Chris At The Pictures

Wednesday, 3 October 2018

'Venom' - Review

venom 10/03/2018 02:24:00 pm 13

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Here is Sony Pictures' second attempt to build a Marvel universe to rival Disney's (stop laughing, they're deadly serious). Venom - seemingly dumped on our world from a rip in the space-time continuum splicing the year 2005 with the present day - sits comfortably alongside the likes of Elektra, Ghost Rider and Daredevil. Grimdark pretentions? Check. Positioning of protagonist as edgy antihero? Check. Ludicrous rubber costumes? I wish.

Star of the show here is the eponymous blob, a parasitical alien which attaches to a living host and imbues them with superhuman abilities. Venom finds a vehicle in smug, down-on-his-luck journalist, Eddie Brock (a spectacularly miscast Tom Hardy). "You look like shit!" exclaims the owner of Brock's local corner shop, as he swaggers cooly past with hair perfectly styled, sporting just the right kind of stubble and trendier clothes than anyone else within fifty miles.

He's on the trail of billionaire Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), a cardboard cutout superviallain obsessed with human-symbiote experimentation. Brock's investigation (assisted by an upsettingly underused Jenny Slate) exposes him to one of the parasites. Hence, Venom - a giant, foul-mouthed monster with a penchant for biting people's heads off - is born.

But before the beast is unleashed, we must suffer an hour of 'Superhero Origin Stories for Dummies', replete with a plodding romance subplot (Hardy and a bored, bewigged Michelle Williams conjure no chemistry), unintelligible action sequences and broiling inner turmoil. At least, that's what one assumes Hardy is going for with his Jim Carrey-esque line in spittle and shrieking.

When the latter half finally sees Venom emerge, things fail to improve. An age rating promising gory ultra-violence is all bark and no bite, with most antagonists dispatched in a blur of swinging tentacles and nondescript crunching sounds. The genuinely enticing body-horror aspects of the comic book source are buried, and the Bronson star's clear commitment to depraved lunacy proves all for naught.

It's difficult to see loyal fans of the Venom character - still searching for salvation after Spider-Man 3 - getting back on board (incidentally, the producer who insisted upon Venom's involvement in said misfire, Avi Arad, returns to supervise this outing). As a disposable piece of popcorn fodder, it's merely hopeless. As the basis of a major cinematic enterprise, it's poison.

Wednesday, 26 September 2018

'Mile 22' - Review

thriller 9/26/2018 07:29:00 pm 0

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Director Peter Berg’s trademark patriotism mutates into the jingoism we all feared lay beneath the surface in this relentlessly nasty film. Mark Wahlberg (in his and Berg’s fourth joint op) stars as Jimmy Silver, a US overwatch soldier tasked with escorting top-priority informant, Li Noor (The Raid star Iko Uwais), out of hostile territory.

This is the sort of machismo-fuelled bulletfest that seems to fly in the face of everything the Berg/Wahlberg duo have rallied against in their previous efforts. Whether the raw and upsetting nihilism of Lone Survivor, the fallout of corporate neglect in Deepwater Horizon, or the devastation of ordinary lives in Patriot's Day the pair have always dealt with violence and heroism. The downfall of Mile 22 is its oblivious conflation of the two.

First-time scribes Graham Roland and Lee Carpenter fumble every possible opportunity for emotional resonance, clearly hoping that bravado alone will save them having to write anything resembling a character. Wahlberg is an instantly irritating screen presence here; a rubber band-fiddling pottymouth whose bad behaviour is excused by various, non-specified mental disorders. The film posits him as a good man caught in horrific circumstances. Don’t be fooled: Silver is unsympathetic and risible from the word go. We’re supposed to be cheering him on, but the only applause you’d hear within a million miles of this film is if the audience was asked - likely at gunpoint - to clap every time there’s a cut.

The editing (choppy or sloppy, it’s hard to tell) is about as graceful as a dozen blows to the head, and renders Uwais’ signature talent for balletic martial artistry totally mute. Everything from car chases to firefights to boardroom debriefings blend into one unintelligible mass of hurled insults, cruel splatter and American flags. It’s impossible to tell what’s going on, where it’s all happening, why you’re supposed to care and, crucially, when it’s all going to stop.

