Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2025-07-28T15:38:41.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: M3GAN 2.0 review: Cinematic tonal whiplash may divide fans
items: How to Train Your Dragon review: This live-action remake is Lord of the Rings-level epic
items: How to Train Your Dragon review: Live-action remake is Lord of the Rings-level epic
items: Wolf Man review: Does the job, but don't expect anything groundbreaking
items: Paddington in Peru review: Non-stop fun with surprises aplenty
items: Borderlands review: There's no real spark to this bland video game adaptation
items: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes review: Decent thrills and spectacular action
items: The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes review – A satisfying prequel
items: Foe review: Lots to admire but not much to enjoy
items: The Creator review: Spectacular visuals but generic storytelling
items: Blue Beetle review: Snappy, unapologetically silly but predictable
items: The Flash review: One of the best DC movies ever made
items: The Little Mermaid review: Halle Bailey radiates charisma in Disney remake
items: Renfield review: Messy Nicolas Cage comedy misses as often as it hits
items: Shazam! Fury of the Gods review: DC sequel hits goofy sweet spot
items: M3GAN review: A slick, smart and tautly directed slice of camp horror

M3GAN 2.0 review: Cinematic tonal whiplash may divide fans
type: item
date: 2025-06-26T10:26:30.000Z
creator: Dave Golder
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: If you like the first film, you may well enjoy this sequel. You just won't enjoy it for the same reasons.
encoded: The original M3GAN was a creepily effective horror flick about a girl-sized AI doll that turns psycho-killer. It was wickedly funny in places, sure, but at its heart, it was a well-made horror film. M3GAN 2.0 is not. The weird thing is, it doesn’t even seem to want to be one. Because, while it’s been made by pretty much the same team – both in front of and behind the camera – it feels wildly different in tone. The first film was a high-tech stalker flick, while this sequel feels more like a comedy version of Alita: Battle Angel, with incrementally more gore. And few filmgoers ever had that on their wish list. A quick refresher: M3GAN is a prototype AI doll, originally created by a roboticist, Gemma (Allison Williams), for a hi-tech toy company. In the first film, M3GAN bonded with Gemma’s orphaned niece, Cady (Violet McGraw), but took her programming – to protect the girl at all costs – to bloody extremes, and ended up being destroyed. Apparently. She wasn’t, of course. She managed to secretly download her digital soul into Gemma’s connected smart house system, and she’s been waiting for an opportunity to re-emerge. Meanwhile, the US military has been developing a new defence system based on a killer bot called Amelia (Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android). View oEmbed on the source website But when Amelia goes rogue and embarks on a mission that could destroy civilisation as we know it, M3GAN convinces Gemma that she’s the only thing that can stop her, but she’s going to need a new body to do it. Sounds ludicrous? That’s not even the half of it. This film is mad bonkers and an utterly breathless, gonzo action thriller from the opening scenes. Gone is the slow-burn, tense, unsettling build-up of horror in the original, to be replaced by ruthlessly plot-led hokum, with a surprisingly rationed amount of designer gore. The carefully developed human (or human/AI) relationships of the first film are largely absent, replaced by a few clumsy he…

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How to Train Your Dragon review: This live-action remake is Lord of the Rings-level epic
type: item
creator: Dave Golder
subject: App
subject: App features
description: In future years, opinions about which version is better will probably come down to which one you saw first.
encoded: ★★★★☆ How to Train Your Dragon is in cinemas now. Add it to your watchlist Disney’s success rate with its live-action remakes of animated classics may have grown increasingly hit or miss in recent years, but that clearly hasn’t deterred DreamWorks from thinking, "We’ll have some of that!" After all, How to Train Your Dragon (2010) – an utterly charming tale of Vikings and dragons turning from bitter enemies to contented allies – was one of the most successful and adored non-Pixar animated movies of the past 20 years. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/06/2569D02100182R-b2f9498.jpg" width="8256" height="5504" alt="Mason Thames as Hiccup and Nico Parker as Astrid in How to Train Your Dragon. They are both wearing viking era clothes, are looking shocked at some offscreen and have their arms reached out, holding one another" title="Mason Thames as Hiccup and Nico Parker as Astrid in How to Train Your Dragon" /> So, having spun the franchise into two sequel movies, a number of shorts and a TV series, now it’s time for a remake with a live-action twist. The big question is: has DreamWorks produced a Beauty and the Beast or a Snow White? The resounding answer is: a Beast, in more ways than one. Because Beauty and the Beast was not just a remake, but a cover version, almost a recreation of the original beat for beat, just with practical sets and (some) flesh and blood characters. This new How to Train Your Dragon takes the same route, even taking its authenticity a little further – director Dean DeBlois also helmed all three of the animated movies, and Gerard Butler returns to play Viking chieftain Stoick the Vast. The plot is identical. The Viking island of Berk is under constant attack from dragons. Young Hiccup, son of the chief, dreams of being a dragonslayer, but he’s a bit of a gangly geek, and a disappointment to his dad. But then Hiccup forms a secret bond with one of the most feared breeds of dragon – a Night Fury, whom he chr…

