Shooting for Bottoms meets Pulp Fiction, this cheap, tonally awry, distinctly un-funny, try-hard, sack-full-of-dildos romp utterly misfires, clearly coming from the wrong solo Coen Brother, and both awkwardly and shamelessly wasting the talents of a couple of good actresses.
After a long and uncertain three year wait, Denis Villeneuve's Magnum Opus continues with this epic second chapter in his staggering realisation of Frank Herbert's Dune - UPDATED WITH IMAX REVIEW.
Where to watch the 2024 Oscar best picture nominees
by Andy Bassett
UPDATED with winners 11-Mar-2024: With the 2024 Oscar ceremony having just taken place, we look at the streaming services where you can quickly catch this year’s best film nominees so you can now 'agree to disagree' with the Academy's choices if you so wish.
The mainstream horror rut continues as Blumhouse follows up its last dull, dreary, multiplex horror with… another dull, dreary, multiplex horror. Who’d have imagined that?
Nuts and bolts Statham doing what he does best; it's trashy, it's hilariously OTT, but it's also a frequently viscerally satisfying piece of revenge action carnage. UPDATE - NOW ON SKY/NOW TV
Sharply witty and sublimely satirical, and providing a much-deserved, tour-de-force lead for the excellent Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction is definitely worth catching whilst it's still on the Big Screen. UPDATE - Now on Amazon Prime UK.
A loose adaptation of Alasdair Gray's novel, Poor Things is a perfect confluence of art and message, idea and execution, writing and design, Yorgos Lanthimos follows up his Oscar winning film 'The Favourite' with a bona fide masterpiece. UPDATE - Now on Disney+ in 4KDV/DA
At least avoiding the lowest-hanging fruit, Ridley Scott’s breathtaking command of scenes of historical warfare distract from but don’t negate the core problem with the depiction of the French emperor: that he is ultimately unknowable. UPDATE: Available now on AppleTV+
Commanded by a fabulously curmudgeonly performance by Paul Giamatti, his reunion with writer/director Alexander "Sideways" Payne makes for a surprisingly uplifting festive feast.
Matthew Vaughn returns with a typically decadent style explosion that doesn’t know what it wants to be other than absolutely everything for absolutely everybody…
The film adaptation of the musical adaptation of the non-fiction book adaptation…who knew that being Mean was so lucrative? Thank god Tina Fey did, as her third go-round with the bitchy queen bees of North Shore High remains as viperous and hilarious as it was twenty years ago…
One of Scorsese’s most expansive, both in its visuals and perspectives, Killers of the Flower Moon is a rare film. It’s an example of an old master reflecting on his own limitations and then pushing back against them - NOW AVAILABLE ON APPLE TV.
Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (Netflix) Movie Review
by Cas Harlow
Zack Snyder's pitched Star Wars-esque sci-fi epic franchise thingy plops on Netflix, and is about as well-received as anybody expected, making you wonder how on earth anybody is going to make it to Part 4.
Barry Keoghan shines in Saltburn, the wicked, gorgeous and dizzying second film from Promising Young Woman’s Emerald Fennell. Tearing apart class, wealth, privilege and the institutions we’re taught to respect or aspire to with delirious – and often hilarious – glee in one of the sharpest films of the year. NOW ON AMAZON UK.
Bradley Cooper's sophomore symphony doesn't hit the raw, accomplished notes of A Star is Born, but is an impressively staged biopic nonetheless, with committed lead performances.
When we got arguably the best entry in the series with Shin Godzilla it was hard to accept any other version of the monster would be as thrilling or as surprising. That its immediate live action successor is a rival to those highs makes Yamazaki Takashi’s Godzilla Minus One a near miracle.
Intricately layered and audaciously framed, Todd Haynes' Natalie Portman / Julianne Moore psychodrama may be a little too ambitiously avant garde for its own good.
Best Movies, TV and 4K Blu-rays of 2023 - Editor's Choice Awards
by Cas Harlow
The movies team takes a look back at 2023, highlighting some of the best theatrical and streaming movie releases TV shows, and 4K discs, as well as the studios behind them.
Jessica Yu's Fox/Hulu/Disney/Star comedy, Quiz Lady, enjoys a clever pairing of Awkwafina's trademark grumpy old woman schtick with an utterly against-type, deliciously OTT Sandra Oh.
Christos Nikou's English-language directorial debut is an intriguing little sci-fi idea never quite done justice by its otherwise conventional romantic drama narrative, despite committed performances from its leads.
Writer/director Kitty Green reunites with her star from The Assistant, Julia Garner, for another slow-burn brew of toxic masculinity steeped in palpable, simmering, dread.
Blunt and Evans take a fat paycheque to portray loathsome drug reps who take a fat paycheque to persuade slimy doctors to take a fat paycheque to push a drug that everyone on the pyramid knows kills people. The end.
Denzel Washington takes the only franchise he's ever participated in to a surprisingly satisfying conclusion in this western-themed, Italian-flavoured small-town thriller, on digital now.
What if this wasn’t a story about the heroic rise and tragic fall of the most popular mobile phone? What if this was a group of business illiterates serially failing upwards and, rather than an inspiration, we’re purely in it for the schadenfreude. That…could work.
Continuing a hell of a strong streak of movies on Netflix, Fair Play is another tremendous effort - and another impressive directorial debut - somewhat surprisingly delivering palpably intense thrills from what is, essentially, a sexually-fuelled exploration of cutthroat hedge management and gender politics.
Grant Singer's directorial debut will certainly garner him some well-earned attention, affording choice leading roles for Benicio del Toro and Alicia Silverstone, and unspooling a dark and twisty crime drama with surprising confidence.
Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham and their ever-decreasing circle of superannuated chums return for, hopefully, one last adventure that sadly seems to forget what made this premier Geri-Action franchise such a guilty pleasure in the first place…must be their age…
Intimately tapping into the sobering reality of a what-if-you-reunited-with-your childhood-sweetheart scenario, Past Lives gets under your skin with its authenticity and honesty.
Sir Kenneth Branagh returns as Agatha Christie’s famously moustachioed master detective… only this time, it’s not just the living he has to worry about as he takes a delightfully gothic horror inflected trip to Italy’s Floating City…
Late to the party, we take a dive into a suitably nautical companion-piece to the similarly unbearably tense Fall, finding that this underwater two-hander at least manages to stick its landing.