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The other mainstream-adjacent indie movie from a new young horror filmmaker who is seeing success and is currently competing for screens with Obsession. An adaptation of the viral internet trend, which has its initial roots in director Kane Parsons’ horror web series.  The difference between the two films is that A24 gave Parsons a still very modest $10 million budget and some name actors in the…

Director Corey Barker’s indie horror debut feature is becoming something of a viral phenomenon. Made for just $750,000 and acquired after a fierce bidding war by Focus Features and Blumhouse, it received a wide global theatrical release and has grossed $322 million worldwide as of this writing. It’s a fairly tropey genre effort in which a naive but hopelessly romantic early 20-something (Michael…

With the main show having wrapped its five-season 10-year run on  New Year’s Day, here we have the first of what this viewer assumed would be the first of many spinoffs, sequels and prequels across mediums.  That’s not counting the existence of The First Shadow,  the London production of which has already been covered in a post on this blog by this author.  The first of the televisual efforts is…

The Magic Faraway Tree (2026)  The latest attempt by the British Film industry to create its own crossover children’s blockbuster by adapting vintage material,   an attempt to recreate the lightning-in-a-bottle success of Paddington, involves updating this Enid Blyton property for 2026. On paper, the creative team here has given itself a good chance of achieving this. Paddington scribe and…

  Hijack—Season 2.  Episodes watched. 8 of 8.   The first season of this Idris Elba-fronted pseudo-real-time hijacking drama, taking place over 7 episodes on a single transatlantic flight, where Elba very quickly reveals his experience as a hostage negotiator was not exactly great TV, but it was propulsive and silly enough to sustain the runtime as a mild guilty pleasure coasting by on Elba’s…

The fortunes of Pixar in the post-pandemic era have been thoroughly analysed and picked over by a number of different commentators and channels across the board. Well, the studios’ pioneering of the medium is important enough to the state of animation as a whole (they are unquestionably the most important American animation house of the last 40 years)  that their corporate overlords at the House…

Whatever writer-director Celine Song followed up her gorgeous debut feature romantic drama Past Lives(2023) with was immediately going to capture this viewer’s interest. Much as this watcher likes to clown on the ethos and general mindset of the type of watcher who typically seeks out a lot of A24 releases, this was one of their top titles, with its critical acclaim and Oscar nominations…

It feels like every time this author sets out to start a MCU review, there is some semblance of trying to assess both how far the MCU has fallen from its cultural ubiquitous heyday, yet also acknowledging it is perennially “ too big to entirely fail”  on scope of the universe alone Here we have what is in theory, the biggest testament to that mentality. In that Disney through the purchase of 20th…

The adage that sometimes franchises of any sort or medium should be left to run their natural creative course is as old as the concept of the broader franchise model itself. The question is what happens when said intellectual property is simply too valuable and too universal as an effective synonym for an entire microgenre ( in this case, any property involving dinosaurs) for those behind it to…

What are we doing here, guys? Seriously, who wants to try and make The Smurfs of all things a thing as a theatrical animated franchise on its third attempt? I guess your answer would be Paramount, which has now acquired the rights from Sony after the notoriously terrible live-action duology and attempted animated reboot sputtered to an end. To the creatives on the newest entries nebulous credit,…

Spoilers for the ending of John Wick: Chapter 4 The John Wick franchise didn’t invent its style of very stylised physical action on a global scale. That said, what it can very much be credited with is popularising the stylism within an American audience context. Whether it comes from franchise directorial figurehead Chad Stahelski, original director David Leach, who has gone off to make several…

Even as someone who has seen only the 2010 Jackie Chan/ Jaden Smith failed reboot before this one, The Karate Kid franchise is an odd nostalgia beast within the context of 2025. This is entirely thanks to the crossover success of one of the most successful shows to come out of the streaming era, Cobra Kai.  This is not a comment on the show’s quality, as it’s one of the streaming juggernauts this…

As a non-horror fan, generally speaking, Final Destination is one of those franchises known to this writer by a certain level of cultural osmosis. Still, he had never seen one of the movies in full before an IMAX screening of the latest entry.   After a 13-year hiatus since part 5. In fact  In the interest of transparency this might as well be a safe space to admit that the only reason this…

When looking exclusively at his directing credits ( which does seem a little bit unfair, especially in the year where we have the release of the 28 Years Later trilogy (?)   Alex Garland’s directorial career is all over the place, you have a breathtaking debut high in Ex Machina and a strong follow up with Annihilation The rest ranges from meandering disappointint of the miniseries Devs to one of…

In their attempts to become multi-hyphenate creatives in their own right “PlayStation Studios”, the arm of Sony concerned with cross-media adaptations of PlayStation video game properties is certainly not going anywhere debuting with a big fancy new logo animation that was attached to the distinctly below average Uncharted movie starring Mark Wahlberg and Tom Holland. Nevertheless, that film was…

Sometimes, a brand extension is a frankly blatantly obvious lateral move. There’s no better example of that in the recent theatre space than this jukebox musical adaptation of the lovely 2018 British independent film starring Jessie Buckley, Sophie Okonedo, and Julie Walters. Offering the perfect blend of social realism and wish-fulfilment fantasy the film sees Buckley as a fresh out-of-prison…

  Here’s a bizarre case from this author’s perspective. He wants to make abundantly clear, before giving his thoughts on the professionally recorded release of the hugely successful millennial feminist power fantasy musical, that preservation and greater access to these shows is only a good thing. That’s sad in the pantheon of all the live theatre this viewer has seen (having seen the show…