Thursday, 26 July 2018

'Mission: Impossible - Fallout' - Review

ving rhames 7/26/2018 12:04:00 am 0

★ ★ ★ ★ ½

One doesn’t often clamour to declare a franchise’s sixth instalment its finest hour - unless you happened to be me in the immediate aftermath of Revenge of the Sith - and yet, here we are. Mission: Impossible - Fallout leaves no nail unchewed in its quest to outdo every previous instalment (nay, every action movie released in the last decade) with minimal digital trickery and maximum physical impact.

The plot (largely surplus to the requirement of whichever death wish Tom Cruise fancied living out during that day’s filming) finds Ethan Hunt and company (Cruise, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Rebecca Ferguson) in pursuit of stolen nuclear material. Given Ethan’s propensity for going rogue, he’s lumped with the CIA’s favourite blunt instrument, August Walker (Henry Cavill).

With both the CIA and a shady organisation known as The Syndicate on their tail, how do they intend to do all this? “I’ll figure it out” is the general mantra adopted by Hunt, his put-upon comrades, and director Christopher McQuarrie. And figured it out, he has. Every set piece - whether it’s a motorcycle chase into oncoming traffic in Paris, a rooftop pursuit in London, or an actual HALO jump performed thirty thousand feet in the air - surges with unbelievable adrenaline, each more thrilling than the last. Even in a standard cinema, the IMAX footage (including said skydive) shines brightest of all, the lack of stuntmen in Cruise’s stead laid beautifully bare.

Cruise - who broke his ankle in a comparatively minor stunt, leaping between rooftops (just another day at the office!) - continues to display levels of physical aptitude suited to a man half his age, but his portrayal of Hunt still stands even when removed from the sheer spectacle. With a history such as his, our favourite IMF operative is an understandably twitchy presence who smiles little and frets often, fueled by the desire to prevent nightmares of his lost love, Julia (Michelle Monaghan), from becoming reality.

Cavill, by contrast, is statuesque and supplied with a resolute workman’s grin. Justice League died so his moustache could live, and it proved a necessary sacrifice. Ditching the clean-shaven boy scout look serves him well in a role that seems tailor-made for his physical prowess and roughshod charisma, not least during a furious bathroom showdown that calls to mind the most chest-shattering moments of Gareth Evans’ The Raid 2.

Whilst images crunch the bones, pulses are pounded by Lorne Balfe’s score, which hits the ground running from the opening logos and barely pauses for breath. It’s not packed with memorable cues (the Lalo Schifrin original theme is given some fancy reworks), but Balfe should be commended for his ability to deliver music to match the mayhem.

As is standard practice for the franchise, this entry suffers from a convoluted plot, and works best when it sheds the scheming and puts pedal to metal. McQuarrie and Cruise know that in a post-Mad Max: Fury Road landscape, simplicity is key. With an action sequence involving a fleet of trucks, cars, explosions and flamethrowing guitarists now embedded in the moviegoing consciousness, there’s no further you can go (besides maybe filming the entire thing in outer space). It’s time to go back to basics, and maybe the greatest victory of Fallout is achieving the highest possible stakes with the simplest image: a man clinging to a rope. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to survive the final thirty minutes without gripping onto your seat, stuffing your knuckles into your mouth or simply swearing out-loud in disbelief: impossible? I’ll say.

Sunday, 22 July 2018

'Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again' - Review

stellan skarsgard 7/22/2018 11:50:00 am 0

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

This prequel, sequel and so much more than equal to 2008’s surprise smash hit plays to every strength of its ludicrous premise, star-studded cast and indestructible jukebox soundtrack. Amanda Seyfried returns as Sophie, no longer planning the wedding of her dreams but instead a celebration for her recently passed mother and former Dancing Queen, Donna (Meryl Streep). The narrative flits between Sophie’s attempts to do right by her mother, her longing for distant Man After Midnight, Sky (Dominic Cooper) and the past flings of the young Donna (Lily James).

One might argue that having a predisposition to ABBA might make you a tad biased towards Here We Go Again (as the proud inheritor of a signature edition CD of their greatest hits, I plead guilty), but I’d argue that anyone with a beating heart would feel the same. It doesn’t matter how reluctant you feel going in, how utterly illogical the timeframes, nor how much your ears bleed from Pierce Brosnan’s crooning; the instant Seyfried lets loose the first strains of ‘Thank You For The Music’, the battle is all but lost.

