Nearly 25 years after Gladiator, Ridley Scott has gone back to the well… and this time there are sharks in the Colosseum. In Gladiator II, Russell Crowe, who played Maximus in the original, is only seen in a couple of quick throwback scenes. But even with the focus squarely on his son, Lucius (Paul Mescal),…
Hot on the heels of the release of the excellent TV-adaptation of Red Queen on Prime Video comes the second book in the Antonia Scott and Jon Gutiérrez series: Black Wolf by Juan Gómez-Jurado (translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia). The series plays on a fairly standard Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson format. Antonia…
If I say “who you gonna call”; you say… “Ghostbusters”, right? And that kind of sums up where this franchise is at. It’s all about familiarity now. Originality and nuance have long since left the building as the producers look for ways to tap into nostalgia, while at the same time introducing a younger audience…
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s fantasy novel City of Last Chances came out earlier this year and was marketed as a stand alone. That was a richly conceived fantasy novel centring on a city under occupation and a revolt that brews and explodes on its streets. There was so much world building around the city of Ilmar and…
Puss in Boots (the voice of Antonio Banderas) first appeared in Shrek 2 in 2004, before showing up again in a couple of other Shrek sequels and then a standalone film in 2011. Now the swashbuckling adventurer returns in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. This time, he’s facing his biggest challenge – losing his…
Having not seen the original Matrix trilogy, I was totally lost for most of this fourth instalment. I took a while to understand what was going on. But it basically boils down to a simple premise – Neo has to rescue Trinity and they face many obstacles. The action takes place two decades after The…
The wait has been worth it. The outbreak of COIVD-19 significantly delayed the release of A Quiet Place Part II and it is now difficult to watch this film without drawing parallels to the world on a precipice. How I’ve missed quality Hollywood fare of this ilk. Tension characterises the movie, which picks up where…
Doctor Sleep is the latest Stephen King novel to be made into a motion picture. It picks up the story of Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) 40 years after his terrifying stay at the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. Still irrevocably scarred by the trauma he endured as a child at the Overlook, Torrance has fought…
Ten years on, the little family of four in Zombieland: Double Tap are still doing what worked well when the zombie apocalypse first occurred. The rules of survival haven’t changed, though they may have been added to over all the years that Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) and sisters Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) and…
Sicario is a Spanish word used to describe the hitmen associated with Mexican drug cartels. Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario (2015) was a gripping action crime drama set on the border between the US and Mexico. The sequel, Day of the Soldado, doesn’t disappoint. The film is propelled by two antihero protagonists who venture deep into the…
