Mark Cousins is an Irish author and filmmaker. He is well-known for his literary work on film. His book The Story of Film is an introductory book in cinema history that is taught in many film courses. Besides serving as the premise to a 930-minute documentary in 2011, The Story …
Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece Alien was a tremendous achievement; A low-fi monolith of science-fiction horror that changed the landscape of film as we know it. From Ridley Scott’s lean and elegant direction to HR Giger’s phallic and genitalia-inspired character and set design, one which now feels fused into the very …
It’s a shame when one of your most anticipated films of the year winds up also being one of the biggest disappointments. Unfortunately, that was my experience with Alien: Romulus, the highly anticipated return to the horrors of space from Fede Álvarez. Álvarez has made a name for himself within …
An intriguing premise is the only aspect a film needs to grab attention. That said – and unfortunately, if I may be honest – it’s the names of directors, screenwriters, and especially well-known actors that ultimately become the biggest draw for the general public. Jackpot! truly hits the jackpot by …
Doug Liman is known for kickstarting the Jason Bourne franchise with The Bourne Identity, but perhaps even more for what’s often considered one of the best action films of its decade, Edge of Tomorrow. Unfortunately, since that 2014 release, the filmmaker has been inconsistent with his work, producing reasonably satisfying …
I’ve avoided reading Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us for years now. As an avid reader who is also constantly on social media, the novels of Colleen Hoover have been plastered all over TikTok and Instagram, none with such veracity as It Ends With Us and its sequel, It Begins …
A career woman finds herself unexpectedly pregnant? Snore. Without knowing who the dad is? Seen it. But pregnant with twins, by each of her suitors? Outstanding. Without hyperbole, this is the greatest concept for a romantic comedy in the history of time. Bad Newz then surpasses the excellence of its …
Marvel ended Phase 3 of its cinematic universe in 2019 on a high with Spiderman: Far From Home and promised that Phase 4 would bring new stories along with new heroes. Fans were excited for the new era. However, things didn’t turn out to be as good as fans wanted. …
Fairy tales have always dealt with heavy topics. Children still need to know about complex issues, and sometimes, couching those issues in a fantastical world can make them easier to understand. That remains true for adults. High fantasy stories can cause us to engage with topics that we might otherwise …
The animated world of Batman is growing, with the latest series, Batman: Caped Crusader, that recently hit Prime Video. The ten-episode series from showrunner Bruce Timm, written by Greg Rucka (Harley Quinn, The Old Guard), delivers a new grounded animated series with Hamish Linklater voicing Batman/Bruce Wayne. Does the animated world …
An uninspired plot and several phoned in performances makes Borderlands a huge misfire. Adapting a story from one medium to another is tough. Whether the source material is a novel or a comic or a twitter thread or a game, there are many choices that need to made because while …
Musical biopics consistently earn a reputation as a simple path to awards seasons and other accolades. In recent years, there have been examples in Bohemian Rapsody, Maestro, Elvis, and The United States vs. Billie Holiday, among others. It is a genre that has been repeating itself constantly and delivering mediocre …
This inspired by true events biopic is crowd-pleasing cinema at its best. An ordinary Joe goes toe to toe with heartless billionaires, conniving moneylenders and unfair bureaucracy all in an attempt to make life better and easier for people like him. Will he succeed?? The set-up answers its own question, …
In 2020, director Lee Isaac Chung made Minari, the story of an immigrant family in Arkansas with dialogue almost entirely in Korean. An extremely insulting debate sprang up about whether the movie was American, only possible because the immigrants weren’t white and not speaking English. Mr. Chung has now responded …
Scarlett Johansson co-produced this movie as a vehicle for herself, which should automatically mean it’s worth watching. She has largely focused her career on how someone with a body like hers navigates the world, but here, her body is not the center of attention. Instead it’s her mind, specifically her …
Welcome to Manchester, let’s be having you. For three days a collection of metal, prog rock, jazz and other genres including unique geeza-core were assembled in the 02 Victoria Warehouse, a few minutes’ walk away from the iconic Old Trafford Stadium, for a two-stage weekender of chaos inside a sweltering …
Bruce Springsteen walks up on stage at Wembley Stadium and goes straight into song. There is no introduction because there needs no introduction, he is the Boss, and the Boss is magic – over fifty years of making some of the foremost rock and roll music, he comes out and debuts …
For fans of horror films, at times, it feels like the classic monster tropes are done to death. Made famous in Hollywood thanks to the classic Universal films, vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein’s monster, and The Mummy have been produced and reproduced by almost every studio. You would think that over the …
Not since 1999’s The Blair Witch Project has a horror campaign been quite as effective as the one Neon have instigated for Oswald Perkins’ horror Longlegs. The campaign that tore the internet apart at the turn of the millennium was based on the idea that the titular Blair Witch was …
Not much is known about Josef Mysliveček – the 18th-century composer at the center of writer and director Petr Václav’s lavish historical biopic The Bohemian – in the English-speaking musical world. It is known he was on good terms with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as the two composers vied for recognition …