The first Mamma Mia is a fun film. The second is a great one. It’s funnier (a single line from Christine Baranski damn near slew me), better-looking, genuinely well-acted and has emotion simply bursting from every pore. James is a total dream in the lead role, and her supporting cast take up the challenge with fizzing aplomb. The three younger incarnations of Sam, Harry and Bill (Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgård hand the stage to Jeremy Irvine, Hugh Skinner and Josh Dylan) are all suitably dashing. Gold stars are awarded to supporting turns from Cher (in a late appearance as Sophie’s grandmother) and Omid Djalili (playing a perfectly po-faced passport officer).

The songs are still largely crowbarred in, but this time around it’s a knowing, satisfying kind of shoehorn delivered by a script that knows exactly what you came for. Besides a smattering or reprisals, the chosen playlist is rife with a selection of underplayed classics (‘Angeleyes’ was a particular hit with my tear ducts) and pushes the boundaries of credulity beyond breaking point: the circumstances surrounding a performance of ‘Fernando’ are so incredulous that you’ll positively (if not literally) shriek with joy. And joy is the dish of the day in this smorgasbord of cheese, cheers and Cher, making Here We Go Again the surest hit of this summer: boy, is it gonna make money, money, money.

Thursday, 19 July 2018

'Whitney' - Review

whitney houston 7/19/2018 01:58:00 pm 0

★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

Like a stone upon the surface of a lake, this documentary detailing the life, labours and loves of pop star Whitney Houston skims close to many truths, but eventually sinks in search of a scoop. Academy award-winning writer-director Kevin MacDonald’s handling of his topic is efficient but oddly heartless: emotional moments (Houston’s famous performance of ‘I Will Always Love You’ in Johannesburg, camera-phone footage of her disastrous comeback tour in 2010), would pack a punch even without the context of the doc’s wider story. Her key chart-toppers are placed by MacDonald and his editor Sam Rice-Edwards into the wider context of America’s various conquests throughout the seventies and eighties and up to the turn of the century, fragmenting the film as it tells the various stages of her story.

Unfortunately, these bookmark montages are emblematic of a wider problem with the film: it’s all about how Whitney’s story unfolded before the world, but never how the world shaped her story or her music. Interviews with various members of her family dig a little deeper into her constant battle with drugs, her sexuality, her family’s background in black gospel singing and what her success meant to that community, but the singer’s own words - already hard to come by, as Houston made very few TV interviews - are notable only by their infrequence. Whitney’s glittering construction and swift pace leaves little room for reflection, with an unedited home video recording of Whitney and her mother, post-performance, serving as the only real pause for thought.

As with Nick Broomfield’s Whitney: Can I Be Me?, perhaps the fault lies with a white British director taking on a subject so inherently tied to the voice of black America in the last decades of the twentieth century. In the case of Kevin MacDonald, we even have a storyteller who, by his own admission, was not fond of Whitney Houston before starting his research and found the whole sorry affair of her death “distasteful”. The whiff of a smoking gun is detected in the air towards the conclusion, but with the Houston family and her closest friends decidedly split about who or what was to blame for her tragic end, it’s a feeble finale.

Thursday, 5 July 2018

'Adrift' - Review

true story 7/05/2018 09:46:00 pm 1

★ ★ ★ ½ ☆

Two great performances keep Baltasar Kormákur’s latest disaster drama resolutely afloat: Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin star as real-life couple Tami Oldham and Richard Sharp, whose voyage from Tahiti to San Diego in 1983 took them directly into the path of Hurricane Raymond. The film plays out in a split time-frame, beginning with Tami waking aboard the wrecked vessel, before flashing back to detail their romance, and leading towards a dual finale.

This narrative structure - in sharp opposition to the linear unravelling of Kormákur’s previous film, Everest - contrasts the sun-kissed days of Tami and Richard’s growing connection against the survival thriller of Raymond’s aftermath. Turning up the cheese to reinforce the grit, it results in an incredibly effective sense of gnawing inevitability, always keeping us one match cut away from tragedy.

Woodley has grown a lot as a performer since the Divergent series that made her the household name of teenage audiences (even in rocky fare like Oliver Stone’s Snowden, she acquits herself well), and here she’s as steadfast as we’ve ever seen her. Her performance walks an impressive line between Sandra Bullock in Gravity and - strangely - Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games series: there’s that same grounded aura of rags-to-resolve as Tami deals with the devastation.

