Taika Waititi’s previous instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor: Ragnarök was, at least for a while, a strikingly odd experience and refreshingly different flavour in what had become the bland cinematic equivalent of a fast-food franchise. Suddenly, droll, pisstaking Kiwi humour had entered the overblown Wagnerian Marvel superhero fantasy universe. At first, it felt quite subversive but the film
Read moreThe fun, inventive, hyper-energetic but sometimes (for adults) headache-inducing world of our little animated buddies, the Minions, continues with Minions: The Rise of Gru. This one takes us back to the mid-70 s and criminal genius Gru’s nascent years as an aspiring super villain. Here, the 11-year-old primary school student Gru (Steve Carrell) dreams of joining his heroes, a super
Read moreLightyear, which features space ranger from Toy Story, Buzz Lightyear, is not strictly a Toy Story film. The idea behind this film is that this is the movie Andy (from Toy Story) would have seen that inspired him to get the Buzz Lightyear doll. The fact that this back story involves someone being compelled to pick up merchandise is a
Read moreJurassic Park was one of the event films of the 1990s and a movie many would recall as fondly as ET or Star Wars. Based on the excellent Michael Crichton novel, the film combined revelatory photorealistic dinosaur special effects with a mostly exciting, if at times, cheesy adventure story built around revolutionary science and technology concepts. Although not as rigorously
Read moreArriving on our cinema screens a mere 36 years after the original film, Top Gun: Maverick is part action movie, part military propaganda and part romance but more than anything it’s a wilful exercise in Gen X nostalgia mining. With flashbacks to the original film, scenes almost reproduced from that film, a soundtrack with some of the same songs and
Read moreThe seemingly endless Marvel movie parade careens ahead with the latest cgi-drenched action extravaganza, Dr Strange in The Multiverse of Madness. While as visually inventive and eyeball pummelling as any film in the various Marvel universes (MCU, Spiderverse) this movie seriously lacks the energy and fun of the best Marvel movies such as the recent Spider-Man No Way Home and
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