Shazam! Fury Of The Gods

The biggest surprise of 2019 was Shazam! A delightfully charming superhero movie from DC, which managed to bring a mix of Tom Hanks’ Big with the usual formula found in most movies of this genre. A moderate success, it was inevitable that a sequel would happen. After several scheduling issues, Shazam! Fury of the Gods…

Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania

There currently seems to be a backlash against Marvel and its cinematic universe. Reading the reviews of their latest and 31st movie, you would be led to believe that Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is an absolute disaster. It’s not. It might not be up there with Avengers: Endgame, which seems to be the height…

Avatar: The Way Of Water

It was 13 years ago that James Cameron, still riding high on the success of the terrible Titanic, broke his own records with the surprisingly dull Avatar, a movie which can be explained quite simply as two hours of tree hugging and the final act where they blew up the trees! I wasn’t holding my…

Violent Night

If you are a fan of the movie Scrooged with Bill Murray, you will remember the start has an advert for an up-and-coming TV movie with Lee Majors called The Night The Reindeer Died. The premise was Santa Claus was under attack by terrorists, and only Lee Major could save them. Somebody had obviously thought…

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Black Panther was a cinematic phenomenon when it hit the screens in 2018. It broke box office records, became the first and only superhero film nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars and was a complete game changer for black cinema. A sequel was inevitable. However, no one would have predicted that the film’s star,…

Black Adam

The DC Cinematic world has been having a few problems of late. Shazam 2 and Aquaman 2 have had their releases pushed back; Batgirl was cancelled, and The Flash is still being decided on after the strange events of his star in public life. So maybe a new hero is needed to lift the Warner…

The Woman King

Hollywood is definitely changing. Watching The Woman King, a small-scale historical epic set in Africa and based around a tribe of female warriors, this film would not have been possible even twenty years ago. Yet Black Panther seems to have changed all that. This is a movie made up mainly of black actors, primarily women,…

Beast

Back when Jaws was first released, there was a torrent of copycats and imitations, whether in the water (Orca – Killer Whale, Pirahna) or animals on the loose (Grizzly). Now we have Beast, a film that would fall into that category if released in the 70s. It does for lions what Jaws did for sharks….

Bullet Train

Trains have always been a great place to set a movie. Think Murder on the Orient Express, Silver Streak and The First Great Train Robbery. They are enclosed; they can create tension and guarantee someone will end up being thrown off. The latest movie on a locomotive is Bullet Train, two hours of increasingly comic…

DC League of Super-Pets

Another week, another superhero movie. This time, it’s the turn of super pets. Krypto the Superdog appeared in 1955 as part of the ever-expanded Superman universe. Since then, Krypto has appeared in comics, animation, and the TV series Smallville and Titans. Now, the canine friend of Superman has its feature film, but to be honest,…

Thor: Love and Thunder

They often say that lightning never strikes twice, something you find with most movie franchises. Marvel’s Thor is a perfect example of the lightning theory. The first film, directed by Kenneth Branagh, was a decent mythical adventure, whereas the sequel, Thor: The Dark World, was a mess and regarded by many as the worst Marvel…

Jurassic World Dominion

Halfway through Jurassic World Dominion, Dr Ian Malcolm exclaims, in an ironic way, “Jurassic World? Not a fan!” Sadly, this seems to be a critique of the film the character is in, as this third instalment of the new franchise, which promised so much, manages to deliver so little. A film that ticks every box…