Based on the Daphne Du Maurier novel, My Cousin Rachel is a period melodrama with a touch of Hitchcockian mystery. While well-performed by an impressive cast that includes Sam Claflin and Rachel Weisz, the film’s minimalist plot, leisurely pacing and odd tonal shifts make it a slightly unsatisfying experience. Sam Claflin plays young English country gent Phillip Ashley who, since
Read morePrior to seeing the new Wonder Woman film there was hope it would provide something different from the typical po-faced tedium of DC adaptations like last year’s awful snoozer Batman vs Superman. Wonder Woman does offer something a little different and in many ways it succeeds although a little it too often succumbs to superhero movie formula. The film does
Read morePirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is yet another lumbering, plotless farce in what has to be one of the most undeservedly successful franchises in cinema history – first film excepted. These Pirate films should be rollicking campy adventures but they’re so waterlogged with cgi and so incoherently plotted that they lack both sense and charm. Also,
Read moreDirector Edgar Wright built his reputation on genre parodies, such as zombie spoof Shaun of the Dead, that were often funny and cartoonishly violent and which cleverly sent up the distinctively odd behaviours of that species known as the English male. His latest film, Baby Driver is neither a pastiche (despite recalling other films) nor is it an English lad
Read moreSo here it is, yet another Spider-Man reboot with a completely new cast, this time featuring young British actor Tom Holland in the title role. It seems there’s a global conspiracy to conscript everyone on earth into the role of Spider- Man. Although not quite an origin story or a remake, this film Spider-Man: Homecoming is, in many ways (which
Read moreWith Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan eschews the traditional war movie narrative for a lyrical yet potently realistic depiction of the 1940 evacuation of more than 300,000 Allied soldiers from the beaches of France as German shells rained down. There’s no war-room strategy sessions, no soldiers talking about their best girl back home and no Rambo-like action sequences. Instead, Nolan recounts the
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