Based on an epic book series by Stephen King, The Dark Tower lacks the gravitas I would have expected. The last gunslinger, Roland Deschain (Idris Elba), has been locked in an eternal battle with Walter O’Dim, also known as the man in black (Matthew McConaughey). Deschain is determined to prevent O’Dim from toppling the Dark…
Visual effects aside, there’s nothing much to get excited about in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. This fantasy sci-fi is based on a comic book series, and is written and directed by Luc Besson (Lucy). It’s the 28th century. Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are a team of special operatives charged with…
Highly creative and well orchestrated is this mystery fantasy about grief. Directed by J.A. Bayona (The Impossible), A Monster Calls is a visually stylish, emotional drama. Patrick Ness, who also wrote the screenplay, penned the award winning novel on which it’s based. Twelve year-old Conor O’Malley (Lewis MacDougall) is hardly your conventional kid. He is about to escape…
Terrence’s Malick’s The Tree of Life won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, but it drove me batty because I could not make head nor tail of it. So too David Lowery’s (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) A Ghost Story, which I only understood in the most rudimentary way. It concerns an official ghost. You know the ones,…
Is there really nobody else wondering why the female characters in a King Kong movie are so attracted to this giant ape? Honestly, I’m always asking myself the same question. Is it because Kong “King of all places he appears in” is such an impressive appearance, radiating power and protection? Or is it its primitive…
If you can follow the intricate (at times maddening) plot in Transformers: The Last Knight then “You’re a better man than I, Gunga Din!”. At least that is until Anthony Hopkins’ character pulls together the threads well into the film. It is the fifth film in the series, following on from 2014’s Transformers: Age of Extinction. …
It’s been quite a wait, but Philip Pullman fans can expect new work from the author of the hugely successful His Dark Materials series. The first volume of the highly-anticipated The Book of Dust will be La Belle Sauvage. The book will be published simultaneously on 19 October 2017 by Penguin Random House Children’s and David Fickling Books…
Pirates just want to have fun! Dead Men Tell No Tales is the fifth instalment in the successful film franchise originally based on the Pirates Of The Caribbean theme ride at Disneyland, and the series has so far grossed over $3.7 billion at the box office, making it one of the most successful film franchises…
Guy Ritchie (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) puts his own take – a gritty, modern edge – to the classic Excalibur myth and the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. Arthur is not yet king, instead a ruffian, a thoroughly reluctant hero compelled to discover…
Talk about throwing the kitchen sink at a movie – it appears the filmmakers behind Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 have pulled together every cockamamie idea they could think of and left it there on screen for the world to see. The heart of the story is a familial relationship concerning a megalomaniacal father,…