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How to Train Your Dragon review: Live-action remake is Lord of the Rings-level epic
type: item
date: 2025-06-09T10:19:58.000Z
creator: Dave Golder
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: In future years, opinions about which version is better will probably come down to which one you saw first.
encoded: Disney’s success rate with its live-action remakes of animated classics may have grown increasingly hit or miss in recent years, but that clearly hasn’t deterred DreamWorks from thinking, "We’ll have some of that!" After all, How to Train Your Dragon (2010) – an utterly charming tale of Vikings and dragons turning from bitter enemies to contented allies – was one of the most successful and adored non-Pixar animated movies of the past 20 years. So, having spun the franchise into two sequel movies, a number of shorts and a TV series, now it’s time for a remake with a live-action twist. The big question is: has DreamWorks produced a Beauty and the Beast or a Snow White? The resounding answer is: a Beast, in more ways than one. Because Beauty and the Beast was not just a remake, but a cover version, almost a recreation of the original beat for beat, just with practical sets and (some) flesh and blood characters. This new How to Train Your Dragon takes the same route, even taking its authenticity a little further – director Dean DeBlois also helmed all three of the animated movies, and Gerard Butler returns to play Viking chieftain Stoick the Vast. Sponsored by Vue Save up to 30% on the latest releases at Vue in 2025 Are you a movie lover who always wants to be up to date with the latest releases? Then you're in luck, as RadioTimes.com readers can enjoy new films at Vue Cinemas for less. Customers will receive up to 30% off films with Vue Pass, as long as they have a RadioTimes.com account. It's a great time for new releases, with films such as Wicked, Nosferatu, The Brutalist and Moana 2 taking UK cinemas by storm. Head to your nearest Vue to catch these movies and more for up to 30% less if you're signed up as a RadioTimes.com member. Save up to 30% with Vue Pass The plot is identical. The Viking island of Berk is under constant attack from dragons. Young Hiccup, son of the chief, dreams of being a dragonslayer, but he’s a bit of a gangly geek, and a disappointment to …

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Wolf Man review: Does the job, but don't expect anything groundbreaking
type: item
date: 2025-01-17T11:21:02.000Z
creator: Dave Golder
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: The Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell has reimagined another classic Universal monster movie.
encoded: Having long ago abandoned the idea of combining its classic cinematic monsters into a goofy shared universe (following the almighty flop of 2017’s The Mummy), Universal instead found a reimagining formula that worked with 2020’s standalone critical and box office hit The Invisible Man. Written and directed by Leigh Whannell, it was a canny update that married the central conceit of invisibility to contemporary concerns about gaslighting and abusive relationships. Now Whannell’s back, trying to work that same hoodoo on another Universal monster – the Wolf Man. Once again he’s given the basic concept a major rethink, but this time around he’s not exactly dragged an idea kicking and screaming into the 2020s. A few FX aside, this feels like a time capsule from the ’80s, and not just because Julia Garner, the film’s scream queen, sports a hairdo straight off a Desperately Seeking Susan poster. Wolf Man opens with young Blake Lovell being taught how to hunt in the mountains of Oregon by his permanently angry dad. Instead they narrowly avoid being mauled by creature that Blake’s dad seems convinced is a missing hiker who, according to local rumours, contracted a virus that turned him into a Wolf Man. Thirty years later, Blake (Christopher Abbott) is a writer in the city, living with his journalist wife Charlotte (Garner) and their little girl, Ginger (Matilda Firth). Charlotte, we learn, is worried her high-power job means she’s a rubbish mother, while Blake gets to do all the parent/child bonding stuff (which is clearly supposed to be cute, but is actually a tad nauseating). Then Blake, who’s long estranged from his father, learns that dad’s been declared dead, and he’s inherited the family farm. So Blake suggests travelling out to the old farmstead for a bit of family bonding time. Bad move. Just as they’re approaching the farm, they’re attacked by a strange creature that bites Blake. Then things get really hairy… Except, oddly, they don’t in a literal sense. Because thi…

