Calum Cooper 
2017’s The Greatest Showman is a musical drama whose popularity I struggle to understand. For all its huge setpieces and hyper-stylised choreography its narrative and thematic substance was cloying and often faux, with overwhelmingly bland songs – minus Rewrite the Stars – to boot. Director Michael Gracey at last returns …
After two monumental entries into the Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi had a lot riding on it. Trying to stick the landing is always a high pressure job but with this final piece of the original trilogy, we are thankfully in luck. While it’s not as airtight of …
If anyone suspected that the success of George Lucas’s Star Wars was a fluke, then the 1980s Irvin Kershner-directed The Empire Strikes Back smothered these allegations. It maintains the imagination and splendour of the original while adding narrative twists and new character dimensions to the mix. But while it is, …
In 1977, blockbuster cinema changed forever with the release of George Lucas’s Star Wars. While Steven Spielberg’s Jaws spawned the term blockbuster, Star Wars came to define the genre with its humongous popularity, critical acclaim, and financial success, which was unlike anything cinemas had seen at that point. Nearly fifty …
2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – the final entry in the Star Wars sequel trilogy – had severe production hurdles from the start. The film was originally going to be helmed by Jurassic World director Colin Treverrow, who had managed to pen a full script with Derek Connolly …
Despite the critical acclaim of Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, certain corners of the internet would have you believe that the film was “divisive.” While there were certainly some unhappy fans – they’ve been screaming from their parents’ basements since 2017 – the evidence of audience gathering surveys …
Shortly after Disney acquired Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012, one of the first announcements made was their intent to make a Star Wars sequel trilogy. Talks of a continuation in the form of Episodes 7, 8 and 9 had been floating around the zeitgeist for years, but to see …
This is perhaps my hottest Star Wars take: I think Rogue One is a bit overrated. I am by no means calling it bad, but this is a case where a lot of its issues become obfuscated by one excellent chunk of the film. However, that stretch of the film …
Revenge of the Sith is the best of the Star Wars prequel trilogy by a country mile. Where The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones felt narratively meandering, handicapped by their insistence on telling over showing, Revenge of the Sith takes much better advantage of writer-director George Lucas’s idiosyncrasies. …
If my review for The Phantom Menace could be perceived as me going out of my way to be fair, then Attack of the Clones is me reaping what I’ve sowed. Not only does this film suffer from many of the same issues as its predecessor, but it amplifies them …
When Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, the first of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, hit cinemas in 1999, it proved extremely divisive. A definite victim of overhype, with some fans literally camping outside cinemas before the first screening, neither critics nor audiences seemed to agree on the film’s quality. The …
To this day, Apollo 11’s successful landing on the moon is one of humanity’s greatest feats – an inspiring amalgamation of ingenuity, ambition, and cooperation. Fly Me to the Moon, to this critic’s knowledge, is the first to use this mission for a romantic comedy setting. It’s certainly an unorthodox …
Bad horror movies are a dime a dozen, with their formulaic narratives and low, often limiting, budgets. 2024 alone has seen the bizarre Night Swim, an interesting idea poorly executed in Imaginary, and, more recently, Tarot, a daft concept that was more banal than spooky. To give those pictures’ credit, though, at least …
Amy Winehouse was arguably one of the greatest singers of the 21st century. Her remarkable voice, combined with her ability to tap into emotional authenticity, made her a force to be reckoned with in the modern music scene. At 27 years old, she left this world far too soon, leaving …
Avatar: The Last Airbender is the latest animated property to get the live-action treatment from Netflix. There has been some success with this trend, such as Netflix’s adaptation of the anime One Piece, but reimaginings such as this have to work hard to justify their existence, as their animated counterparts are already …
When one thinks of letter writing in the contemporary age, we tend to think of it as a forgotten art form where communicators shared feelings of friendship through the personal means of delivering a handwritten message. Friendship is the last thing contained in the letters of Wicked Little Letters. Instead, we get …
Nickelodeon cartoons were a staple of the after-school experience for many kids and families during the late 90s to mid-2000s. From Spongebob Squarepants to Invader Zim, some of the most popular shows ever to spawn from the channel emerged during this period. However, one of these shows stands heads and shoulders above the …
Michael Winterbottom has one of the most prolific filmographies of any contemporary British filmmaker. From docudrama miniseries like This England to black comedies like Greed to Palme d’Or competing projects like 24 Hour Party People, Winterbottom has shown bold experimentation and a refusal to be bound to one singular approach to media. His latest, the period drama Shoshana, is a …
Denis Villeneuve’s much-awaited sequel to 2021’s spi-fi epic, Dune, is the first truly great film of 2024. Dune: Part Two’s scope is awe-inspiring, its pacing is electric, and the themes it explores are suspenseful and thought-provoking. While a faithful adaptation to its behemoth-sized source material, the ways in which it inverts the formula of …
Biopics about popular celebrities can be difficult to create, largely in part because they will try to capture the scope of one’s whole life rather than the key elements that made them who they were. It’s not necessarily an incorrect approach to the genre, but for every fun or creative …