Time for DC to finally step up to the plate. Having the history and the characters just can’t cut it anymore with Marvel streaking clear with every new release. DC tried to jump too soon to catch their competitors and fumbled the ball horribly with Batman v. Superman (a good film hidden within a hastily assembled CGI-fest) and Suicide Squad (a great cast and styling hidden in a godawful plot.) Fuelled by bad press, albeit good box office returns, it's time for the company to

Blockbuster season is well and truly upon us and it looks like, for once, new franchises and one-off event movies will dominate the cinematic landscape. Of course, though, there’s still room for the odd money-spinning unnecessary sequel and the latest on the market is Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge (bizarrely changed from the, far better, US title: Dead Men Tell No Tales which is not only more apt for the film but actually uttered more than once in the dialogue.)

The marriage of Guy Ritchie and the fantasy genre should be like chalk and cheese but ‘genre’ Directors stretching the reaches of their comfort zone can work (the Coen Brothers dabbling in romantic comedy certainly worked out.) Ritchie has already got his eye in somewhat. His last wade into literary waters yielding the rather underappreciated Sherlock Holmes movies but trying again to produce something set pre-modern world seems to be something a lot of people are writing him

The ‘unnecessary sequel to the unexpected prequel' award goes to Alien: Covenant. Ridley Scott seems intent on tarnishing his reputation and whilst, to my mind, Prometheus was a successful sci-fi film lovingly set in the Alien-verse, Covenant, and its desperate attempts to homage the original classic, just feels like a lazy effort. Being Scott and being Alien it is, of course, not without merit. A returning Michael Fassbender is the film’s (ironically) beating heart as he pla

Guardians of the Galaxy was such a breath of fresh air for the MCU. Sci-fi overtones, roguish heroes and 80's styling differentiating it completely to the earthbound superheroes we were used to, placing high on any fan's 'best of the MCU' shortlist (top of my personal one) and such a hit that it allowed Marvel to have equivalent success with other comparatively 'risky' movies as Ant-Man and Doctor Strange. The worry for the sequel was whether the surprise would have worn off

Brie Larson has had an exceptional couple of years or so. Oscar-winner for the breakout hit Room, future Captain Marvel (the MCU’s first female superhero to get a standalone film), a key component of another shared universe in Kong: Skull Island and the biggest draw for Ben Wheatley’s latest: Free Fire. Bursting into the mainstream with last year’s High Rise, Wheatley is fast proving himself as a Director to keep a very beady eye on (Directors to keep an eye on are doing very

I think we may see more anime and cyberpunk novels remade into Hollywood blockbusters now the superhero genre has burst open the doors for science-fiction to make a killing at the box office. Later this year, the long-awaited adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower will hit screens but, before then, we have the equally-fevered live-action version of Ghost in the Shell. I’ve got to say upfront that I came to Rupert Sanders’ film without seeing the original and that the mor

It seems the film industry will never stop on their relentless pursuit to tickle all of our nostalgia funny bones. Why come up with an original idea when you can mine the past for inspiration? Why risk a new property when an existing one will attract a rose-tinted audience? All well and good if these adaptations are handled properly. Unfortunately, we’ve not been lucky in this regard recently. The less said about the Transformers franchise the better and the horrible attempt

Unprovoked rant time and, I must say, that people who applaud the screen after a film concludes in the cinema should be banned from watching films forevermore. This tends to happen at big-budget remakes of musicals (here’s looking at you Mamma Mia and Les Misérables) and leads me nicely into a review of the next film on Disney's relentless march of remakes: everyone's favourite 18th century tale of Stockholm Syndrome: Beauty and the Beast. A contentious choice for many consid

So, whilst we are all, I'm sure, forever grateful of Marvel for gifting us the MCU we must deal with the subsequent consequences. Like other forms of media, once an idea has success it shall be copied and imitated in the hope of matching it but, inevitably, the original's heights shall never be scaled. So it is with Kong: Skull Island which is, bafflingly, a 'shared universe' flick with 2014's Godzilla. A shared universe film with, it must be said upfront, hardly any throwbac

So, after 8 films and 17(!) years, it's time for Hugh Jackman to hang up his adamantium and move on from Wolverine and the X-Men. Totally miscast (or so we thought) initially, as he's taller and rather less Canadian than the comic book legend, it's hard now to imagine anyone else's mutton chops in the role. That's not to say that the films he's appeared in have been sparkling or stuck to canon (damn you, Marvel) and so Jackman, and returning Director James Mangold (blame him

An animated musical which looks a little like The X Factor, from a Director out of the game for 10 years and released by the commercially popular, but not exactly critic's choice, Illumination Studios sounds like a recipe for disaster but I'm happy to say that Sing is an absolute delight and an early frontrunner for the best kid's movie of the year. Director Garth Jennings clearly was given free rein to let his imagination run wild and came good with a delightful tale about a