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Paddington in Peru review: Non-stop fun with surprises aplenty
type: item
creator: Dave Golder
subject: App
subject: App features
description: This time, it’s not the bear out of place, but the family, as Paddington travels back to his ancestral home.
encoded: ★★★★☆ Paddington in Peru is in cinemas from Friday. Add it to your watchlist Let’s cut to the chase: Paddington in Peru isn’t quite as good as its two predecessors, but it comes pretty close. When you’re trying to match two of the most beloved and acclaimed family films of recent times, falling a little short is no cause for hard stares, because this is still a film that’s all kinds of non-stop fun. View oEmbed on the source website This time, it’s not the bear out of place, but the family, as Paddington travels back to his ancestral home of Peru. His travels are prompted by a message from the Mother superior (Olivia Colman) at the Home For Retired Bears in Peru, where Paddington’s Aunt Lucy resides. Apparently Aunt Lucy is not herself, so the Browns arrange a hasty visit en masse – Mrs Brown (now played by Emily Mortimer) decides it’s a last chance for her to bond with her children before they leave home, and Mr Brown (Hugh Bonneville) sees it as a chance to prove to his bosses that he’s a risk-taker. It’s not quite clear why Mrs Bird (Julie Walters) tags along, too, but be glad she does, as Walters gets two of the film’s biggest laughs and is hilarious in every scene she shares with Colman. When Paddington and co arrive in Peru, Aunt Lucy has gone missing. However, she’s left a clue that sends them on a perilous mission into the jungle to find her. From there it’s a pretty episodic plot, though blessed with a great twist as regards the villain of the piece — the shady, gold-seeking boat captain Hunter Cabot (Antonio Banderas). Moving the action to Peru was a risk for a franchise that derived a lot of its charm from the very Britishness of its background characters and setting (viewers of a certain vintage might shudder at the potential of a Holiday on the Buses scenario). However, it all turns out OK. The film certainly isn’t left wanting for Britishness – Bonneville alone makes sure of that (his "take me seriously" walk through a jungle village is embarrassingly …

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Paddington in Peru review: Non-stop fun with surprises aplenty
type: item
date: 2024-11-04T11:55:44.000Z
creator: Dave Golder
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: This time, it’s not the bear out of place, but the family, as Paddington travels back to his ancestral home.
encoded: Let’s cut to the chase: Paddington in Peru isn’t quite as good as its two predecessors, but it comes pretty close. When you’re trying to match two of the most beloved and acclaimed family films of recent times, falling a little short is no cause for hard stares, because this is still a film that’s all kind of non-stop fun. This time, it’s not the bear out of place, but the family, as Paddington travels back to his ancestral home of Peru. His travels are prompted by a message from the Mother superior (Olivia Colman) at the Home For Retired Bears in Peru, where Paddington’s Aunt Lucy resides. Apparently Aunt Lucy is not herself, so the Browns arrange a hasty visit en masse – Mrs Brown (now played by Emily Mortimer) decides it’s a last chance for her to bond with her children before they leave home, and Mr Brown (Hugh Bonneville) sees it as a chance to prove to his bosses that he’s a risk taker. It’s not quite clear why Mrs Bird (Julie Walters) tags along, too, but be glad she does, as she gets two of the film’s biggest laughs and is hilarious in every scene she shares with Colman. When Paddington and co arrive in Peru, Aunt Lucy has gone missing. However, she’s left a clue that sends them on a perilous mission into the jungle to find her. From there it’s a pretty episodic plot, though blessed with a great twist as regards the villain of the piece — the shady, gold-seeking boat captain Hunter Cabot (Antonio Banderas). Moving the action to Peru was a risk for a franchise that derived a lot of its charm from the very Britishness of its background characters and setting (viewers of a certain vintage might shudder at the potential of a Holiday on the Buses scenario). However, it all turns out okay. The film certainly isn’t left wanting for Britishness – Bonneville alone makes sure of that (his "take me seriously" walk through a jungle village is embarrassingly spot on). Olivia Colman is an irrepressibly chirpy singing nun, and there are also vengeful ghosts, llama-back esc…

