You can tell we are heading into the autumn and the awards seasons when serious, more mature movies start hitting our screens. Having months of lightweight blockbusters aimed at the young and young at heart is turning towards films dealing with issues or stories that will attract an older audience. The first is Lee, a…
Author: Stuart Wren
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
It has been a long time since Tim Burton made a decent movie. Not that his films have been terrible. They haven’t been up there with his early work, like the Batman movies or Edward Scissorhands. So, returning to the character of one of his most inventive works seems a good idea if he is…
Blink Twice
Zoe Kravitz is known for being the daughter of rock superstar Lenny Kravitz and playing Catwoman in the 2022 blockbuster The Batman. She can cut it as an actress, but can she deliver as a film director? Absolutely. Blink Twice, which she also co-wrote, is one of the most exciting debuts for someone behind the…
Alien: Romulus
Ever since Ridley Scott’s 1979 game-changing Alien hit our screens, which managed the hybrid of horror and sci-fi so successfully, the movie has spawned seven other films, with only one getting close to the brilliance of the original, the 1986 James Cameron direct sequel, Aliens. The rest may have been flawed but fascinating or down-right…
Borderlands
Going into Borderlands, I knew very little. I knew it was based on a video game, but that was about it. I have never played the game or even seen the game. I knew it was directed by Eli Roth, who is usually associated with very gory horrors and was responsible for the torture porn…
Harold And The Purple Crayon
In my distant memory, I recall reading a book about a boy who had a magic crayon that he could draw anything, and it would appear. When Harold and the Purple Crayon started with a short animated pre-credit sequence, those memories came flooding back, so there was an element of nostalgia that I could at…
Deadpool & Wolverine
It almost seems a miracle that Deadpool 3 got to the screen. Originally announced when the Marvel character was still at 20th Century Fox, it was shelved during the deal with Disney and questions were thrown up as to whether the House of Mouse would allow such a sweary character into the Marvel Cinematic Universe….
Longlegs
It seems to be a common factor in horror movies to put, as part of their advertising campaign, that their film is the scariest movie of all time, of the year, or of the week. The truth is none of them are that scary, and you leave the cinema feeling slightly cheated. Longlegs has done…
Twisters
Let’s go back to 1996. The year that Twister hit the screens. A big, loud, visually impressive blockbuster that could easily be placed in the disaster movie category but seemed more to be out to amaze the audience with its effects, including the flying cow. Now we have Twisters, a stand-alone sequel that takes moments…
Despicable Me 4
Animated franchises are a bit of a hit-or-miss affair. Some, like Toy Story, get it absolutely right, even if they should have stopped at number 3, whereas Ice Age started off well but became overcrowded with far too many characters and lost that original charm. Despicable Me started with a massive boom, a hilarious, inventive…
MaXXXine
I have been looking forward to catching the third part of Ti West’s horror trilogy that started with X and continued with Pearl, which followed the life of wannabe star Maxine Minx (nee Miller). The films have been far more than just generic horrors; they examine fame and the lengths people will go to get…
A Quiet Place: Day One
John Krasinski’s sci-fi horror A Quiet Place is possibly one of the best films of the 21st Century. A gripping, relentlessly tense terror that left audiences leaving the cinema with full pots of popcorn for fear of making a noise. He then gave us the decent sequel, A Quiet Place Part II. Now, with Kransinski…
Stu Loves Film 