Claflin, too, is excellent. His endless charisma is a valuable asset during the scenes of seaborne young love (i.e. he looks good sailing into port with his shirt hanging open), and his ability to switch from wry humour to wan acceptance sees us through the darker moments. Richard was originally to be played by Miles Teller, and (no offence to Teller) I think the film owes a debt of thanks to those “scheduling conflicts”.

What small amount of artistic liberty the film takes is all to do with pathos, as opposed to narrative neatness. As the remainder pays attention rather than lip service to reality (its approach to the logistics of finding oneself shipwrecked would make for a fine double bill with All Is Lost), small fictional reveries can be forgiven. Adrift may not be a note-perfect depiction of a true event, but as a showcase for two stars at the top of their game; it hits all the right ones.

Tuesday, 3 July 2018

'Sicario 2: Soldado' - Review

thriller 7/03/2018 02:33:00 pm 0

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Picking up where 2015’s grim tale of murky morals on the Mexican border left off, this sequel finds itself squeezing every political pressure point within reach. Josh Brolin returns as CIA operative Matt Graver, tasked with initiating open warfare between the Mexican cartels to dissuade the smuggling of terrorists across the border. He again enlists the mysterious Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), this time to kidnap a crime lord’s daughter (Isabela Moner) and thereby escalate the unrest: they're going to build a war and make Mexico pay for it.

With the triple-threat of helmsman Denis Villeneuve, cinematographer Roger Deakins and star Emily Blunt now absent, this descent into destruction loses all direction and grace, becoming - ironically - a rather blunt instrument. I didn’t think Sicario had a heart in the first place, but without Blunt’s Kate Macer as the moral anchor, Soldado becomes a one-way ticket to rock bottom for all parties involved. “Rules of engagement, sir?” asks a squadmate of Graver’s as they prepare for a stand-off. “Fuck it all”, comes the response.

Nowhere is the shrugging off of anything less dour than a Nietzschean tract more apparent than this moment, Graver having already dismissed POTUS as “cowardly” for not wanting to cause the destabilisation of a neighbouring country. Taylor Sheridan returns as screenwriter, and makes it his mission to push all the MAGA era buttons he can before someone pries his fingers from the typewriter. The film opens with Mexican immigrants swarming towards the border, ISIS suicide bombers concealed within their ranks. An entire subplot is dedicated to the training of a young Mexican trafficker (Elijah Rodriguez). Disturbingly realistic dramatisations of atrocities committed on American soil are delivered in clear detail while later images of Mexican children and parents boarding separate buses are casually, even callously dismissed before we move to more masculine brooding.

Sheridan still has problems writing women, too: Kate Macer may have been our way into Sicario, but her feminine traits were unsubtly coded as simply daring to have ideals in the first place, used only as a contrast to the more pragmatic Graver and the morally suspect Alejandro. In Soldado, the only women with substantial speaking roles are Catherine Keener as a hawk-like overseer, and Moner, who's (still magnetic) turn as political prisoner becomes little more than a device to draw out development for Alejandro and plot exposition from everyone else. Del Toro is a gripping presence, as one would expect, but Brolin - bereft of any challenger - simply stomps about with his chin forward.

Director Stefano Sollima (Suburra) is no stranger to underworld unrest, and his teaming up with d.o.p. Dariusz Wolski (Alien: Covenant) makes for some appropriately forbidding imagery. Everything’s either blistering desert sunlight or spotlit shadows, both colour-timed to whichever shade of grey fits the current philosophical mood. Soldado’s nihilism, however (largely displayed in explosive but uninvolving action scenes), becomes wearing all too soon. An epilogue that further hammers home this franchise’s Gospel of Matthew, “violence begets more violence” message offers no solution to its central conflict, nor to the real-life horrors it purports to represent.

'Patrick' - Review

tom bennett 7/03/2018 09:58:00 am 0

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Even by the usual standards of pet-centred pictures, this film of asinine canine antics is one for the pound. Beattie Edmonson is put-upon English teacher Sarah, whose grandmother passes away and leaves the irritable singleton her prized pug, Patrick. Before long, the poop-happy pooch is wrecking her flat, embarrassing her in front of the neighbours and thwarting all attempts for Sarah to be rid of him. The most unbelievable part of an extortionately convoluted plot is that, in the age of sickly viral videos and entire social media campaigns dedicated to them, a pug would be impossible to sell (I’ll bet that somewhere on the cutting room floor lies a scene in which Patrick gets his own Instagram).

