Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is the only Spider-Man in his universe but when he encounters portal creating villain the Spot (Jason Schwartzman), Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) re-enters his life, introducing him to more Spider-People than he could’ve ever imagined, led by Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac).
Five years ago, Into the Spider-Verse blew everyone’s minds and now the anticipated sequel is here. Can they capture lightning in a bottle once again? They sure can!
Across the Spider-Verse is once again a stunning piece of animation. Not only does each Spider-Person look so different they are often animated in different ways making them each standout. It’s not just the individual characters but it’s the worlds they inhabit too that benefit from this care and attention. The colour scheme and style of Gwen’s New York is vastly different to Miles’ New York for example, and the same can be said for the other universes the characters visit. Gwen’s world is especially beautiful. The Spider-Gwen comics are one of the few comic series I read years ago and the pastels and almost water-colour styling from the comics are what builds up her world in the film which is a really nice touch. (more…)
In 1936, archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is hired by the US government to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis can obtain its awesome powers.
As the latest Indiana Jones film will soon be upon us, I decided to revisit the previous four films for the first time in about 15 years. I watched the original trilogy for the first time in 2008 in order to see Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in the cinema with friends who’d grown up watching Indy, and I’ve seen bits and pieces of all the films over the years since but I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen them in their entirety since the first time I watched them. So, in some ways this will be like watching them for the first time.
Raiders of the Lost Ark is a bit good, isn’t it? It’s proper old school filmmaking and it’s such a fun and exiting film. It surprised me how many of the iconic Indiana Jones moments happen in this film, the fact that the rolling boulder sequences is in the film’s opening and there’s still a lot of brilliant action sequences still to come is wonderful. Raiders of the Lost Ark really has become the blueprint for action-adventure films like The Mummy and National Treasure and it’s great to see where some of the tropes originated or gained popularity from. (more…)
Trigger warnings for racism, death of a loved one, rape, and drug use.
Eighteen-year-old Daunis’ mixed heritage has always made her feel like an outsider, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation, and after a family tragedy puts her college plans on hold, the only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother Levi’s hockey team. But when she witnesses a shocking murder, she reluctantly agrees to be part of a covert FBI operation into a series of drug-related deaths. But the deceptions – and deaths – keep piling up and soon the threat strikes too close to home. Now Daunis must decide what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she’ll go to protect her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known.
While Firekeeper’s Daughter is certainly a mystery, it is definitely a slow burn one and it’s the characters and the relationships that are more of the focus of the story. It’s more a story of culture, identity, and belonging with Daunis trying to find a place for herself and dealing with her grief even as she is trying to learn enough to stop anyone else from getting hurt. The grief Daunis feels is palpable and is almost like a shadow over the whole novel as she tries to work her way through it and understand that different people deal with grief in different ways. Daunis has lost a lot of people she cared about and how she tries to compartmentalise it all is very relatable.
Daunis as a character doesn’t really have an arc as such. She’s always been a good and caring person, but it’s as her world shifts as she learns more about the people in the community she grew up with, that her world-view has to change to accept these new truths. She has always been sure of who she is in terms of her heritage with a white mother and Ojibwe father and she’s always felt connected to her people, it’s just that almost everyone else has seen her as one or the other, never both – or they see her as not good enough to be one or the other. (more…)
Edgin (Chris Pine), a charming thief, and his band of unlikely allies undertake an epic heist to steal a great treasure including a powerful ancient relic, from Forge (Hugh Grant), a double-crossing political leader, and Sofina (Daisy Head), a dangerous wizard.
I’m not someone who grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons, in fact I’ve only played a campaign once an that was during lockdown over Zoom and I had very little clue as to what I was doing. So, when it comes to any references or homages to the game this film might have, I don’t have the knowledge to notice these things so I very much went into Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves as just someone who likes fantasy stories. Plus there’s the fact it was a story about thieves and features heists – two things a love in media.
I enjoyed Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves a ridiculous amount. The setting is very much a generic fantasy land with taverns, grand castles, and a variety of creatures including dragons. However, it works because the sense familiarity in the setting and genre tropes means the odd differences standout more and having a shorthand on how this fantasy world works means there can be more focus on the characters and the plot. (more…)
With Nike’s basketball division failing, sport marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) sets out to beat the competition – Converse and Adidas – and sign basketball rookie Michael Jordan.
Air fits into one of my favourite subgenres of film – people being really good at their jobs. There’s something really satisfying about seeing people work hard, believe in what they’re doing and working together. Plus, there’s the element of it being an underdog story which always works well in sports movies. It also does the most important thing a sports film can do, make a sport understandable and interesting for anyone, no matter how much or little they know about the sport which is basketball in this instance.
Air is superbly directed with director Ben Affleck making a bunch of phone calls absolutely thrilling. It’s a testament to how good the script is when it makes a story where you know the ending so engaging. It’s also a surprisingly funny film and is downright hilarious at times thanks mostly due to Chris Messina’s David Falk, Michael Jordan’s agent. Any phone call between him and Damon is excellent and usually a bit chaotic too. (more…)
With the price on his head always increasing, John Wick (Keanu Reeves) finds a way to defeat the High Table; kill the Marquis (Bill Skarsgård) in single combat and win his freedom.