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Borderlands review: There's no real spark to this bland video game adaptation
type: item
date: 2024-08-08T09:50:15.000Z
creator: Dave Golder
subject: Movies
subject: Sci-fi
subject: Review
description: Eli Roth's film is a load of old sci-fi hokum riding on a wave of irreverent, often juvenile humour.
encoded: Screwball space opera game adaptation Borderlands opens with a typically corny voice-over introducing us to the key points of the backstory: long-lost all-powerful beings, abandoned hell planet, secret treasure, blah, blah, blah. Then it turns all that round and sums it up as "wacky BS!". It’s pretty much a microcosm for the next hour and a half (although arguably there’s more plot in the voice-over than the rest of the film). Because Borderlands is a load of old sci-fi hokum riding on a wave of irreverent, often juvenile humour. Directed by Eli Roth, who’s better known for cult horror faves such as Cabin Fever (2002) and Hostel (2005), Borderlands is based on a violent but darkly comic series of first-person shooter games, and while it’s taken some liberties with the characters and story elements, aesthetically and tonally it captures the anarchic action, cartoonish setting and unfeasibly large weaponry of its source material. Cate Blanchett, clearly having a ball in her first action hero role, plays Lilith, a bounty hunter hired to find Tina, the kidnapped daughter of a rich and powerful interplanetary dodgy geezer. Tina’s somewhere on the blighted planet of Pandora, a hellhole that is usually only visited by "vault hunters", seeking the location of a legendary power source. It’s also Lilith’s home planet. This is, of course, relevant. Not so much because it leads to a big revelation, but because it’s one of the few character-building elements in the film. Mostly, the characters, including the former soldiers who join Lilith’s gang, Roland (Kevin Hart) and Krieg (Florian Munteanu), are just here to shoot guns, kick things and shout a lot. There’s also a comedy robot, Claptrap, voiced by Jack Black, who is exactly what you’d expect from a comedy robot voiced by Jack Black – occasionally the best thing in the film, but often just irritating. To call it light on plot would be like calling The Artist (2011) light on dialogue. But Borderlands is certainly fast-paced an…

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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes review: Decent thrills and spectacular action
type: item
date: 2024-05-09T11:37:14.000Z
creator: Dave Golder
subject: Movies
subject: Sci-fi
subject: Review
description: The latest entry in the long-running franchise is a serviceably entertaining potboiler rather than a must-see cinematic experience.
encoded: There’s a sense of new beginnings to the fourth instalment of the rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise. With a new director/writer team at the helm (The Maze Runner’s Wes Ball and Avatar: The Way of Water’s Josh Friedman), a leap forwards in time a few hundreds years from the previous film and a more family friendly fantasy adventure vibe, Kingdom is clearly the first part of a new volume rather than just the next chapter. Not that it reveals exactly what this volume might involve until very late in the running time. The first three films now form a self-contained trilogy, detailing how apes – under the leadership of a chimpanzee called Caesar – came to inherit the Earth after a human-engineered virus both increased ape intelligence and reduced human’s to a primitive, speechless state. Kingdom opens generations later, but, intriguingly, chooses not to reveal exactly what the new status quo is on the planet. Instead, we’re introduced to the new world order through the eyes of an isolated tribe of chimpanzees who specialise in eagle husbandry. They have little knowledge of the world before the apes’ ascendance and their relationship to humans, or “echoes” as they call them – their elders either don’t know or have been withholding the truth. It’s an Arcadian idyll until the tribe is discovered by a thuggish party of apes who burn the village down and enslave the villages they don’t kill. They’re from a clan ruled by the power-hungry Proximus Caesar, who has twisted the memory of Caesar into an ugly, new creed. Only Noa (Owen Teague), the son of the eagle-whispering clan’s chief, escapes capture as he’s left for dead. Waking up the day after the attack, he tracks the Proximus apes back to their kingdom, and makes some unlikely allies along the way: an orangutan called Raka (Peter Macon) who worships the “true” teachings of Caesar (which he interprets as peaceful co-existence between human and ape) and a young female echo (Freya Allan) who has secrets of her own. While …

