10 h. ago MOVIE REVIEW: Is there much to like in YouTuber's debut horror 'Shelby Oaks?'

Very polished filmmaking shrouded in mystery is influenced a bit too much by other work.

Events

5 d. ago The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants review – swashbuckling, snicker

With a turn by Mark Hamill and a saltily suggestive catchphrase for Patrick, the fourth SpongeBob film shows that anything can still happen in Bikini BottomCould the students who snickered their way through those first SpongeBob adventures have foreseen the franchise persisting 25 years on, even after metabolising the most lysergic pharmaceuticals? Such longevity is partly down to extra-commercial considerations, in that the series has a capacity for tickling adults’ funny bones – possibly even those now fully grown students – as well as the very young. Though it can’t claim anything quite as unexpected as the David Hasselhoff cameo in 2004’s The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie – not so much a high bar as an unforgettably wonky one – feature four thinks nothing of making Clancy Brown talk like a pirate while handing royalty cheques to Barbra Streisand and Yello. Anything can still happen in Bikini Bottom.Preceded by a festive short for Paramount’s other weathered babysitters, the Teenag...

Politics

6 d. ago MOVIE REVIEW: Does thriller 'Bone Lake' manage to stay afloat?

Couples retreat into web of manipulation occasionally drowns in its own ambition.

Science

6 d. ago Song Sung Blue review – Neil Diamond tribute act gets sweet treat of movie thanks to Jackman and Hudson

Film that follows a Milwaukee married couple as they rise to fame with a real-life band called Lightning and Thunder is undeniably entertainingHere is a startlingly strange, undeniably entertaining true-life story from the heartland of American showbusiness; a lovable crowdpleaser whose feelgood flavour won’t prepare you for the way the plot repeatedly and savagely twists like an unsafe fairground ride. I actually had my eyes closed and mouth open at certain key points, and was grabbing the seat in front of me with both fists. It also may yet prove that, yes, Hugh Jackman really is the greatest showman (his role here is much more interesting than his bland impersonation of PT Barnum) and his co-star Kate Hudson brings just the same performance megawattage.Mike and Claire Sardina, terrifically played by Jackman and Hudson, were a Milwaukee married couple with kids from previous relationships who in the 90s formed a cheesy Neil Diamond tribute act called Lightning and Thunder; they be...

Culture

8 d. ago MOVIE REVIEW: We see if Netfix's 'Troll 2' is a monster success of a sequel

Cast remain witty and endearing but many of the story beats feel too familiar.

Politics

9 d. ago Amadeus review – this Mozart series is a pale, petty version of the movie it’s based on

Will Sharpe and Paul Bettany’s new TV drama is flat, airless and banal. It’s a crass affair with a thin, half-hearted performance from SharpeHere’s my position. If you are going to create a miniseries about the life, death and music of one of the defining geniuses of the last 1,000 years of western civilisation, and if you are going to use as your source material a script for a great play that was made into a near-perfect film beloved by almost everyone for its wit and immense, profound themes rendered accessible and moving, and for the fact that it had two of the most extraordinary performances ever committed to what may still then have been celluloid – well, you had better be pretty damn sure that you are bringing something new, exciting, different, richer, cleverer, even more illuminating to the table. Otherwise you are going to look like a bit of a berk.And so, my friends, to the new six-part drama Amadeus, about the life, death and music of Wolfgang A Mozart, one of the definin...

Culture

1 week ago Making Mary Poppins by Todd James Pierce review – the musical brothers behind the movie magic

Bob and Dick Sherman take centre stage in this well-researched account of how Walt Disney created a classicLike many kids of the VHS generation, I must have watched my taped-off-the-telly copy of Disney’s Mary Poppins (1964) well over 100 times. I probably knew every frame as well as Walt Disney himself, who invested 20 years in bringing it to the screen.The culmination of his live action achievements, Mary Poppins remained the project Walt was most proud of. A sophisticated, multi-Oscar-winning musical that proved the House of Mouse was about more than just cartoons, its box office success enabled him to expand his Florida ambitions for Disney World resort and shore up the company’s financial future. Continue reading...

Culture

2 w. ago The Great Flood review – Korean apocalypse movie swerves into sinister sci

The storytelling is brittle, but there is still enjoyment to be had from this story of a mother and child and rescue from a catastrophic flood in SeoulKim Byung-woo’s chimeric but not unenjoyable sixth feature begins like a normal apocalypse movie, with a deluge inundating Seoul. Then it flirts with taking on social stratification baggage as a beleaguered mother tries to climb up her 30-storey apartment block to escape the rising flood waters. But once it is revealed that An-na (Kim Da-mi) is a second-ranking science officer for an indispensable research project, the film becomes a different beast entirely – possibly something quite insidious.As the film gats under way, An-na’s swimming-obsessed six-year-old son Ja-in (Kwon Eun-seong) sees his dreams come true when water begins flooding their apartment. Along with everyone else, they begin pounding the stairs – before corporate security officer Hee-jo (Park Hae-soo) catches up with them and explains that an asteroid impact in Antarc...