Obviously we got to talk about the action as that’s what the John Wick franchise has become known for and Chapter 4 takes things to a whole other level. There are probably about half a dozen sequences which could be the standout in any film so that fact there’s so many exciting and impressive sequences in one film is something to be commended. For a fourth film in an unlikely franchise to be this good and to take its characters and the action to levels we haven’t seen before is really something else. The final act is action on a level and like the sequences before it, it knows how to have some fun with it.
One of the things that makes the many thrilling action sequences work, besides from being well shot, edited, lit, and choreographed, is that many of the key characters are motivated by things other than revenge and desire for a big payday. It’s loyalty and family that drives most of them. Whether that’s blood family like new characters Shimazu and his daughter Akira (Hiroyuki Sanada and Rina Sawayama), or family of choice like John, Winston (Ian McShane) and Charon (Lance Reddick), or even the family that the Tracker (Shamier Anderson) has with his attack dog. These characters have something to fight for other than themselves and it makes any threat they face feel more real and there’s consequences for the decisions they make. (more…)
Imagine a world where your phone is too big for your hand, where your doctor prescribes a drug that is wrong for your body, where in a car accident you are 47% more likely to be seriously injured, where every week the countless hours of work you do are not recognised or valued. If any of this sounds familiar, chances are that you’re a woman. Invisible Women shows us how, in a world largely built for and by men, we are systematically ignoring half the population. It exposes the gender data gap – a gap in our knowledge that is at the root of perpetual, systemic discrimination against women, and that has created a pervasive but invisible bias with a profound effect on women’s lives.
Invisible Women is one of those books that simultaneously super interesting but also super frustrating. I love how with all its stats from countries around the world and its in-depth look at different industries and situations, it puts words to the ideas or feelings I had about life as a woman in the world. There’s the stock phrases like “representation matters” but Invisible Women goes more in-depth than just the idea of “seeing is believing”.
I liked how it goes into the biological differences between men and women and how things like mobile phones getting increasingly larger is fine for men to use one-handed but it’s more difficult for women as the phones are designed with men’s hands in mind and they are usually larger than women’s hands. It’s easy to think that anything men can do, women can do but that’s not the case when the equipment they need to use to do X thing aren’t designed for a woman’s body. I know I’m guilty of thinking that I “can be just as good as a man” when it comes to different things if we have the same time or training, but Invisible Women showed how so much “standard” equipment like PPE, high-vis jackets, and stab vests are designed for a man’s physique aka someone without breasts and perhaps narrower hips and a larger face, which means they are more uncomfortable for women or even don’t work as they should as they’re not designed for their body shape. It’s really enlightening and though as Invisible Women shows there’s still a lot of data missing, it’s ridiculous that what data there is has yet to cause any changes in various industries. Though as the book progresses and shows how the majority of decision makers, whether in government or industry, are men it’s maybe not a such a surprise that women’s needs aren’t seen as such a priority. (more…)
Adonis “Donnie” Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) never knew his famous father, world heavyweight champion Apollo Creed, who died in the ring before he was born. Fighting is in his blood and Donnie tracks down his father’s former rival turned friend Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) to ask him to train him.
While Creed is a sequel/part of the Rocky franchise, it’s definitely the kind of clever “reboot” where you can watch it without knowing anything of the previous films. That certainly what I did the first time I watched it and I loved it then, just as I loved it this time. I won’t lie though, there is something nice to see the references and call backs to the previous films in this one and there’s the odd scene that has maybe a bit more emotional weight knowing what came before it decades ago.
The other smart thing Creed does is how it balances the legacy of this franchise with what Donnie as a character is going through. Donnie wants to carve out his own name for himself and not just get things handed to him because of his family name, but as things progress he comes to a realisation that he can be his own man but that doesn’t change the fact of who his father is. He can embrace the name “Creed” without living in his father’s shadow. The film itself goes a similar route and while it is no doubt an excellent film on its own, embracing what came before it just adds something extra special to Creed.
There are still fights in Creed but it’s really the characters and their everyday relationship drama which is the focus of this film. That’s not to say they skimp on the fights, when they’re there, they’re exciting and well shot. The fight about midway through the film is a standout as while I’m sure there’s the computer trickery putting in the edits where needed, it looks like the whole fight, including when each boxer is in their corner in between each round, is all in one take. It really immerses you in the action and I have no clue how they got the cuts to appear on each fighter’s face without you seeing the makeup artists.
Michael B. Jordan is excellent in Creed and conveys that emotional turmoil of trying to find a place to belong and a family without just living off your famous relatives’ names. The family he builds is Rocky, who he starts calling “Unc” pretty much as soon as they met much to Rocky’s bemusement, Bianca (Tessa Thompson), his musician girlfriend, and his adoptive mother Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad). I kind of loved what Creed says about family because here’s Rocky that’s lost his wife and best friend/brother-in-law and his own son lives in another country, so while he doesn’t have any close blood family either, with Donnie’s help he also gets a second chance at a different kind of family.
