I’ve heard it said that movies come into our lives, for a reason bringing something we must learn… And Wicked: For Good is teaching us a point that we might already know – sequels are never as good. Wicked: For Good follows on seamlessly from the original story – we meet the popular public personas of Glinda the Good (Ariana Grande), and Fiyero Tigelaar (Jonathan Bailey) as they run e...
Rom-coms are back, and they’re better than ever. The once cliché-ridden genre, popular only with hopeless romantics and teenage girls, gets a much needed update with the release of A Nice Indian Boy. Roshan Sethi brings us the magical love-story between two young men, Naveen (Karan Soni) and Jay (Jonathan Groff) who come from oddly similar backgrounds, but with stark differences that they must ove...
The opening hour of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy takes its sweet time—way too much of it, in fact. We meet Bridget several years after Bridget Jones’s Baby, where she and Mark had a son and got hitched. In Mad About the Boy, Bridget has become a widow and single parent to Billy and his younger sister, Mabel, after Mark died while on a humanitarian trip four years prior. This new reality ...
Sometimes films set out to be unpleasant and unsettling – putting their audiences in a state of discomfort ultimately drives them to a greater understanding of the overall subject matter, and for many art house films that works. However for Queer, an adaptation of the unfinished novella of the same name by the famed William Burroughs, the lack of follow through leaves the audience feeling well, ju...
There is nothing that quite compares to a tear-jerker or a good romance and We Live in Time seems to be already demonstrating its prowess in both categories. While it isn’t reinventing the genre, honestly it’s almost a cliché – the determined beautiful-but- quirky heroine marries the quiet, bookish male lead but shockingly develops a terminal illness somewhere in the narrative. However, the ...
Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera) is having the worst time. Not only has her boyfriend broken up with her while she’s been undergoing cancer treatment, but he has also taken the musical they composed together and cast a famous actress in the role they wrote for her. Seeking comfort, Laura returns to her childhood home, where she finds a monster (Tommy Dewey) in her closet, and begins a surreal romanc...
I’ve heard it said that movies come into our lives for a reason, bringing something we must learn, and Wicked (Part 1). From the director that brought us In The Heights and the masterpiece that was Step Up 3D, Jon M. Chu, comes the much anticipated silver screen adaptation of the beloved musical of the same name. While part of the success of In The Heights comes from the raw and realistic slant to...
Releasing today, mostly French production Mr Blake at Your Service! is an odd one. Starring John Malkovich (Red, Burn After Reading), this endearing and quirky comedy drama shirks genre tropes and fails to realise the stakes it takes an hour and fifty minutes to set up. In order to unpack this film a little some spoilers are ahead. Fair warning, it’s a little désordonné. Director Gilles Legardinie...
The United States’ Apollo program was established in 1962, when President Kennedy announced that men would walk on the moon by 1970. At the time of that announcement, America was already engaged in what the media termed the Space Race. This had started five years previously, in 1957, when the Soviet Union had launched the world’s first unmanned space vehicle, Sputnik 1 and it became more intense i...
Tashi, an ambitious and former tennis prodigy is married to a champion (Art) on a losing streak. Her strategy for her husband’s redemption takes an unexpected turn when Mike faces off against former best friend Patrick, who is also Tashi’s former boyfriend. Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers brings a ménage à trois to the tennis court, bouncing fast paced romantic drama and comedy across th...
Love Lies Bleeding is a movie that we’ve all seen before – a drama that’s sexy, gorey, dark and so incredibly visceral that you feel like you need a shower afterwards – but far bigger, better and gayer. Dramatic and psychotic at times, director Rose Glass hasn’t journeyed far from her breakout horror Saint Maud, giving 80s gym culture a dark twist. The story is centered around the see...
If you, when sitting down to view Anyone But You, were also dreading another shaky Shakespere inspired rom-com, you might find yourself in for an unexpected surprise. Not exactly known for his romantic comedies, Will Gluck (director of Peter Rabbit) delivers a crowd-pleasing rom-com that harks back to the hey-day of the genre. Starring the both very hot right now Sydney Sweeney (best known for E...
