Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2026-03-09T21:00:11.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Who will win Best Director?
items: The Bride review: An ambitious and stylish monster movie that doesn't quite cohere
items: The Bride review: An ambitious and stylish monster movie that doesn't entirely cohere
items: Crime 101 review: Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo reunite in thriller with echoes of crime classic Heat
items: Saipan review: Éanna Hardwicke is utterly magnetic as Roy Keane in dramatisation of infamous feud
items: The Running Man review: Glen Powell proves a charismatic hero in Edgar Wright remake
items: The Running Man review: Glen Powell proves a charismatic hero in Edgar Wright's patchy remake
items: Black Phone 2 review: Gripping sequel embraces gruesomeness and the paranormal
items: Superman review: An entertaining relaunch for the last son of Krypton
items: Superman review: James Gunn has delivered an entertaining relaunch
items: Karate Kid: Legends review – Reboot lacks the soul and heft of previous outings
items: Final Destination Bloodlines review – A slick, ghoulishly entertaining reboot
items: Thunderbolts* review: Florence Pugh shines bright in Marvel's thoughtful return to form
items: Thunderbolts* review: Florence Pugh shines in Marvel's emotional return to form
items: Black Bag review: A taut and tidy spy thriller with 007 vibes
items: Black Bag review: There are some 007 vibes in this taut and tidy thriller
items: Oscar predictions 2025: Who will win and should win Best Supporting Actress?
items: Oscar predictions 2025: Who will win and should win Best Supporting Actor?
items: Who's going to win Best Supporting Actress?
items: Who's going to win Best Supporting Actor?
items: Kraven the Hunter review: Better than Morbius and Madame Web at least
items: Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story review – a life-affirming portrait of a real-life hero
items: Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story review – Life-affirming portrait of a real-life hero
items: Salem's Lot review: Stephen King adaptation lacks bite
items: Deadpool & Wolverine review: Could Ryan Reynolds's crude antihero actually be Marvel’s messiah?
items: Deadpool & Wolverine review: Could Wade Wilson actually be Marvel's messiah?
items: Road House review: Jake Gyllenhaal is a class act in slick remake
items: Dune: Part Two review – A spectacular return to Arrakis
items: Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom review: A serviceable slice of comic book nonsense
items: Rebel Moon review: Zack Snyder's space opera is meandering and derivative

Who will win Best Director?
type: item
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: App
subject: App features
subject: The Oscars
description: Paul Thomas Anderson appears to be this year's favourite, but with strong entries from category debutants and former winners in the mix, it's anyone's guess.
encoded: This year’s array of best director candidates for the Academy Award includes a trio making their category debut, a former winner, and a four-time nominee who must be favourite. At the end of 2025, you might have expected Guillermo del Toro (Frankenstein) or Yorgos Lanthimos (Bugonia) to be in the final five. However, Josh Safdie moved into contention following the December release of Marty Supreme and the Oscar buzz around Timothée Chalamet’s dazzling performance as a charismatic hustler out to achieve greatness. It’s Safdie’s first nomination in any category and the first film made solo since 2008 and the 2024 split with co-directing sibling Benny. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2026/01/GettyImages-2255312976-35ced8c.jpg" width="5851" height="3901" alt="Paul Mescal, Pippa Harris, Nic Gonda, Jessie Buckley, Jacobi Jupe, Max Richter, Chloé Zhao, Steven Spielberg, Liza Marshall, Noah Jupe, Maggie O'Farrell on stage at the 83rd Annual Golden Globes held at The Beverly Hilton on January 11, 2026 in Beverly Hills, California." title="83rd Annual Golden Globes - Inside" /> Joachim Trier received a screenplay nomination for The Worst Person in the World (2021), but his nod for Sentimental Value is the first for directing. The story of a reunion between two sisters and their estranged film-maker father (played by Swedish veteran Stellan Skarsgård) has garnered four acting nominations, with only Skarsgård in the shake-up for a statuette. Trier will likely miss out, although the film has a chance of copping the Academy Award for best international feature, and is available on Mubi now. A winner at the 2021 Oscars for Nomadland, Chloé Zhao became only the second woman to receive the Academy Award after Kathryn Bigelow broke that particular glass ceiling for The Hurt Locker in 2010. The Chinese film-maker’s second nomination as director is for Hamnet, the adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel about the fallout from the tragic death of Shak…

