The 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 moreBaz Luhrmann is one of the least subtle directors of recent times. Perhaps only Michael Bay and Oliver Stone in the 90’s top him for obviousness and outrageousness. Having Baz direct a film about Elvis Presley who, at least in the latter part of his life, was known for excess and an extravagant lifestyle, promised to be a sensory assault.
Read moreSteadily emerging as one of the most interesting contemporary filmmakers, Alex Garland, who intrigued and unnerved us with his AI thriller Ex Machina, brings us his creepiest film yet, the oddball horror misogyny parable, Men. As anyone who has seen the evil, shiny, puppet-like face in the promo will realise, there’s something decidedly sinister at work in this film. Here,
Read moreIranian director Asghar Farhadi is one of the great auteurs of contemporary cinema. His distinctly low-key humanist dramas immerse us in the minutiae of Iranian people’s lives and through their stories he subtly but powerfully explores aspects of Iranian society, culture and politics. His latest film, the Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix winner, A Hero, is no different and has
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 more