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The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes review – A satisfying prequel
type: item
date: 2023-11-14T12:13:16.000Z
creator: Dave Golder
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: There’s a lot that impresses about this bleak and sprawling prequel – but there are a few issues with pacing and tone.
encoded: The Hunger Games, it turns out, weren’t always as slick, epic and audience-pleasing as the 74th Games showcased in the first film in the franchise. Though they were always as sick and brutal. Surprisingly, though, this fifth Hunger Games movie – based on the best-selling prequel by Suzanne Collins – doesn’t take us back to the origins of the Games, but is instead based around the 10th Games, a period of seismic change for the bloody gladiatorial spectacle. It’s a clever move, allowing the film to concentrate on the rise to power of the young Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), the dodgy Panem President played by Donald Sutherland in the previous films. Because after 10 years – with the Games originally designed to emphasise the Capitol’s powerhold over the 12 districts that dared to rise up against them – baying audiences are beginning to tire of the bloody but samey event. So the powers that be decide that the next generation of political hopefuls need to prove their worth by mentoring the Games' contenders to make them more TV-friendly. Snow lucks out when he’s paired with District 12’s Lucy Gray Baird (West Side Story’s Rachel Zegler) who has charisma, spunk and a hell of a singing voice she uses at any given opportunity. No exaggeration. She even sings while being attacked by snakes at one point. Snow sees an opportunity to reinvigorate the Games big time and impress his superiors. But is he using Lucy for his own ends, or is he actually falling in love with her? There’s a lot that impresses about this bleak and sprawling prequel, despite some major issues of pacing and tone. In fact, its greatest strength could also be its greatest weakness: despite its heritage, it’s not actually a young adult (YA) action movie. It’s a fully committed character study with an extended action sequence in the middle. That’s right, no blockbuster finale, just an emotional one. A brave choice indeed. And sadly, while intentions are noble, that final third of the movie is also the weakest …

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Foe review: Lots to admire but not much to enjoy
type: item
date: 2023-10-11T16:31:31.000Z
creator: Dave Golder
subject: Movies
subject: Comment
subject: Review
description: The sci-fi drama starring Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan is overwrought and artificial.
encoded: Despite a few shots of a space station, a high-tech food processing plant, a couple of flying cars and a self-driving vehicle, Foe is not hard science fiction. It’s very soft and squishy science fiction, more focused on feelings and relationships, with lots of melodramatic sobbing, hollow-eyed acting and overwrought incidental music. It asks big questions about the human condition, but the biggest question for the audience is more likely to be: how much longer does this go on for? Set in a near-future Earth ravaged by climate change, the film opens with a couple living on a treeless plain in the American Midwest. Junior (Paul Mescal) works in a giant chicken-processing plant and Hen (Saoirse Ronan) waits at a diner, and while their marriage is solid, there are clearly issues bubbling away under the surface. They’re visited by a mysterious government employee, Terrance (Aaron Pierre), who turns up at their 200-year-old, dilapidated farmhouse one night. Terrance informs them that Junior has been conscripted to work on a space station. But not immediately. Terrance will spend the next two years putting Junior through a series of tests to help create an android replica of him that will keep Hen company while he’s away. As time goes on, Junior becomes increasingly paranoid about leaving Hen behind in the care of his AI doppelgänger (presumably the title is a pun on “faux” but it’s never made clear). It’s a film that strains for arthouse credibility. The acting is fully committed. It uses impressionistic images, overlapping dialogue and recurrent sight and sound motifs to create a rich sensual tapestry. The cinematography and muted colour palette add to the dense, cloying atmosphere. At times, there’s a sense of visual poetry, such as a shot of blood swirling down a plughole when an android takes a shower, but at another point mud clogging the plughole when a human takes a shower. All of which are the kind of assured directorial flourishes you’d expect from Garth Davis, w…

