With a guaranteed worldwide audience but also an amazingly finicky, near-fundamentalist fan base, helming a Star Wars film must be a very tantalising and yet daunting prospect for any director. After directing the mostly loved The Force Awakens, JJ Abrams takes back the reins from Rian Johnson who gave us the intriguingly off-beat but ultimately silly, The Last Jedi. With
Read moreFrom its plot to its dialogue to its action sequences and its overwrought clanging metallic soundtrack, Terminator: Dark Fate has been engineered to mimic the beloved early films, particularly Terminator 2: Judgement Day. While tightly-constructed, occasionally exciting and moderately inventive, this latest instalment in the 35-year-old franchise is just too familiar to really thrill. It starts encouragingly with a refreshing
Read moreAfter 11 years and a seemingly endless procession of ear drum and eyeball pummelling films, the first phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe comes to a close with the three-hour behemoth Avengers: Endgame. This collision of superhero action flick, high-tech sci-fi film, Tolkienesque fantasy epic and pompous Wagnerian myth has so far received reviews verging on the orgasmic with some
Read moreIt’s been a while since the last dystopian futuristic sci-fi fantasy in which pretty teens are oppressed by a fascist adult state. To satiate fans of that genre we now have The Darkest Minds, an adaptation of Alexandra Bracken’s young adult novel. The film takes us into an unspecified future where a strange malady has caused some children to develop
Read moreCargo is an Australian post-apocalyptic zombie film and while that concept might elicit groans from some people Cargo doesn’t always subscribe to horror convention and instead transforms a familiar scenario into a potent human drama reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and confronting allegory of Australia’s racially divided landscape. The film sees husband and wife Andy (Martin freeman) and Kay (Susie
Read moreA strange mash-up of M Night Shyamalan’s better work and Meet the Parents, the socially perceptive, comedy-inflected horror film Get Out is an impressive directorial debut for Jordan Peel. Here, Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) is the boyfriend nervously heading to a first encounter with his girlfriend’s parents. He’s particularly anxious because his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) hasn’t mentioned to
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