Category: Opinion

One of the big problems in modern cinema isn’t so much the behaviour of patrons, the overpriced candy bar selection or inadequate screening technology, although those things are an issue many cinema chains need to deal with. No, perhaps the biggest problem with film culture – especially online – is the constant fight by studios and marketing against spoilers. Case in point: the release this week of Marvel’s latest superhero blockbuster, Avengers: Infinity War, came with a plea from the studio for reviewers and initial audiences not to reveal the…

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It’s almost a cliche in film circles to consider Stanley Kubrick’s space-set sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey a masterpiece. The word is bandied about a lot these days, even moreso with product and content that’s almost the antithesis of the word, and yet for 50 years the film has captured the imagination and confounded the unprepared in equal measure, resulting in more debate, dissection and critique than almost any other film I’m aware of.

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I am not, nor will I ever likely be, a professional film critic. I doubt you’ll see my name on the aggregation sites or listed in catchy grabs on film posters, and frankly that’s probably as okay with me as it might be for you. For a tick over a decade, however, I’ve been writing film reviews in a semi-serious manner on this blog here, which has morphed and changed throughout the period to become my escape from daily routine into an outlet for my thoughts on the films I…

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When 2017’s second DC film release, Justice League, flopped hard (by blockbuster standards, that is) in cinemas, met with scathing criticism and an inbuilt laugh-track surrounding Henry Cavill’s digitally removed moustache, the embers of hope for the floundering DCEU lit by Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman appeared extinguished. Competing studio Marvel, meanwhile, obliterated almost every record known to man with the February release of Black Panther, arguably its most successful film to-date (until next month’s Avengers: Infinity War slaughters all before it) and reaffirming it as the template by which all…

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This past weekend was a particularly horrific one for Hollywood’s image as an artist’s playground. Off the back of the #MeToo movement involving countless female actresses and participants in Hollywood’s uprising against not only sexual inequality but sexual aggression by men in positions of power, Kill Bill star Uma Thurman let loose in a scorched earth interview with the New York Times and recounted numerous times she was harassed and abused by producer Harvey Weinstein, and forced to endure physical and mental torture at the hands of superstar director Quentin…

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Studios spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year letting us know about their upcoming film projects. Every year they try to lure us into the darkened cineplexes to watch their latest stuff, with everything from major tentpole blockbusters to low-budget indie dramas finding themselves the subject of the one thing nobody can resist watching: the film trailer. Sure, posters and cast interviews and weird websites can offer interest and intrigue as to the quality of a film, but by far the most finely tuned and well honed artform in…

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