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The Creator review: Spectacular visuals but generic storytelling
type: item
date: 2023-09-26T16:00:52.000Z
creator: Dave Golder
subject: Movies
subject: Sci-fi
subject: Review
description: The new film from Rogue One director Gareth Edwards is sci-fi that preaches to the converted – although said converts will find much to enjoy.
encoded: Any new hardware-heavy sci-fi film from the director of everyone’s favourite Star Wars spin-off, Rogue One, has a lot to live up to. And Gareth Edwards certainly delivers when it comes to gun-toting robot hordes and massive great futuristic vehicles ripping apart the landscape with The Creator. It’s on shakier ground, though, when it comes to shaping a compelling story about war between humans and robots. In the near future, following an AI-instigated nuclear strike on Los Angeles that killed billions, Earth has split into rival power blocks; the US-led West, which has outlawed AI, and a pan-Asian superstate where humans still live in harmony with their microchipped mates. The US military has created a massive, flying anti-AI system called NOMAD to wipe all AIs from the planet, but then gains intel that 'the Creator' – an elusive Asian architect of advanced AI – has also developed a weapon that could turn the tide of the war. So they send former spy Joshua (John David Washington) back to Vietnam to locate and destroy the weapon. He, though, is more interested in locating his ex-wife, Maya (Gemma Chan), the daughter of The Creator, whom he fell in love with while undercover. He thought she’d been killed in a US raid five years previously, when she was pregnant with his child, but surveillance footage reveals she’s still alive. When Joshua locates the Creator’s new toy, though, he’s shocked to learn it’s an AI in the form of a young girl… who may be able to lead him to Maya. For that reason, he’s prepared to turn traitor. From there, the film becomes a sci-fi road movie for much of its run, part Deus Ex, part Children of Men, but considerably less subtle and thought-provoking than either. There are also elements of Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, Akira and, yes, Star Wars in the mix (especially the comedy background robot moments), and it doesn’t so much wear these influences on its sleeve as tattoo them on its arm. Because there’s little originality here. The film has …

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Blue Beetle review: Snappy, unapologetically silly but predictable
type: item
date: 2023-08-17T10:50:58.000Z
creator: Dave Golder
subject: Movies
subject: Sci-fi
subject: Comment
subject: DC Comics
subject: Review
description: There's an authenticity to the portrayal of a Latino family in the new superhero flick, but many of the narrative beats will feel familiar.
encoded: The Blue Beetle’s been around in various incarnations since 1939, but he’s far from one of DC’s A-list superheroes. He barely even scrapes into the B(eetle)-list. So, in an increasingly overcrowded cinematic superhero market, he seriously needs a unique selling point to capture the audience’s imagination. DC's answer is to focus on the character's Latino connections. College graduate Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) returns home to find things have taken a bad turn for his Mexican family. His dad’s had a heart attack after having lost his business, and they’re being forced from their home. The cause of all their ills is evil mega tech corporation Kord Industries, run by the soulless Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), which has the authorities of Palmera City in its pocket. The Reyes family’s fortunes change, though, when Jaime bonds with a sentient alien scarab device that Kord is using to power a new line of cyborg super soldiers. This gives him the ability to grow an insect-like supersuit with a range of awesome superpowers. But with it comes three problems: the suit has an uncontrollable AI with a mind of its own; Kord will stop at nothing to get the scarab back; and he ruins his favourite trainers every time he transforms. So Jaime joins forces with Victoria’s rebellious niece, Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine), to find a way to separate Jaime from the alien scarab. But Jenny’s dead dad – and former Kord boss – has a few skeletons in his Batcave. The result is a snappy, funny, unapologetically silly superhero romp with a lot of heart, that puts the whole Reyes family at the centre of the action. Even their Nana. In fact, especially their Nana – there are times when it looks like she’s touting for her own Supergran spin-off. It’s certainly a pleasant change not to have the young hero hiding their secret identity. Warners hired Puerto Rican director Ángel Manuel Soto and Mexican screenwriter Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer to craft the film, and the authenticity they bring to the proj…

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The Flash review: One of the best DC movies ever made
type: item
date: 2023-06-14T09:40:39.000Z
creator: Dave Golder
subject: Movies
subject: Sci-fi
subject: Review
description: The long-delayed film is entertainingly bonkers, with in-jokes and cameos aplenty.
encoded: “I’m the janitor of the Justice League,” grumbles DC’s fastest man alive, as he starts his first big-screen solo adventure clearing up a mess created by Batman. But that pales into insignificance with the mess he has to clear up after he travels back in time and creates an entire new reality. The result is a lightning-paced, in-joke-stuffed, cameo-packed screwball slice of superhero cinema that takes Marvel’s multiverse shtick and gives it an anarchic Bill & Ted makeover. Welcome to the metaverse of madness. This incarnation of superfast superhero The Flash, aka geeky forensic scientist Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) was first seen in the much-beleaguered Justice League. His first movie as headliner isn’t an origin story, though elements of the character’s comic origin do make it into the script. Instead the film loosely adapts one of The Flash’s most celebrated comic book storylines, Flashpoint, in which Barry travels back in time to try to prevent his mother being murdered when he was a child, a crime for which his father was wrongly convicted. But as anyone who’s seen The Butterfly Effect knows, changing even one tiny thing in the past can create ripples that turn into tsunamis. Which is exactly what happens here, when Barry, in a fit of pique, discovers that running faster than light means he can travel into the past. A remarkably unperturbed Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) suggests to Barry that using this new power might be unwise, but Barry, of course, ignores him. Next thing you know, Barry’s saved his mum, and created a new timeline where Eric Stoltz starred in Back to the Future. But on his return journey to the present, something knocks him off course, and he ends up sharing a reality with his goofy 18-year-old self, on the day of the event that gave him his powers. Worse still, General Zod (Michael Shannon) shows up to kill all of humanity, just as he did in Man of Steel, but in this timeline there’s no Superman to stop him. To use a “running” gag in the film itsel…

