Director: McG Stars: Bella Thorne, Emily Alyn Lind, Jenna Ortega Three years on from his apparent career-restart and McG hasn't gotten very far maturing. 2017's The Babysitter had gusto going for it, but not a lot else. Like Steve Buscemi asking how his fellow kids are, it came off as trying a little too hard, rocking … Continue reading Review: The Babysitter: Killer Queen
Director: Johannes Roberts Stars: Sophie Nélisse, Corinne Foxx, Brianne Tju A couple of years ago horror filmmaker Johannes Roberts took the po-faced brio of Bryan Bertino's The Strangers and reconstituted it into the giddily enjoyable slasher throwback The Strangers: Prey at Night. Based on that gorgeous and bloody 90 minutes of nonsense, I'll happily follow him … Continue reading Review: 47 Meters Down Uncaged
Director: Cathy Yan Stars: Margot Robbie, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Ella Jay Basco What to do about comic book movies? They're not going anywhere, at least not for the foreseeable. It's in vogue right now for 'highbrow' directors to vocally shit-talk them, and these comments are not without merit. These flicks are largely very similar to one … Continue reading Review: Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn
Director: Jake Kasdan Stars: Karen Gillan, Danny DeVito, Awkwafina When, in combination, The Greatest Showman and Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle took more money for Sony than the last Bond film, it seemed inevitable that at least one of them would be franchised as quickly as possible. Jumanji was the obvious choice. After all, it was … Continue reading Review: Jumanji: The Next Level
Director: Mike Flanagan Stars: Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, Ewan McGregor Redefining for yourself what constitutes family is a large part of Doctor Sleep. the belated follow-up to both Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Those two precursors are famously divergent. King hated Kubrick's film, which is widely regarded as one of the horror masterpieces. Kubrick altered the … Continue reading Review: Doctor Sleep
Director: Tim Miller Stars: Mackenzie Davis, Linda Hamilton, Natalia Reyes In hindsight, perhaps we ought to be thankful for just how dire Terminator Genisys turned out to be. That movie - which pissed all over a pretty well sodden franchise - ended with the threat of further sequels. Fortunately, those plans have been terminated (ha!). Dark Fate … Continue reading Review: Terminator Dark Fate
Director: Andy Muschietti Stars: Bill Hader, Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy Andy Muschietti's IT felt like a culmination of everything popular horror had been trying to do in the cinema for the past 10 years. It was a grandiose, nostalgia-laced funhouse of jump scares. It moved sleekly, it looked gorgeous and - as with King's doorstop source … Continue reading Review: IT Chapter Two
Director: Ric Roman Waugh Stars: Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman, Jada Pinkett Smith Seemingly made for the six people left who still think that 24 ought to be a thing, but with half the budget of a standard episode, Angel Has Fallen is the second sequel to silly but harmless action thriller Olympus Has Fallen. Industrial … Continue reading Review: Angel Has Fallen
This isn't a contrary piece arguing in favour of Jaws 2 being anywhere near comparable to Steven Spielberg's original blockbuster. It's quite in vogue for certain publications to float such edgelord opinions. These articles make for juicy clickbait, but often serve little purpose beyond that. No, Jeannot Szwarc's obligatory 1978 sequel to the monster smash … Continue reading How Jaws 2 Addresses The Vietnam War
Director: Tim Story Stars: Samuel L Jackson, Jessie T. Usher, Regina Hall Gordon Parks' 1971 film Shaft is probably the mainstream's flagship title from the blaxploitation run of the era, but it - and its sequels - are also outliers in the subgenre. The majority of the pictures that fall into this bracket were about vigilantes, … Continue reading Review: Shaft (2019)
Director: Christopher Landon Stars: Jessica Rothe, Phi Vu, Israel Broussard One of the many things that Christopher Landon did right with 2017's super-fun surprise Happy Death Day was keep it (relatively) simple. A girl, Tree (Jessica Rothe), finds herself in a time loop after being stalked and killed by a masked slasher. To break the loop … Continue reading Review: Happy Death Day 2U
Directors: Mike Mitchell, Trisha Gum Stars: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett Remember 5 years ago, when everything was awesome? Before Trump got elected? Before Brexit? It was a time of such utopian simplicity that none of us could possibly have appreciated it. Do you know happiness when it's happening? Back in the halcyon days … Continue reading Review: The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
Director: David Gordon Green Stars: Jamie Lee Curtis, Will Patton, Andi Matichak One of the creepiest things about Halloween (2018), right out of the gate, is the appearance of the Miramax logo, which hasn't been seen in many a year, and certainly not since the expulsion of the Weinsteins. Ballsy/deluded of someone to hold on to … Continue reading Review: Halloween (2018)
Director: Antoine Fuqua Stars: Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Ashton Sanders Back when I was a teenager I had a VHS copy of U.S. Marshals, the also-ran sequel to The Fugitive. That film's star Harrison Ford had bolted the fledgling franchise. Instead it was Tommy Lee Jones who reprised his role, hunting down Wesley Snipes with … Continue reading Review: The Equalizer 2
Director: Peyton Reed Stars: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Peña Ant-Man And The Wasp doesn't feature any crossover characters from any other quadrant of the MCU. After the "everybody in!" maximalism of Avengers: Infinity War there's actually something nice about a pit-stop this insular. Peyton Reed's follow-up to his 2015 underdog is pleasingly small-scale, but it lands … Continue reading Review: Ant-Man And The Wasp
