and fizzles out without an explosive ending. Filmmaker S. Craig Zahler isn’t one to shy away from gratuitous violence; in 2015’s Bone Tomahawk you needed a hell of a strong stomach. He followed that up with Vince Vaughn in Brawl in Cell Block 99 in 2017 and he gave us much of the same...
Avengers: Endgame Review
Epic and spectacular, an emotional rollercoaster that none of us will ever forget. For the past 11 years, Marvel’s Avengers characters of Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and so many more have dominated the box office worldwide as well as opening up a pathway for a jubilant fandom igniting an...
Free Guy Review
If you are familiar with Jim Carrey’s The Truman Show, then you already know the vibe Night at the Museum franchise director Shawn Levy is trying to portray with Free Guy. A film that stars the lovable Ryan Reynolds as an NPC (non-playable character to those not familiar with the gaming world) with all the humour you would expect...
Wild Rose Review
Drenched in realism, unconventional turns and a wee belter in its leading lady, Jessie Buckley. Just rip the lyrics out of the heart of this film and you’d be on to a country winner. Is it a path worth taking? That country road to stardom, to live out your dreams with no regard to the life you’ve reluctantly been lumbered...
Vice Review
Filled to the brim with eye-opening power plays delivered with excellence. It’s a Vice that just kept on giving with frequently witty scenarios and liberal intelligence. In his latest, director Adam McKay takes a leaf out of his own structural efforts from The Big Short and planted them seamlessly into his latest ‘biographical’ move. He delves into the world of...
Little Review
Fundamentally flawed but it has some wicked one-liners that cut close to the PC bone leading to an ultimately timely message. For anyone thinking isn’t this just Tom Hank’s Big but in reverse, gender-swapped and spruced up for a contemporary feel, you wouldn’t be far wrong. At the tender age of just 13, the film’s star Marsai Martin is the...
Minamata Review
Filmmaker Andrew Levitas delves into the perils and righteous fight of famed photojournalist W. Eugene Smith with a furiously calming depiction of a fascinating and compelling narrative. It’s a drama that highlights the evils of big corporate companies polluting innocent towns and their residents and their lack of scruples when big money is respected more than the lives of...
People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan Review
What works on the small screen doesn’t necessarily mean it world work on the big; none so trying words can be spoken about the BBC’s mockumentary People Just Do Nothing and their brief dalliance with fame in Japan that jeopardises not just friendships but its cult-like status.Having gone off the air back in 2018 the Kurupt FM crew consisting...
Shazam Review
A popcorn frenzy, it has bundles of fun, entertainment and charm, it’s a welcome way forward if you are suffering from Superhero fatigue. Warner Bros. DCEU has taken a battering over the last few years, never quite living up to the hype of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, it’s struggled to hit the right cord that goes head to head...
Roman J Israel Esq Review
It’s hard to fathom Dan Gilroy’s awkwardly titled Roman J Israel Esq. is only his second stint as director, his first coming from the intense drama stylings of Nightcrawler starring Jake Gyllenhaal. The writer/director has kept to the intellectual script that’s doused in a characterisation study, bringing in another A-list name in Denzel Washington and extracting, as he did with Gyllenhaal, a career best with...
The Many Saints of Newark Review
After 14 years since the final episode aired of the iconic mobster series The Sopranos aired, series creator David Chase delves back into the world of dodgy dealings, murder and family betrayal once again with the prequel feature. It’s a prequel that not only veers into pointless territories but treats its audience with contempt by feeling the need to spell...
Dumbo Review
Bringing it up to date for today’s audiences has left this feeling flat; the magic has left the circus. If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it! These wise words couldn’t have been any truer for Tim Burton’s live-action reboot of the 1941 Disney classic. The latest in a trend of classic remakes leaves it’s heart at the door in favour...
Booksmart Review
Hilariously smart, audaciously original and expertly performed this is a top contender for comedy of the year. In Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut, female friendship complexities and high school humour reign supreme. Clever dialogue and teenage angst run wild for one night only vowing to bring the party down with tremendous fever, marking this brilliantly genius filmmaking.Nerdy best friends Molly (Beanie...