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The Bride review: An ambitious and stylish monster movie that doesn't quite cohere
type: item
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Maggie Gyllenhaal’s re-imagining of the Bride of Frankenstein boasts a mesmerising Jessie Buckley performance, but there's a little too much going on...
encoded: ★★★☆☆ The Bride is released in cinemas from Friday 6 March. Add it to your watchlist James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein (1935) starring Boris Karloff and the luminous Elsa Lanchester remains a playful, witty follow-up to the English director’s seminal version of Frankenstein (1931), and is often cited as a sequel superior to its acclaimed original, along with the likes of The Godfather Part II, The Empire Strikes Back and The Dark Knight. Writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s re-imagining of the 1935 Universal masterpiece is playful, too, boldly locating to mid-1930s America where the Monster or “Frank” (played by a suitably stitched-and-stapled Christian Bale) has reached the end of his tether after being alone for over a century. His desire for a mate brings the patchwork Romeo to the door of Chicago scientist Dr Euphronius (Annette Bening), whose work in reinvigorating the dead offers lovelorn Frank the chance to have a companion just like him. All they need is a recently deceased corpse… Enter Jessie Buckley as Ida, whose sudden transformation from glum gangster’s moll to dangerously gobby harridan is all down to being possessed by novelist Mary Shelley (also played by Buckley, emulating the monochrome framing device from the 1935 original). Here, the Frankenstein author occupies a shadowy netherworld where she bemoans her lack of agency in life and so injects her proto-feminist ire into Ida, only to put the poor girl in an early pauper’s grave and become the ideal candidate for revival. Indeed, it is Shelley who poses the question from the outset whether the unfurling tale will be “a ghost story, a horror story or most frightening of all, a love story?” In her second film behind the camera (following The Lost Daughter in 2021), Gyllenhaal attempts to harness all those elements, while adding in plenty of genre-mashing moments. From Frank’s love of movie musicals, encapsulated by song-and-dance matinee idol Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), to the unnatural born kill…

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The Bride review: An ambitious and stylish monster movie that doesn't entirely cohere
type: item
date: 2026-03-05T15:15:18.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: Maggie Gyllenhaal’s re-imagining of the Bride of Frankenstein boasts a mesmerising Jessie Buckley performance, but there's a little too much going on...
encoded: James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein (1935) starring Boris Karloff and the luminous Elsa Lanchester remains a playful, witty follow-up to the English director’s seminal version of Frankenstein (1931), and is often cited as a sequel superior to its acclaimed original, along with the likes of The Godfather Part II, The Empire Strikes Back and The Dark Knight. Writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s re-imagining of the 1935 Universal masterpiece is playful, too, boldly locating to mid-1930s America where the Monster or “Frank” (played by a suitably stitched-and-stapled Christian Bale) has reached the end of his tether after being alone for over a century. His desire for a mate brings the patchwork Romeo to the door of Chicago scientist Dr Euphronius (Annette Bening), whose work in reinvigorating the dead offers lovelorn Frank the chance to have a companion just like him. All they need is a recently deceased corpse… Enter Jessie Buckley as Ida, whose sudden transformation from glum gangster’s moll to dangerously gobby harridan is all down to being possessed by novelist Mary Shelley (also played by Buckley, emulating the monochrome framing device from the 1935 original). Here, the Frankenstein author occupies a shadowy netherworld where she bemoans her lack of agency in life and so injects her proto-feminist ire into Ida, only to put the poor girl in an early pauper’s grave and become the ideal candidate for revival. Indeed, it is Shelley who poses the question from the outset whether the unfurling tale will be “a ghost story, a horror story or most frightening of all, a love story?” In her second film behind the camera (following The Lost Daughter in 2021), Gyllenhaal attempts to harness all those elements, while adding in plenty of genre-mashing moments. From Frank’s love of movie musicals, encapsulated by song-and-dance matinee idol Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), to the unnatural born killers later embarking on a Bonnie and Clyde-style joyride across America, the sophomore…