Events

2 w. ago Silent Night, Deadly Night review – killer Santa remake is overstuffed

There are too many competing and overfamiliar ideas in this busy slasher reboot that’s sorely lacking in styleThere was a bizarre moral outrage back in November 1984 when seasonal slasher Silent Night, Deadly Night dared to put an axe in the hands of Santa. Despite being, you know, not a real person he was once treated with enough reverence to cause parent-led protests, a ban of all advertising and then of the film itself. It provided a sharp edge to an otherwise blunt and unremarkable post-Halloween knockoff and might help to explain why it managed to eke out four junky sequels and a 2012 remake.We’re now at the inevitable second remake stage but the 2025 redo arrives after the gimmick of Killer Santa has now become a subgenre in itself. He’s cropped up in Christmas Bloody Christmas, Christmas Evil, Santa’s Slay, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, Deadly Games and last year’s Terrifier 3 and the makers of this December’s take are more than aware that seeing Santa with a weapon isn’t e...

Events

2 w. ago ‘A movie diary’: how Letterboxd became a film review haven for the algorithm

The platform’s esoteric watchlists and rating system appeal to cinephiles craving a different mode of discoveryI never thought I would use Letterboxd. The app’s premise of logging reviews of every film you watch felt like counting steps, and I generally prefer to exercise my pretension the old fashioned way – such as getting a BFA or frequenting art house cinema screenings where I am usually the only person under 50 in the theater.But after I wrote about my feelgood movie for the Guardian – that would be Sullivan’s Travels, Preston Sturges’s perfect 1941 satire – I was swayed by two newsroom colleagues. “Hey Alaina, we heard you like movies,” one of them said. “What’s your Letterboxd?” I wanted to be part of the club, and signed up later that night. Now, I write thoughts on every movie I see, usually before I’ve even left the theater or closed out the streamer. Continue reading...

Culture

2 w. ago Film bro finds and ‘crash out cinema’: how Letterboxd became a review haven for the algorithm

The platform’s esoteric watchlists and rating system appeal to cinephiles craving a different mode of discoveryI never thought I would use Letterboxd. The app’s premise of logging reviews of every film you watch felt like counting steps, and I generally prefer to exercise my pretension the old fashioned way – such as getting a BFA or frequenting art house cinema screenings where I am usually the only person under 50 in the theater.But after I wrote about my feelgood movie for the Guardian – that would be Sullivan’s Travels, Preston Sturges’s perfect 1941 satire – I was swayed by two newsroom colleagues. “Hey Alaina, we heard you like movies,” one of them said. “What’s your Letterboxd?” I wanted to be part of the club, and signed up later that night. Now, I write thoughts on every movie I see, usually before I’ve even left the theater or closed out the streamer. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago Ella McCay review – James L Brooks returns with a sorry mess of a movie

Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Albert Brooks, Rebecca Hall and Woody Harrelson are among the stars lost in the writer-director’s baffling misfireElla McCay, a new comedy drama written and directed by James L Brooks, feels like a relic, and not just because it’s set, seemingly arbitrarily, in 2008. Broadly appealing, well cast, neither strictly comic nor melodramatic, concerning ordinary people in non-IP circumstances, it’s the type of mid-budget adult film that used to appear regularly in cinemas in the 90s and aughts, before the streaming wars devoured the market. Even its lead promotional image, turned into a life-size cardboard cut-out at the theater – Emma Mackey’s titular Ella in a sensible trench coat, balancing on one foot as she fixes a broken block heel – recalls a bygone era of films like Confessions of a Shopaholic, Miss Congeniality or Little Miss Sunshine, that would now go straight to streaming.To be clear, I miss these types of movies, and want to see more of them. I ...

Politics

2 w. ago MOVIE REVIEW: We see if 'Wicked For Good' is a bewitching sequel

Darker tone can’t defy majestic magic in a fulsome follow-up stuffed with a slew of story twists.

Politics

3 w. ago Fackham Hall review – Downton Abbey spoof is fast, funny and throwaway

Period drama parody has some decent and often smart gags and benefits from a game cast including Damian Lewis and Thomasin McKenziePerhaps it’s the feeling of end times in the air: after years of inactivity, spoofs are making a comeback. This summer saw the resurgence of the lighthearted genre, which at its best sends up the pretensions of overly serious genre with a barrage of pitched cliches, sight gags and stupid-clever puns. The Naked Gun, starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson in a spoof of a buddy-cop spoof, opened to moderate box office success; the hapless rock band dialed it back up to 11 in Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. Reboots of the horror spoof gold-standard Scary Movie and the Mel Brooks Star Wars rip Spaceballs were greenlit, and there were rumors of a return for international man of mystery Austin Powers. Unserious times, it seems, beget appetite for knowingly unserious, joke-dense, refreshingly shallow fun.The latest of these goofy parodies, which premieres on...

Politics

3 w. ago Jay Kelly review – George Clooney is raw and revealing as an ageing movie star

A star-studded cast – including Adam Sandler, Laura Dern and Greta Gerwig – surround Clooney’s egotistical A-lister in Noah Baumbach’s new Netflix film

Politics