And it is a frankly labyrinthine tangle of a story for a (supposedly) cutesy kids movie. Sarah must face a possible eviction, carjacking pupils (who, of course, all look about 25), a rotten family, a fun run, nasty rival teachers, and two possible suitors. They arrive in the form of the frankly awful Ed Skrien and Tom Bennett, both almost unrecognisable beneath pained expressions that exude less “Kiss me” and more “Kill me”. Everyone - Edmonson included - looks like they wish they were somewhere else, while Jennifer Saunders looks like she should be somewhere else, staggering in from the sidelines every now and again to offer everyone cake when she should be offering them criminal compensation.

Patrick, meanwhile, wanders about causing every manner of upset, all carried off with the comic timing of a particularly bad episode of The Chuckle Brothers and the editing skills of a toddler. Impressively, for a film in which the dopey dog single-handedly demolishes Sarah’s apartment, none of his messes ever quite outshine the script itself: a screenplay relying on coincidences so eye-rolling they’d have you throwing up if the dialogue didn’t already. Too tortuous for tots and too cloying for parents, it makes 90 minutes feel like 90 millenia.

Wednesday, 6 June 2018

'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom' - Review

toby jones 6/06/2018 10:42:00 pm 0

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

The park has gone and so has all direction and imagination in this interminable continuation of the Jurassic Park franchise. With neither the depth of Spielberg’s first adventure, the scare factor of his under-appreciated sequel, nor the nostalgic charm of 2015’s Jurassic World (the less said of Jurassic Park III, the better), this entry settles for retreading old ground. With the facility at Isla Nublar in ruins (again), a shady businessman plans to airlift the dinosaurs back to the mainland (again) in order that they may be exploited for military purposes (again), and also to spite his more aged and more peace-loving mentor (again).

As for our heroes, Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) is now a stringent dinosaur-rights activist, and she begrudgingly recruits Owen (Chris Pratt) to assist in saving the remaining dinosaurs from Isla Nublar’s suddenly active volcano. That is, before the doomed creatures are plucked from deliverance by Rafe Spall as the aforementioned suit, armed with a smile as untrustworthy as your average social media privacy policy.

Director J.A. Byona and cinematographer Óscar Faura do their best to bring some semblance of awe to proceedings, but returning screenwriters Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly’s script suffocates the Spanish duo’s usual flair for likeable characters and haunting imagery. There are some glimpses of the young Richard Dreyfuss in Pratt’s portrayal of Owen, but not enough to prevent him slipping into Star Lord-lite. Howard goes all in on the running (appropriately booted this time around) and screaming, and is easily the most watchable human presence. A new sidekick played by Justice Smith is immediately annoying, and his disappearance from the middle act would be a relief, were it not another indicator of the feckless screenplay losing track of who’s where and why.

“Why?” is a question I found myself asking a lot during this film. Mostly “Why aren’t I just at home watching Jurassic Park?”. The re-heated narrative structure, knock-off set pieces (we’re treated to re-runs of the museum showdown and The Lost World’s downtown dinos), plus a perfunctory appearance from Jeff Goldblum continuously serve to remind us of movies we’d rather be watching. And it’s never scary. Not once. My entire generation can attest to the nightmares of poor Eddie being bisected by the T-Rex pair in The Lost World, and the most this softened rehash can muster is ‘occasional bloody moments’. A largely dialogue-free prologue featuring some truly stunning imagery of monsters in the moonlight is the closest we come to genuine thrills, which is more than can be said for the genetically-enhanced ‘Indoraptor’, introduced by Toby Jones doing his best Donald Trump impression.

This creature is another of the screenplay’s walking clunkers: it’s sold to us as the fusion between Jurassic World’s Indominus Rex and a Velociraptor. A key plot point of the previous film was that the multi-breed Indominus was part-Raptor, and could therefore weaponise Owen’s pack against him. Did they just add more? Extra raptor with your half-raptor, sir? The Indominus - while not particularly chilling - served as a neat analogy for Hollywood’s misunderstanding that bigger equals better. The Indoraptor’s purpose seems to be to remind us that...er...rich people can be greedy and stupid? I don’t need the film to tell me that: that it exists at all is proof enough.

