Just when you thought you’d seen every spin on the high school/coming-of-age film, Bottoms comes along as an utter blast of fresh air for the genre. Imbued with that unmistakable sense of producer Elizabeth Banks’ energy and filled with improv’, it’s a surreal, heightened comedy world that gleefully subverts a lot of the genre’s tropes and cliches whilst also still proving heartfelt and genuine. Two ‘ugly, untalented gays’ (their words, and the schools, which should give a cl

A thought-provoking and hotly-debated New Yorker short story turned thought-provoking and, I’m sure, to-be-hotly-debated movie: Cat Person is the latest treatise on modern dating. Straight up, this is not as essential as Promising Young Woman which remains the high watermark this strives to reach. Cat Person suffers a little for trying to be everything at once but there’s a lot to like, enjoy and think about here. The first half actually adapts the text well. The short story

Age is just simply not a barrier in film. The de facto ‘greatest living director’ Martin Scorsese has just dropped one of the year’s best at the age of 80 and this after already gifting us The Irishman a few years ago in a unique collaboration with Netflix. Killers of the Flower Moon is due to drop as an AppleTV+ exclusive sometime around Christmas but, as per Scorsese’s demand, is being shown in its proper home at the cinema for a limited time. Yes, first of all it is a long

The stage looks tantalisingly set for an era of peak sci-fi. We seem to have moved away from the ‘sci-fact’ splurge of movies which used ever-improving CGI to give us some awe-inspiring and ‘realistic’ films about space (Gravity, The Martian, Interstellar, Ad Astra, First Man et al.) and on to more traditional science fiction fare. With the sequel to Dune to come (hopefully this year), Gareth Edwards covers the wait with The Creator, an original (and quite possibly standalone

Do not adjust your sets, Kenneth Branagh has pulled off a true twist with his genre switching Poirot threequel A Haunting in Venice. No moustache origin stories here, Branagh takes his series from star-studded but old-fashioned (especially in light of the recent resurgence of the ‘whodunnit’ murder mystery genre both in TV and film with Knives Out, See How They Run, Poker Face et al.) to straight-up scary here. Don’t worry, this is still a classic Poirot mystery with the requ

What a remarkably quick turnaround in producing Dumb Money, by the way. Telling the, quite unbelievable, tale of the GameStop stock hoopla of a couple of years ago, the fact that Craig Gillespie has managed to assemble THIS cast and tell the story THIS well is almost enough to take attention away from the film itself. Luckily, the film itself more than matches all of the above and is another in a growing line of ‘anti-establishment,’ ‘punk rock’ movies to make you think more

You might be surprised at how much time you’ll spend in The Equalizer 3 watching Denzel Washington’s Robert McCall drink tea in a Sicilian café and doing chores for the locals. Don’t worry, he still gets his fair amount of ‘equalizing’ to do but this entry is more about the philosophical elements around the ‘why’ aspect. The second instalment was Washington’s first ever sequel and you get the impression that he wanted to end the trilogy properly and put care and attention int

A24 must be the only film company (minus, perhaps, Pixar and Marvel Studios) with a devoted fanbase and nigh-on guarantee of quality. It’s funny to think that of a company, as opposed to having a favourite director or star, and is something more common within the music industry. Towing the arthouse/mainstream divide just so, A24 have been on an imperious run of form in recent times, hoovering up Oscars and critical acclaim. Their latest gift to the world (in collaboration wit

It must be really difficult being tasked with editing the trailer for a comedy movie. How to get bums on cinema seats but also not ruin all the best jokes?! It’s also equally difficult reviewing a comedy movie (or any movie in fact) without harking back to the trailer and judging it based on what was included in there. Strays, like many before it, is a big victim of ‘comedy trailer syndrome.’ When that dropped, it was such a forehead-slappingly obvious idea to make a lewd, R-

It’s not often you see the 'mockumentary' format but it tends to always be something worth seeing when it does appear. From This is Spinal Tap through to The Office, What We Do in the Shadows et al., the format allows for brilliant, quotable comedy that’s usually smart and rewards repeat viewing. The latest example is the excellent Theater Camp which doesn’t really require a description, it does exactly what it says on the tin. This is no straight pastiche, mocking tale thoug

Frustratingly, once again, for everything DC get right with Blue Beetle, there’s a lot they do wrong. This constant feeling of ‘one step forward, two steps back’ just shows no sign of abating and the James Gunn relaunch of the new ‘DCU’ just can’t come soon enough. Will we see Blue Beetle again? Who’s to know but what we have here is a character who deserves a second chance, but a film that certainly doesn’t. The first Hispanic-American superhero and a largely Hispanic-Americ

The animated superhero takeover/resurgence continues with aplomb with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. With screenplay and production credits for Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, there was early promise with this one and it absolutely delivers on that with a rip-roaringly fun film and a similar take on the ‘Spider-Verse’ animation style (with a really nice, night-time, slightly more muted and dark tone to the colouring.) The comic-like scribbles really suit the franc