Crime 101 review: Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo reunite in thriller with echoes of crime classic Heat
type: item
date: 2026-02-11T16:00:09.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Contains Trailer
subject: Review
description: Director Bart Layton delivers an impressive slow-burn that erupts with a nerve-jangling, edge-of-your-seat climax.
encoded: Criminal deception is a common denominator in English director Bart Layton’s only other feature films. Whether it’s a French conman pretending to be a missing American teenager in the excellent Bafta-nominated documentary The Imposter (2012), or students pulling off an audacious rare-book heist dressed as elderly businessmen in unbelievable-but-true 2018 docudrama American Animals, Layton is clearly interested in what it takes to become a criminal. For his third film, Layton takes on another heist story, only here it’s a fictional one based on a novella by private-investigator-turned-crime writer Don Winslow. Chris Hemsworth heads a quality cast as professional jewel thief Mike Davis, whose ability to carry out a series of robberies without using violence or leaving any DNA evidence or clues to his identity is foxing the Los Angeles police. However, dogged detective Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo, going for the crumpled Columbo look) sees a pattern: these meticulously executed heists all take place in the vicinity of California’s elongated 101 freeway. Not that his sceptical superiors or even his partner (Corey Hawkins) buy into this, with his team preferring him to simply "play the game" and close cases. Meanwhile, Davis wants out of crime after a previous robbery nearly cost him his life. Yet, he doesn't realising that his handler (the ever-gravelly Nick Nolte) has secretly enlisted young thug Orman (Barry Keoghan, star of American Animals) to take the spoils from his last job, worth a cool $11 million. The difference between the pair is immediately clear, with Orman being a dirt-bike-riding loose cannon in comparison to the calm, composure of Davis, a precise professional who drives only the sportiest of cars. No moment better illustrates this than Orman's shambolic attempt to rob a jewellery store, which nearly goes catastrophically wrong. And where does Halle Berry’s disillusioned 50-something insurance broker, Sharon Colvin, fit into this increasingly tangled web…

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Saipan review: Éanna Hardwicke is utterly magnetic as Roy Keane in dramatisation of infamous feud
type: item
date: 2026-01-21T16:48:53.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: Thanks to fabulous performances and a witty, perceptive script that’s more concerned with the game of life than the game itself, this has something for everybody – football fan or not.
encoded: The best-known true-story feature films about “the beautiful game” have put the lives of iconic football managers like Brian Clough (The Damned United) or brilliant players such as George Best (Best) at the heart of the drama. A manager (Mick McCarthy) and a player (Roy Keane) are also at the centre of events in Saipan, however, it’s a notorious falling-out between the men in the lead-up to the 2002 World Cup in Japan and Korea around which events unfold in this enthralling fictionalisation from husband-and-wife directors Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn (Ordinary Love, Good Vibrations). Sporting spats are ten-a-penny these days, going viral almost immediately. But when Republic of Ireland captain Roy Keane walked out of his team’s training camp on the island of Saipan on the eve of departure for the tournament, it created huge press headlines, knocking the status of English talisman David Beckham’s broken foot off both the front and back pages of tabloids and broadsheets. Meanwhile, the fallout in Ireland was seismic and polarising, not least because Keane was a bone fide world-class footballer — honed into a muscular midfield general by both Clough and his Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson — who was going to lead the team to glory. We return to those heady days when the Irish team, minus a then-injured Keane, managed to qualify for only their third World Cup at the end of 2001. And yet, it’s quickly apparent there’s tension between a permanently bristling Keane (played with sustained intensity by Éanna Hardwicke) and a seemingly unflappable McCarthy (the ever-versatile Steve Coogan), as the countdown to the competition ticks away. Although niftily paced over 90 minutes, there’s a fabulous, slow-burning quality to proceedings as the affable, Barnsley-born McCarthy strives to mediate between his star player’s uncompromising professional approach to diet, drinking and training and the rest of the team behaving as though they are on a tourist jolly. But as the…