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The Little Mermaid review: Halle Bailey radiates charisma in Disney remake
type: item
date: 2023-05-22T13:00:29.000Z
creator: Dave Golder
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: This is one of the more faithful live-action adaptations – and thanks to some brilliant performances, one of the more successful.
encoded: The latest Disney animated classic to receive the Mouse House’s live-action makeover treatment, The Little Mermaid, is one of the more faithful adaptations – and one of the more successful, thanks mainly to some magical performances. But definitely not the new songs. This version opens with a quote from Hans Christian Andersen’s original fairy tale (“But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.”) which may have you wondering if the script is going to plunder more of the source material. But no. This is very much a cover version in the way the live-action Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin were, rather than going more off-piste like Mulan or The Jungle Book. In fact, great swathes of the dialogue are identical – all your favourite zingers are intact! It’s a quote-along as much as a sing-along. So enjoy once again the story of the mermaid Ariel (Halle Bailey) who falls in love with a prince, Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) and makes a pact with the sea witch Ursula (Melissa McCarthy) to become human so she can win his heart. It’s a pact with a mess of strings attached, though. Ariel loses her voice as well as her tail, and if she and Eric don’t lock lips in true love within three days, then Ursula will claim Ariel’s soul. It’s not, of course, a complete xerox, but the changes are mostly in minor tonal detail, for much of the film. We’re told Ariel’s mother was killed by fishermen while Eric is now the adopted son of a human queen, having been a shipwreck survivor as a child, both of which unobtrusively highlight a subtext about racial tolerance which culminates in a genuinely sweet new closing scene. There’s a new catch in Ursula’s clauses to ramp up the jeopardy. There are new songs. The big action climax is significantly rejigged to make Ariel more proactive (hurrah!). But it’s surprising how many scenes are lifted pretty much wholesale from the animated film, which does run that danger of inviting comparisons. The Under the Sea and Kiss the Girl musica…

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Renfield review: Messy Nicolas Cage comedy misses as often as it hits
type: item
date: 2023-04-12T15:42:31.000Z
creator: Dave Golder
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: For splatterfest and cult movie fans, there's much to enjoy in this new take on Dracula starring Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult.
encoded: Gore and gags splatter the screen with grisly abandon in hyperactive horror comedy Renfield. Nicholas Hoult stars as Dracula’s hapless, bug-eating servant, who’s been sourcing blood donors for his voracious boss (Nicolas Cage) for well over a century, and now he wants a way out of this toxic relationship. With the Count a little worse for wear after an unfortunate encounter with some daylight leaves him barbecued to a crisp, Renfield takes him to recuperate in New Orleans. There Renfield joins a self-help group for people with abusive partners. Not, at first, because he believes he needs help, but because he’s becoming ever more uncomfortable plying his boss with his favourite snacks – nuns, tourists and cheerleaders. Renfield reasons that the group members’ lowlife other halves are “monsters” who deserve to become vampire take-out. Drac, however, is not impressed with the narcotics-laced blood Renfield is bringing him. Then Renfield witnesses plucky young cop Qunicy (Awkwafina) standing up to a local crime boss and his goons, and is inspired to step in and help her out. Because, obviously, in the current cinematic climate, Renfield isn’t just the creepy, insect-munching lawyer of Bram Stoker’s novel, but a bug-powered superhero, with some serious fighting moves. Together they mutilate most of the gang (for a cop who constantly calls out the standards of her colleagues, Quincy is remarkably unfazed by Renfield slicing bad guys to pieces) and Renfield has an epiphany: he likes being a good(ish) guy, and he’s going to take back his life. Like Drac’s going to let that happen. Hoult and Cage are huge fun in this messy black comedy, which misses as often as it hits. It’s directed by Chris McKay, who did such an excellent job with The Lego Batman Movie – a sharp, incisively funny and inventive film that also cleverly explored the Bat-mythology. Renfield has moments of similar wit and opens very promisingly with a montage of Hoult’s and Cage’s faces cheekily CGI-ed onto in…

