Well, Denis Villeneuve is certainly ballsy. Already one of the most exciting directors around before he, somehow, made a Blade Runner sequel that sits right up there with the original, he then set pulses racing and dissenters commenting all over again by daring to adapt one of the most daunting 'unfilmable' novels: Dune. The great David Lynch couldn't even make a passable version of the famously dense text (although that wasn't solely his fault), a book so influential in the

Film is an amazing art form for showing us just how little we’ve changed over time. It can affirm its point in a heavy-handed or light-touch way but the experience of watching and listening to a story can often be the most effective way to get a message across. Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel is set in the late 1300’s but is an all-too-relatable tale of abuse, societal and political failings and how truth can change wildly from one person to another. Based on the true story of F

The Cineworld screening for Venom: Let There Be Carnage on a Monday evening was nigh-on full. Is this a positive thing? A sign that the superhero genre is losing none of its stranglehold on audiences and that those audiences are happy to embrace the comfort and joy of the cinema after the misery of Covid? Or should it be taken as a sign that, like queues at fuel stations, the British public can’t be trusted? A difficult quandary, but it’s right to focus on the joy of seeing a

No Time to Die (finally) comes to us almost 'From Daniel Craig (and the gang) With Love' as the postscript to his tenure that almost never was (I guess he’s now learned to 'Never Say Never Again.') Craig’s, no doubt, been an exceptional Bond but his films have often been muddled. Like Brosnan before him, another excellent Bond whose films suffered by reflecting the 'Spectre' of the noughties' obsession with lacklustre CGI and silly future tech’, Craig’s films have had to surv

I’ve mentioned before, in a previous post, that The Brighton Film Club is attempting to construct the definitive list of ‘music films’: representing everything from biopics, movies with great soundtracks and musicians acting. Representing a musician’s life in film is a really tricky thing and constitutes a number of factors (including how closely involved the artist or their family are in its creation) and it’s no wonder that certain biopics absolutely soar and just 'feel lik

A Marvel MCU review effectively writes itself these days. After 25 films you can basically expect 5-star epics like the Avengers: Infinity War/Endgame double feature or brilliantly solid and effective 4-star/8 or 9 out of 10 superhero blockbusters that will give you an amazing night at the cinema or at home on the sofa. The fact that a franchise can stay so essential this far in is unprecedented and an achievement which is pretty much unparalleled in cinema history. Phase 4 i

Free Guy is the inevitable consequence of the success of Deadpool. Take a winning formula, maximise the budget and make it a little more family-friendly (with an emphasis on appealing to the littler ones.) This is not necessarily a bad thing and the fact that Free Guy is an original IP blockbuster that seems to be performing well at the box office is to its credit, but this is a film where you will get out of it exactly what you expect. The review effectively writes itself: I

I remember writing a review of the Tomb Raider remake a few years ago where I loudly sounded the death knell for the adventure film as a genre. Ultimatums such as this normally come back to haunt you and so it is as, against all the odds, Disney’s Jungle Cruise has just given a shot in the arm to the family adventure blockbuster. This looked for all the world like a film to sit with The Legend of Tarzan in the bargain buckets and it seems, by and large, that the critical cons

Despite the continued commercial and critical success of the genre, I just get an inkling that a crossroads is approaching for the superhero movie. With the depth and level of commitment for the viewer ever-increasing, and a gradual switch in characters with the bigger names being usurped by those more niche, it feels like a race to not be the film to get diminishing returns. Who knows, maybe that day will never come? With the enormous success and quality of the MCU Disney+ s

It’s important to acknowledge nostalgia as a key factor when discussing favourite movies. Like any art form, the situation surrounding your first experience of a film can have a huge effect. So it is that, to many children of the 90’s, the frankly ridiculous original Space Jam incites rose-tinted thrills and ticks massive nostalgia boxes. Michael Jordan having to play a game of basketball with the Looney Tunes for some reason? Brilliant! It doesn’t quite take the all-time car

I know the might of the Disney+ shows has well and truly thrust us Marvelites into Phase 4 but, in filmic terms, it’s nice to take a little step back and have a film focusing on one of our original heroes: the long (long) awaited Black Widow. Sure, she sadly won’t be with us across the rest of this next Phase (or so we think) but the character was always crying out for a solo endeavour and the chance to explore a little of that 'red in her ledger.' Sadly, this prequel isn’t q

There’s a brilliant sketch in That Mitchell & Webb Look where the Illuminati explain, whilst inducting a new member, that they run the world behind the scenes by keeping themselves, at all times, ‘as tipsy as you get after a glass and a half of wine.’ They decree that this is the optimum performance level of humans and anything above this leads to ruin. It’s definitely not the basis for the brilliant Another Round (or Druk to give it its Danish title) but the premise is much