Korean/ Canadian writer/director Celine Song seduced audiences with her subtle but heartbreaking story of inescapable childhood attachments and unrequited romance in her 2023 debut film Past Lives. Her first Hollywood film, Materialists, doesn’t quite deliver on the expectations Past Lives raised but still gives what could have been a standard romantic comedy/ drama a little more depth and class than
Read moreAfter 11 years and a seemingly endless procession of ear drum and eyeball pummelling films, the first phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe comes to a close with the three-hour behemoth Avengers: Endgame. This collision of superhero action flick, high-tech sci-fi film, Tolkienesque fantasy epic and pompous Wagnerian myth has so far received reviews verging on the orgasmic with some
Read moreSuper heroes being taken to task by the US government over the collateral damage of their battles with pompous villains… haven’t we seen this before? Yes, the vague plot outline for Captain America Civil War does recall Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice but unlike that loud, murky-looking DC Comics adaptation, the Marvel film is actually a lot of fun.
Read moreAvengers: Age of Ultron is the 11th Marvel comics cinema adaptation and the series is feeling a little tired. The first Iron Man and Avengers films cleverly balanced dynamic action with cheeky humour and an inventive vision of futuristic technology but the many Marvel superhero films that have followed, including Age of Ultron, have, unfortunately, become tiresome and infuriatingly cluttered
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