Our resident critic Robert Chandler gives us his perspective on the latest entertaintment from the big and small screen.
Judd Apatow’s THE KING OF STATEN ISLAND tells the semi-autobiographical story of Pete Davidson (provisionally playing himself) as Scott Carlin, who has been traumatised since the age of seven, when his father, a firefighter, died in the conflagration of 9/11.
Read MoreSofia Coppola's ON THE ROCKS is a gentle look at a marriage that might be in trouble. It runs a regular 90 minutes (it always feels like a relief when a movie promises a running time of one and a half hours), though in truth its story could have been told in 65.
Read MoreGood grief. WONDER WOMAN 84 is appalling.
It’s as though DC, Geoff Johns and Patty Jenkins took the Richard Lester antics from SUPERMAN 2 and 3 as their tonal influences and married them to a story inspired by SUPERMAN 4.
Read MoreWell, this is interesting. WANDAVISION... going all out to try something different... and mostly succeeding.
Netflix's LUPIN is a triumph! Omar Sy is foxy and beguiling as Assane Diop in this contemporary spin on the classic stories of Arsene Lupin.
Read MoreSome Pixar films have evolved to a point (and have the finance and distribution muscle behind them) where they can just tell interesting stories about people. Stories that have something to say. SOUL is one such film. When Pixar makes movies like this, the studio reminds us that animation is not a genre but simply a form of story-telling, one that can be vital, accessible and profound.
Read MoreI was wanting a bit more from NOELLE on Disney+, if only because its writer/director, Marc Lawrence, made one of my favourite movies: MISS CONGENIALITY.
He also wrote and directed MUSIC & LYRICS and THE REWRITE, two very good Hugh Grant romantic-comedies. Marc Lawrence makes the kind of films people love. His films belong to a genre that’s difficult to get right, but critics rarely write about them in any meaningful way.
THE RHYTHM SECTION is a more interesting "spy" film from Eon than the two recent James Bond ventures (Spectre and Skyfall.)
Blake Lively pitches herself into the role of a woman whose family has been killed in an airliner crash and who then seeks retribution. First she has to be rescued from her despair by a series of men.
Read MoreTom Hanks is excellent as Mr Rogers, a children’s tv presenter (an unknown figure to most British folks), who delivers feel-good bromides via puppets and his on-screen persona. His statements appear simple, but are deceptive. Like his songs, they chime with poetry and have a way of cutting to the heart of a matter.
Read MoreTHE QUEEN’S GAMBIT on Netflix is as good as everyone is saying. Scott Frank’s storytelling is clear and precise. It lands. Awareness of the series has spread mostly through word-of-mouth on social media and through Netflix’s recommendation algorithms. This is the future for movie marketing.
Read MoreThe Blumhouse / Damon Lindelof movie, THE HUNT, is a much better film than it appears to be, or rather, than what I expected.
Read MoreWhile travelling, I caught up with two films, both featuring favourite actresses, both Netflix Originals. Both titles read like the opening lines of novels... or suicide notes.
If I had been a studio head and someone pitched the premise of THE PURGE to me, I would have said yes immediately. I think it's one of the great genre pitches.
Read MoreI suppose I don’t mind that the stormtroopers still stumble into the heroes’ line of fire while aiming really badly themselves... though it does rather kill any sense of jeopardy.
Read More911 LONE STAR works and is compelling. And it is up-to-the-minute contemporary in that it directly addresses issues of diversity representation in its storyline, not only in its casting.
Read MoreWell, it’s not as Lovecraftian as it thinks it is, nor as Lewis Carrollian as it wants to be... but it’s much better than the wretched comments on IMDb suggest.
Read MoreDisney’s new MULAN is ravishing to look at, but is machine-tooled and pre-vis’d to within an inch of its life. There’s no sign of any humanity. It’s been directed by executives.
Read MoreOne falls in love easily with the two heroes of Cho Il-hyung's zombie picture #ALIVE, but the trouble with the film is that it doesn't really allow them to fall in love with each other.
Stacy Kean plays a truck driver ("just because I drive a truck, doesn't make me a truck driver"), who gets framed by a stalk-and-slash killer as he drives across Australia, delivering meat, from Melbourne to Perth.
Read MoreI was ready to bale after the first fifteen minutes (comedy Nazis and whimsy, no thanks) but then the incident happened that stopped JoJo from participating fully in the war... and he returned home, allowing the film to bring the relationship between JoJo and his mother to the fore. It's this relationship that gives the film so much of its heart.
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