Stallone is just jaw-droppingly good in Creed and his Rocky is just tired and almost willing to give up on life until Donnie comes along. Their relationship is at the core of this film and they both push at each other to keep fighting.
Everything about Creed is so well done which shouldn’t be a surprise now with hindsight as director and co-writer Ryan Coogler repeatedly surrounds himself with excellent artists and collaborators. Composer Ludwig Göransson’s score has its own vibe to it but when it incorporates the Rocky theme it does so at just the right moment.
In the era of reboots/legacy sequels Creed is far better than probably anyone was expecting. It does exactly what it set out to do, pay homage to great characters like Rocky and Apollo while forging a new character in Donnie that can stand on their own two feet. Creed blends emotion, drama, and high stakes fights brilliant and overall, it is an excellent film, whether you’ve seen the Rocky films or not. 5/5.
After a computer-generated matchup between current heavyweight champion Mason ‘The Line’ Dixon (Antonio Tarver) and ex-champ Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) puts Balboa as the winner. Dixon’s people look to make the match a reality. Meanwhile Rocky’s looking for a way to process his grief and decides to come out of retirement to try and find some purpose – even if that means he’ll face an opponent who’s faster, stronger and thirty years his junior.
Maybe it’s because I’ve watched all the previous Rocky films so close together but Rocky Balboa did get me a bit emotional a couple of times. Where we see Rocky now at this stage of his life just feels right for the character. He’s still grieving for his beloved Adrian and it becomes clear that he hasn’t even started processing his feelings and grief even though she’s been gone a few years now. Stallone is wonderful in the scenes by her grave and when talking to Paulie (Burt Young) about his memories of her.
Rocky’s got his own restaurant and has a decent life for himself even if he’s not as close to his son Robert (Milo Ventimiglia) as he’d like. Their relationship was interesting and not what I was expecting because there’s a lot of love there, it’s just Robert doesn’t know how to step out of his father’s shadow.
A trope I tend to love is unlikely friendships, especially when the two friends are different generations or genders and Rocky Balboa surprised me by having that. Rocky meets bartender Marie (Geraldine Hughes) and their friendship is really sweet, especially when Rocky is up front about not being over his wife and Marie wasn’t expecting anything like that anyway. It was a fresh dynamic compared to the familial relationships Rocky already has and worked really well.
The final fight in Rocky Balboa is one of my favourites in the series. Just how it’s shot and edited together, along with moments that are in black and white with just a pop of red for either fighter’s blood was so cool and engaging and made it stand out after seeing a bunch of other Rocky fights very recently.
Rocky Balboa is about an aging fighter battling with his emotions and still putting on one hell of a fight in the ring. Obviously there’s the Creed films where you get to see more of Rocky and how his life turned out, but even if you didn’t I think this is a wonderful place to leave the character. He gets one last hurrah and is surrounded by those he cares about which is all anyone like Rocky could want. 5/5.
When Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) realises he’s on the last of his nine lives, he sets out to find the mythical Last Wish and restore his nine lives.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish has finally been released in the UK and I’m happy to say it was worth the wait. Considering it’s been over ten years since previous Puss in Boots film and the Shrek franchise is one of those things that makes us millennials feel old when they realise how long it’s been since those films were at their peak, it is kind of impressive how great The Last Wish is.
Everything about The Last Wish just works from story and character to the brilliant animation. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse clearly shook up how animated films could be as there’s elements used in The Last Wish that are as dynamic and entertaining as that film as it moves away from the standard late-2000s 3D animation and instead uses impressionistic imagery not seen in this franchise before. The colours pop, the fight sequences are thrilling, and some of the new character designs are fantastic. Special mention goes to the Wolf (Wagner Moura) who is a looming presence as they’re on Puss’s trail, that character is one of the most interesting in design and in character motivation.
The action and adventure is there from the outset as Puss takes on a giant creature to save a town but it’s how The Last Wish tackles Puss’s character arc that was really surprising. He reluctantly teams up with a chihuahua (Harvey Guillén) and his old flame Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) and how the friendship between these three develops is great. For a character like Puss whose defining characteristics is his bravery and being a swashbuckling hero, seeing him face up to his mortality and how that can affect how he sees himself was really interesting and sincere.
As Puss searches for the Last Wish, other characters come into play including Goldilocks and the three bears (Florence Pugh, Olivia Colman, Ray Winston, and Samson Kayo), and Jack Horner (John Mulaney) who all have their own reasons for wanting to be the one to get to the Last Wish first. Amazingly all these extra characters still have their own satisfying arcs that aren’t underdeveloped and they way the story brings everyone together to resolve things in a heartfelt way is impressive.
Honestly, I think “impressive” is the word to describe Puss in Boots: The Last Wish because it’s far more entertaining and visually interesting than one ever could’ve thought it’d be. The way it twists fairy tales/nursery rhymes is fun, it has humour and heart throughout, and it’s just a beautiful film to look at with a wonderful story. 5/5.
Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is the only Spider-Man in his universe but when he encounters portal creating villain the Spot (Jason Schwartzman), Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) re-enters his life, introducing him to more Spider-People than he could’ve ever imagined, led by Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac).
Elena Square Eyes 