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 …
The problem with The Problem with People is that it is so determined to be light-hearted in how it deals with an unpleasant aspect of human nature – our talent for conflict – that it is neither realistic enough nor cheerful enough. It works very hard both to provide enough …
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 …
Thanks to streaming, the landscape of cinema has entirely changed. What once would have been a summer crime caper built for the cinema now goes to the small screen. Depending on how you view it, that can be both a benefit and a curse. The curse is that movies like …
Star Wars media has returned to the cultural forefront since the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015. A film trilogy and several television shows later, the franchise has become a norm within the entertainment media landscape. Unfortunately, such an extensive array of content has not had the …
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 …
In 2019, author Holly Jackson released the YA fiction novel A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder to critical acclaim. It went on to win 2020’s British Book Awards Children’s Fiction Book Winner of the Year and, as with most award-winning novels, it was soon picked up for a television adaption. …
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 …
At first glance, Armand – from writer and director Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel in his feature debut – seems cut from the same cloth as Roman Polanski’s 2011 film Carnage and Fran Kranz’s 2021 film Mass: thrillers of the interpersonal, where parents of squabbling, troubled, or otherwise problematic children come together …
While it is to be praised that so many dads are making movies for children these days, it does rather mean the dads are centering themselves in the movies, instead of the children for whom the movies are supposedly made. This is very frustrating, not least when it’s clear that …
There are few institutions in this world that are more heavily regarded and reviled in equal measure than the Catholic church. From the sects of religious devotees that populate social pockets of the world to their portrayal in modern media that places them in the spotlight for heinous acts of …
Universal Language, the latest from Canadian director Matthew Rankin, follows Abdolreza Kahani’s A Shrine as another delightful Iranian-Canadian comedy hitting the 2024 international film festival circuit – a welcome trend, judging by the quality of these two excellent films. Written by Ila Firouzabadi, Pirouz Nemati, and Rankin, a vignette structure …
It’s all too easy to get swept up in the exaggerated hype surrounding a highly anticipated blockbuster, especially these days when initial reactions to such films often take on a clickbait tone and are packed with buzzwords studios love to plaster on posters, trailers, and more. Directed by Jon M. …
It’s always wonderful to see an actor rise to the opportunity and become a great movie star, and there’s a moment late in Gladiator II where the switch visibly flips for Paul Mescal. He (and Daisy Edgar-Jones, who I have written about elsewhere) came out of nowhere in 2020’s lockdown …
I’m not a religious or faith-driven person. In both my personal and professional life, I rely on science, logic, and reason to justify what needs justification, but when it comes to cinema and television, everything fascinates me. Consequently, a mystery-thriller centered on the election of a new Pope after the …
The theme of “artificial intelligence,” particularly in cinema and television, has been one of the most intense, controversial debates in recent years. As with most polarizing topics, opinions tend to be extreme and lack depth, creating opposing views of “AI is good” versus “AI is bad,” as if all uses …
I repeat what I mentioned just a few days ago: there are hundreds of new film releases every year, so it’s only natural that some movies – and their filmmakers – unfortunately slip through the cracks. Andrea Arnold (American Honey) has consistently found success at the Cannes Film Festival, winning …
For every hundred films watched, another hundred slip through the cracks. That said, it’s rare to miss the same director or screenwriter multiple times, yet that’s exactly what happened with John Crowley (Brooklyn) and Nick Payne (The Last Letter from Your Lover) over the years, making We Live in Time …