Some movie tropes need to be thrown in a bin with other outdated, overused tropes and the bin needs to be set on fire.
If the sight of a Smurf-like Will Smith in the teaser trailers for Aladdin had you shuddering in your boots, you weren’t alone.
The Realm opens inconspicuously – a man in a suit finishes a phone call while staring out to sea. The camera tracks him as he crosses the sand, walks up the grass to a restaurant, through the back door into the kitchen where he lifts a platter of shrimp and strides into the dining room of the restaurant.
Look, I get it. In today’s political climate, you head to the cinema to escape from the saturation of mainstream media and spend a few hours completely oblivious to the dire state of the world. The last thing you want to buy tickets to is another Hollywood US presidency film. But trust me, Long Shot is different.
If films had a signature scent, The Chaperone’s would be mothballs.
Thunder Road started out as a 12-minute Sundance Festival short and has morphed into an hour-and-a-half character study of this square-jawed policeman singing, dancing and weeping his way through his mother’s eulogy.
‘Ola De Crimenes’ (Crime Wave) throws you straight into the rollicking, over-the-top absurdity of Spanish comedy.
Little is a film with a big heart. Young girls are going to love this fun, energetic and well-produced comedy and the adults accompanying them to the cinema will definitely get a kick out of it as well.
This film is not one to watch while scrolling through your phone – you’ll need to have your eyes glued to the screen if you’re to make any sense of the glorious mess that is Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.
The Aftermath has the premise and star-studded cast to be a deep and insightful drama, however, it lacks a sense of authenticity to fully command the interest of audiences.
Shazam! has an exclamation mark in its title for a reason – it’s fun, full of energy and a barrel of laughs.
With the vaguest of childhood memories, I walked into the live-action remake of Dumbo prepared for a tale about an odd little elephant in a sad situation. I had forgotten just how sad the story of Dumbo the flying elephant really is and Tim Burton’s CGI baby elephant pulls hard on the heartstrings.
I grew up in the golden era of sick-lit films. Ansel Elgort with his constant un-smoked cigarette as a metaphor in The Fault in Our Stars (2014)? The conceived-as-a-bone-marrow-donor-for-her-terminally-ill-sister Anna and the subsequent tragic outcome in My Sister’s Keeper (2009)? Give me, give me, give me.
Any film which opens with ‘Based on a true story’ incites a desire to know just how true to life the plot is. Director James Marsh attempts to keep King of Thieves as verbatim as possible and you can be assured that there is little glamorizing of this story. The crooks in this film, led by Michael Caine, are surprisingly vicious and callous with a good deal of incontinence thrown in.
It’s a tale as old as time – boy meets dog, boy and dog form an unbreakable bond, boy and dog are tragically separated and then dog spends two-and-a-half years trekking 400 miles to get back to boy. Based on the novel of the same name by W. Bruce Cameron, A Dog’s Way Home is a canine adventure film designed to pull on the heartstrings.
Pairing Anne Hathaway’s flawlessness with Rebel Wilson’s trademark crude humour, The Hustle follows two con artists as they team up to scam a tech millionaire.