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The Running Man review: Glen Powell proves a charismatic hero in Edgar Wright remake
type: item
date: 2025-11-11T19:00:22.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: Wright delivers plenty of kinetic set-pieces in this Stephen King adaptation – but the plot's episodic nature leads to some lulls in momentum.
encoded: On-the-rise action man Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick, Twisters) takes on a role originally played on screen by his Expendables 3 co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger in this explosive, big-budget remake of the 1987 thriller. Set in a dystopian, totalitarian United States where violent television programmes have become the opium of the people, the original film was based on a 1982 novel by Stephen King (under his Richard Bachman pseudonym), but co-writer/director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Last Night in Soho) has opted to stay even closer to the source material for his adaptation. So, instead of Arnie’s Ben Richards being a cop coerced to participate in the game, Powell’s Richards is a working-class Everyman living in an overcrowded slum, whose frustration with his inability to hold down a job and look after his waitress wife and their ailing toddler forces him to volunteer for the financially lucrative if lethal Running Man TV show. Avoid capture for 30 days and $1 billion is the ultimate reward. However, contestants are also hunted across the United States by an elite team of assassins led by a merciless masked mystery man. The action is televised to an audience happy to dob them in to the authorities for a slice of the financial pie, all under the auspices of ever-smirking network CEO and smug puppet-master Dan Killian (Josh Brolin). Read more: Dragonfly review: Brenda Blethyn is at her very best in frequently heartbreaking film Die My Love review: Jennifer Lawrence is superb in this absorbing and quietly devastating drama Killian and motor-mouthed MC Bobby T (Colman Domingo) consider Richards a ratings winner, especially when he continues to evade his murderous pursuers and their ever-present drone cameras, and then survives by the skin of his teeth when they do get close, as in one fiery encounter at a down-at-heel Boston hotel. However, could Richards’s resilience and apoplectic defiance inspire something other than bloodlust from viewers and threaten their bes…

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The Running Man review: Glen Powell proves a charismatic hero in Edgar Wright's patchy remake
type: item
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Wright delivers plenty of kinetic set-pieces in this Stephen King adaptation – but the plot's episodic nature leads to some lulls in momentum.
encoded: ★★★☆☆ The Running Man is in cinemas from Wednesday 12 November. Add it to your watchlist On-the-rise action man Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick, Twisters) takes on a role originally played on screen by his Expendables 3 co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger in this explosive, big-budget remake of the 1987 thriller. Set in a dystopian, totalitarian United States where violent television programmes have become the opium of the people, the original film was based on a 1982 novel by Stephen King (under his Richard Bachman pseudonym), but co-writer/director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Last Night in Soho) has opted to stay even closer to the source material for his adaptation. So, instead of Arnie’s Ben Richards being a cop coerced to participate in the game, Powell’s Richards is a working-class Everyman living in an overcrowded slum, whose frustration with his inability to hold down a job and look after his waitress wife and their ailing toddler forces him to volunteer for the financially lucrative if lethal Running Man TV show. Avoid capture for 30 days and $1 billion is the ultimate reward. However, contestants are also hunted across the United States by an elite team of assassins led by a merciless masked mystery man. The action is televised to an audience happy to dob them in to the authorities for a slice of the financial pie, all under the auspices of ever-smirking network CEO and smug puppet-master Dan Killian (Josh Brolin). Killian and motor-mouthed MC Bobby T (Colman Domingo) consider Richards a ratings winner, especially when he continues to evade his murderous pursuers and their ever-present drone cameras, and then survives by the skin of his teeth when they do get close, as in one fiery encounter at a down-at-heel Boston hotel. However, could Richards’s resilience and apoplectic defiance inspire something other than bloodlust from viewers and threaten their best-laid corporate plans? No stranger to delivering breakneck action (Hot Fuzz, Baby Driver), Wright produ…

