Keanu Reeves: the Man, the Myth, the Legend
Sometime in the 1990s – thanks to some goofball early roles, a few wobbly performances and the occasional taciturn interview – critics and journalists seemed to latch onto the idea that Keanu Reeves was...
Five Video Games Hollywood Should Adapt Next
Video games are a rich vein of narrative potential that Hollywood is still struggling to mine. It’s often the case that the mediums just don’t translate – after all, spending a couple of hours merely...
How Avengers: Endgame Critiques Franchise Cinema
This article contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame What do you mean critiques? It’s the epic crowning glory of the biggest franchise experiment in film history! Twenty-one films of character...
Writing on Screen: How Biopics Portray Authors
In his essay on Richard Eyre’s Iris Murdoch biopic Iris for the Guardian, Martin Amis claims that ‘very broadly, literature concerns itself with the internal, cinema with the external.’ These supposed...
Why TV is the Best Place for Loki
The beauty of a cinematic universe is that it contains someone for everyone. But if the MCU had anyone close to being a universal fan favourite, Asgard’s most slippery adopted son was it. Loki's charms made...
What’s Next for Marvel’s Women After Black Widow’s Endgame?
Poor Black Widow. Introduced as a skin-tight catsuit, deemed a "monster" for her infertility, and finally sacrificed in favour of a grief-stricken revenge murderer who happens to be a dad. She doesn’t even...
Scene Stealers: Nicholas Hoult in The Favourite
Yorgos Lanthimos' The Favourite is deliberately, unsettlingly claustrophobic – all fish-eye queasiness and endless corridors. Yet it derives much of its brilliance from freedom. Freedom from slavish...
Truth, Lies, and Cinema: A Brief History of Cinematic Propaganda
Film is uniquely suited to act as a vehicle of propaganda; its combination of visual and audio storytelling makes it effective for audiences of different ages and literacy levels. Propaganda is about creating...
10 Moments That Defined Marvel’s Avengers
It's been a long old road to reach the Endgame. 21 films, a crowd of super-powered, wise-cracking heroes, and the biggest box office phenomenon of the 21st century all come to a (sort of) end when Endgame hits...
Scene Stealers: Ian McShane in Hot Rod
He’s Al Swearengen. He’s Lovejoy. He’s Odin. He’s Lancashire’s greatest export since the Jelly Baby. You know him, you fear him, you can’t resist his wild eyes – Ian McShane has us all in the...
A Love Letter to… Hellboy
Pairing the director who calls monsters “the patron saints of our blissful imperfection”, and a comic series about a cat-loving, cigar-smoking demon was a match made in heaven. Though Marvel and DC have...
Where Are They Now?: Shaun of the Dead
15 years ago, the team behind cult Channel 4 sitcom Spaced released their love letter to zombie films, Shaun of the Dead. While it had all the jumps, scares, and apocalyptic doom of a great zombie movie, it...
Top 10 Stephen King Adaptations
Given Stephen King’s relentless success as an author, it seems only natural that gripping adaptations of his work should match this success on screen. Over 50 of King’s novels and short stories have been...
Jake Gyllenhaal: The King is Dead?
"What do you mean my reviews have 'fallen off'?", Jake Gyllenhaal’s art critic Morf Vandewalt snaps defensively in the latest entry into the actor’s impressive filmography, Velvet Buzzsaw. It’s been four...
By the Book: The Sisters Brothers
Patrick deWitt’s 2011 novel The Sisters Brothers is very funny. Jacques Audiard’s new film adaptation of that novel is significantly less funny. Despite (or really, because of) this, the film is a great...