REVIEW: Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets makes imagination boring

The space opera is well on its way to becoming my least favourite genre; romcoms included.

Embracing a gaudily frenetic aesthetic may make for a great splash panel in a comic book but it rarely leads to satisfying cinema. Case in point: Luc Besson’s latest, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.…

CINEMATIC GRAB-BAG: A Cure For Wellness & Patriots Day

A Cure For Wellness

A Cure For Wellness is a film I wish was better.

A psychological horror with grandiose ambitions, it stars Dane DeHaan as Lockhart, a callow young stockbroker with ice-chip eyes dispatched to retrieve his company’s CEO from a remote “wellness center” in the Swiss Alps.…

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is shockingly average

 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the middle film in a trilogy tends to be the best.

Movie lovers may be torn between The Godfather and Godfather, Part II, but the rule certainly holds true for The Empire Strikes Back, Terminator 2, The Dark Knight.…

The Place Beyond the Pines is a mythic triptych about family that loses itself in the woods

 

A crime drama directed by an obscure American arthouse director, Derek Cianfrance, and starring two hip young Oscar-nominated actors? Sounds like my cup of tea.

On one hand, you’ve got Ryan Gosling as tatted-up carnival motorcyclist Luke Glanton; a bleach-blonde, barely repressed psychopath who develops a penchant for bank robbery in order to provide for his baby mama, an underused Eva Mendes.…