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Shazam! Fury of the Gods review: DC sequel hits goofy sweet spot
type: item
date: 2023-03-15T22:00:19.000Z
creator: Dave Golder
subject: Movies
subject: Sci-fi
subject: Review
description: It's not perfect, but the new Shazam! film's combination of silliness and optimism works its magic.
encoded: Forget The Fantastic Four, meet The Philly Fiascos. As superhero teams go, they're more of a bumbling Power Rangers than The Avengers. There’s a good reason for that: they're actually just a bunch of kids, with a lot to learn. The first Shazam! (2019) was a surprise screwball entry in the DC movie universe – an unassuming, unpretentious superhero caper that cheerily poked fun at its silly central concept and turned old-fashioned cheesy sentimentality into retro-kitsch. It saw a wizard gift tearaway teen orphan Billy Batson (Asher Angel) the power to turn into a superhero (Zachary Levi) whenever he says the word Shazam! By the end of the film, Billy’s passed on his powers to the other kids in his foster home to help defeat the bad guys – in the process accepting that he’s found his new family among these loveable misfits. But as Shazam! Fury of the Gods opens, that family is threatening to fall apart. The kids have been doing their superhero schtick with more enthusiasm than skill, and Philadelphia’s real estate and infrastructure is paying the price, while the media is not being kind to them. And not all of the kids seem totally committed to the lifestyle; each has other issues distracting them, and Billy fears he’s in danger of losing his newfound stability. To make matters worse, a pair of Greek goddesses, the daughters of Atlas (Dame Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu), have escaped millennia of captivity, and have revenge against humanity on their minds. All they need in order to accomplish this is something that resides in Team Shazam!’s mystical lair. Once again directed by David F Sandberg, Shazam! Fury of the Gods is a fun follow-up that delivers exactly what you’d expect. Tonally, it’s the same mix of silliness, schmaltz and over-the-top action, with more than a few laugh-out loud moments. If you like your superhero flicks with a little more edge, you’re better off rewatching The Dark Knight. Aside from a couple of surprising and conceptually grim death scenes, this…

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M3GAN review: A slick, smart and tautly directed slice of camp horror
type: item
date: 2023-01-11T14:46:58.000Z
creator: Dave Golder
subject: Movies
subject: Sci-fi
subject: TV
subject: Review
description: This new film about an artificially intelligent doll gone rogue will leave you wanting more.
encoded: Say hello to M3GAN, a child-sized, self-learning robot doll with a glitchy operating system that gives a terrifying new meaning to FATAL ERROR. If that sounds like some Bride of Chucky rip-off with an AI makeover then you’re in for a pleasant surprise. And a fair few insanely unpleasant ones too. Gemma (Allison Williams) creates hi-tech toys for a living, and her latest project is M3GAN (Model 3 Generative Android), a fully interactive, life-like doll that looks like a manga school girl who’s crawled out of the uncanny valley. M3GAN is designed to bond with a child, and to protect them and guide them, like a robot nanny in the guise of a playmate. Or a surrogate parent. So when workaholic Gemma becomes the reluctant guardian to her niece, Cady, after the child’s parents die in a road accident, she offloads parenting duties onto M3GAN. Besides, Cady and M3GAN’s growing relationship will serve as a test case that’ll look great at the swanky, prestige product’s press launch. Problems arise, though, when Cady’s reliance on her new plastic pal proves increasingly unhealthy and M3GAN starts to interpret her programming – especially that bit about “protection” – in increasingly extreme ways. At heart, there’s little new about M3GAN. Based on a story co-concocted by the Saw series' main orchestrator James Wan (the film comes from his Atomic Monster production company), the basic plot is as old as Frankenstein: hubristic scientist oversteps moral boundaries and creates a monster. The film also shamelessly embraces a plethora of genre clichés with a cheery we-know-you-know abandon. The very last shot, for example, is an utterly predictable old chestnut of a final twist, but it’s more likely to make you grin than groan. View oEmbed on the source website But it’s also a slick, smart and tautly directed slice of campy horror, opening with a RoboCop-style faux commercial for farting, popping “perpetual pets” that nails the film’s tonal colours to the mast. Settle in for some outr…

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