Five Feet Apart Review
Commendably highlights the issues of Cystic Fibrosis sufferers, you’ll learn a thing or two about this illness as well as be sappily charmed. If there is one guarantee you could take from any teen romance where terminal illness is the villain of the piece, it’s the emotional rollercoaster any filmmaker is going to embed in its very foundations, take Josh Boone’s...
A Wrinkle in Time Review
Ava DuVernay has been making waves in the cinematic universe since wowing audiences with her outstanding directional abilities since she graced us with the stirring Selma. Her next move was the powerful documentary on African American inmates, 13. Now crossing over the line from reality into a Disney fantasy world, DuVernay takes on the adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time with a visual power to blow the mind, but the story falls...
Stillwater Review
10 years in the making, Spotlight filmmaker Tom McCarthy finally give life to the Matt Damon led drama Stillwater. Loosely based and inspired by the Amanda Knox case, the young American woman who was acquitted having spent four years in an Italian prison after the murder in 2007 of her roommate. The film takes on the perspective of her...
At Eternity’s Gate Review
Dafoe is mesmerising as Van Gogh; Schnabel delivers some masterful strokes the emptiness can become quite deafening. Vincent Van Gogh, an eccentric, bold and sensitive human being is the perfect subject for any film interpretation of his life. That’s why in the space of two years we’ve had not one but two films circling the twilight years of the artist....
Pet Semetary Review
A creepy 21st-century remake. A resurrected classic that turns out to be a comedy of grisly errors. Stephen King has certainly been the godfather of horror for many years, and in recent years his novels have been getting the much-revered cinema treatment as audiences thirst for a revival in decent horror pictures. Now 30 years after Pet Semetary was made for...
Greta Review
Trashy, predictable and lifeless, there just aren’t any thrills to be had with this thriller, although Isabelle Huppert makes for one special psycho. In Neil Jordan’s latest, confusion reigns supreme, mostly from the fact this 90’s style thriller doesn’t quite know which route it really wants to take. On the one hand, Jordan seems to want to recreate the glory...
You Were Never Really Here Review
Since 2017’s Cannes film festival, acclaimed director Lynne Ramsey’s You Were Never Really Here has bounced off the lips of many a cinephile with riotous respect. It’s a psycho-drama that evokes the splendour of Martin Scorsese’ Taxi Driver with a broodingly paced plot, relying heavily on suggestion than any real brutality and an eerily haunting and atmospheric score from...
Coda Review
Writer/director Sian Heder’s Sundance award-winning film gives a voice to the hearing impaired in this charmingly quaint movie of one girl's plight of juggling life with her deaf family and the desire to spread her wings and fly the nest.Emilia Jones takes on the role of 17-year-old Ruby, a teenager with the weight of the world on her shoulders....
Spider-man: Into The Spider-Verse Review
All we needed was another Spider-Man movie... or so we thought. After losing count on how many time’s Peter Parker stories can be told for the modern audience, The Lego Movie’s Phil Lord and Chris Miller have injected a delightful originality to the animated story of Miles Morales’s incarnation of Spidey that could have spouted the same old origin...
Space Jam: A New Legacy Review
25 years after the original Space Jam garnered a generation of fans with Basketball legend Michael Jordan and his antics with the classic loony tunes comes its follow-up. Hoping to provide that same sense of joy, relay the importance of teamwork and a message to parents to let your kids be whoever they want to be – whilst these are...
Us Review
Freakishly fun but ultimately clunky and frightening, Lupita Nyong'o is a complete a badass. After the stand-out success of Get Out, audiences have been waiting with bated breath to experience what else lies in Jordan Peele’s arsenal and his latest Us proves the actor turned director was not a one-hit wonder. A thinking person’s horror that doesn’t flow as smoothly...
Black Widow Review
Having first appeared in Iron Man 2 back in 2010 it’s taken 11 years (with a pandemic delay) for Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow to finally get her own standalone film. The spotlight should firmly be on her, or so you would have thought, but for all its acrobatic female kick-ass baddery poor old Natasha Romanoff has to share that limelight...
Mortal Engines Review
Dystopian YA novel adaptations seem to be a trend that will not go away, The Hunger Games set a precedent that most fail to live up to and as each year passes the imagination disintegrates into dust. The latest that falls into that category comes from the Lord of the Ring’s Peter Jackson and first time director Christian Rivers...