Pirates 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 moreBlack Mass dramatises the rein of crime boss James ‘Whitey’ bulger who ruled South Boston from the mid-70’s until the 1990’s. His story is told largely through flashbacks as Bulger’s (Johnny Depp) former associates spill the beans on his disturbing life of crime. The film reveals Bulger’s involvement in multiple murders including brutal vengeance on those he suspected of betraying
Read moreFor No Good Reason documents the life and work of iconic British artist and cartoonist Ralph Steadman. Even if his name is not familiar, his confronting artwork which is full of wonderfully grotesque, cadaverous, deformed figures and distinctive ink and paint splatters will be. His art has graced posters for movies such as Withnail and I and for years his
Read moreFilms with a sinister, all-powerful, self-aware computer threatening to obliterate the human race have almost become a genre unto themselves. There was the creepy HAL trying to scuttle the Jupiter mission in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Skynet triggering the apocalypse in The Terminator, Colossus threatening nuclear annihilation in Colossus: The Forbin Project and the female-voiced computer taunting Shia Labeouf in
Read moreThe Lone Ranger, which began as radio serial in 1933, was a western adventure where the noble white hero, in an optimistically equitable pairing with a native American, triumphed over sweaty fiends in the old west. Given the source material, it was unlikely, the new cinematic version of The Lone Ranger starring Armie Hammer as the titular hero and Johnny
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