Thursday, 17 May 2018

'Deadpool 2' - Review

zazie beetz 5/17/2018 09:15:00 pm 1

★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

Leftover goodwill from 2016’s surprise smash hit doesn’t go the distance in this formulaic and overcranked sequel, which sees Ryan Reynolds slip back into the red onesie. Wade Wilson/Deadpool is mired in a depressive downturn after his wife, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin, who somehow has even less to do this time around), is murdered. His attempts to make amends for his mistakes by joining the X-Men are swiftly shot down when his a botched mission lands him in jail beside Russell (Julian Dennison), a teenage mutant with a highly combustible nature. They’re soon on the run from Josh Brolin’s Cable, a time-travelling cyborg with little patience for the titular twerp’s smart mouth.

Sadly, it’s an attribute with which I entirely sympathise. I was never the world’s biggest fan of the first film, but was found myself won over - almost reluctantly - by its irreverence towards the wider superhero movie landscape. Plus, the years spent in development hell and a need for justice after Fox’s criminal representation of Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine gave it a strangely underdog status. Now, removed from it’s lowly spot on the studio ladder and armed with a budget more in-keeping with your average blockbuster, the fourth-wall breaks, extreme violence and juvenile humour seem far less subversive than before.

There are still plenty of jokes that land (I missed the second big laugh of the film as my eyes were still watering from a sharp inhalation of drink at the opening visual gag), but if you’re not one for dick jokes or endless pop culture references, you’re in a for a rough ride. A grotesque and potentially brilliant Basic Instinct nod is ruined by a character saying out-loud “Basic Instinct!”.

There’s also a streak of self-fellating hypocrisy to some of the comedy which didn’t sit well with me. One aside sees The Merc With The Mouth mockingly refer to Deadpool creator Rob Liefield’s inability to draw feet, yet the artist receives a ‘special thanks to’ credit. Also, for the plentiful supply of jokes aimed at white men getting away with sexual assault, accused abuser T.J. Miller returns as Weasel. The producers claimed “We’re in the final editing” when the accusations emerged, but in an age where Ridley Scott can re-shoot half a movie in the wake of such allegations, that sort of excuse won’t fly.

David Leitch (John Wick, Atomic Blonde) replaces Tim Miller behind the camera this time, and his snappy, brutal approach to combat feels too...much. Action in a Deadpool film should be light and wacky, but the prison break sequence involving Cable and a horde of armoured guards is the wrong kind of bone-crunching. The creaky visual effects have been given a massive overhaul, but a smattering of the set pieces still remain dutifully small of scale, or openly reject the opportunity for mass carnage (see a hilariously anticlimactic skydiving sequence).

But for all its mockery of everything from shared universes to rival comic giant, DC, Deadpool 2 inexorably stumbles in the same potholes as those it purports to subvert. The villain is a grimdark bore. There’s an overblown vehicle chase. Emotional beats fall flat or are immediately interrupted by snark. And, of course, there’s a Stan Lee cameo.

And yet, Reynold’s clear affection for the character and crusade to please the comic fans for better or worse is undeniably admirable. He’s enjoying himself, and he wants you to share that joy. It’s great that Julian Dennison has landed such a spotlight so soon after his breakthrough appearance in Hunt for the Wilderpeople. It’s great that Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hilderbrand) gets to have a girlfriend. It’s great that Zazie Beetz’ Domino (a new ally blessed with a superhuman lucky streak) gets to be a confident action heroine with visible, unmocked armpit hair. There are so many small victories against the usual pitfalls of major comic book fodder, but Deadpool 2’s adherence to a plethora of similar tropes and a suffocatingly smug sense of humour threaten to turn them pyrrhic. “Maximum effort”? Not quite.

Chris At The Pictures

Wednesday, 3 October 2018

'Venom' - Review

Wednesday, 26 September 2018

'Mile 22' - Review

Thursday, 26 July 2018

'Mission: Impossible - Fallout' - Review

Sunday, 22 July 2018

'Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again' - Review

Thursday, 19 July 2018

'Whitney' - Review

Thursday, 5 July 2018

'Adrift' - Review

Tuesday, 3 July 2018

'Sicario 2: Soldado' - Review

'Patrick' - Review

Wednesday, 6 June 2018

'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom' - Review

Thursday, 17 May 2018

'Deadpool 2' - Review

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