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Black Phone 2 review: Gripping sequel embraces gruesomeness and the paranormal
type: item
date: 2025-10-17T09:38:31.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: Ethan Hawke returns as the Grabber in Scott Derrickson's follow-up to his 2022 horror film.
encoded: After watching race-against-time retro-horror The Black Phone (2022), you may wonder how a sequel is possible. Ethan Hawke’s prolific, masked child-killer “The Grabber” had been “dispatched” by latest teenage victim Finney (Mason Thames), thanks to supernatural aid from a phone line to the ghosts of the dead, helpfully situated in the boy’s soundproofed basement prison. However, when it comes to movie monsters and celluloid serial killers, it’s hard to keep a “good” fiend down, especially if a low-budget flick is a box-office hit (over $160 million worldwide). After all, the slasher antics of the likes of Michael Myers (Halloween), Jason Vorhees (Friday the 13th), Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street) and Ghostface (Scream) spawned lucrative long-running franchises, if with diminishing critical returns. However, writer/director Scott Derrickson and co-writer C Robert Cargill have upped the supernatural ante for the sequel with ghoulish and gory aplomb. They achieve this by taking the original film’s characters (and cast) out of small-town suburbia and stranding them at an isolated, blizzard-hit Christian youth camp where boys had vanished mysteriously back in the 1950s. It’s 1982, four years after Finney escaped from becoming another grim statistic, but his ordeal has left him traumatised and prone to violence, much like his alcoholic dad (Jeremy Davies) became after the suicide of Finney’s mother. Meanwhile, younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), whose dreams helped to save her sibling in 1978, is finding her psychic ability (inherited from mum) more of a curse than a gift, and is sleepwalking around town not knowing what is real, a nightmare or a prophetic vision. Indeed, it's a dream about a frozen lake – and its mutilated ghostly denizens – that inspires Gwen, Ernesto (younger brother of a Grabber victim) and Finney — numbing himself with smoking weed in the hope he’ll stop receiving phone calls from beyond — to go to Alpine Lake Camp. Once there, however,…

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Superman review: An entertaining relaunch for the last son of Krypton
type: item
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Some characters are left underused in this refresh from Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn, but David Corenswet makes for a genial hero and his chemistry with Rachel Brosnahan bodes well.
encoded: ★★★☆☆ Superman is in cinemas now. Add it to your watchlist It may seem like only yesterday that Henry Cavill was dispensing truth, justice and the American way as DC’s big-screen Man of Steel — actually, it was a cameo in 2022’s Black Adam. However, with writer/director James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, The Suicide Squad) and producer Peter Safran now the head honchos of a revamped DC Cinematic Universe, a new Superman takes his bow in the relatable shape of David Corenswet, who is more genial Boy Scout than Cavill’s brooding take on the last son of Krypton. Gunn cuts to the chase immediately – no origin story here – as we encounter our hero three years into his role as Earth’s protector, but only after crash-landing bloodied, battered and bruised in the Antarctic. Luckily for him, he’s able to get a solar top-up at his nearby Fortress of Solitude, thanks to whistling up assistance from playful, caped super-mutt Krypto (in a scene-stealing live-action debut). View Green Video on the source website Soon back into the fray against the super-powerful Hammer of Boravia, who handed him his cape earlier, little does Supes know that it is billionaire Lex Luthor (a menacing Nicholas Hoult) who is pulling strings behind the scenes, so consumed is he by his seething hatred of the alien so beloved by the people of Metropolis. Along with the nanite-powered Engineer (Maria Gabriela de Faria), the masked Ultraman and a gigantic fire-breathing monster, Luthor makes Superman’s life a misery, reducing him from trusted guardian to a pariah with an identity crisis and incarceration in a seemingly inescapable secret jail. But what of the Daily Planet’s ace reporter Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan)? Her relationship with Clark Kent/Superman is close, of course, despite bringing him to book for interfering in a foreign conflict (a Russia/Ukraine allusion, perchance?) and for his poor social media presence ("Superman doesn’t have time for selfies"). However, she’s also instrumental…

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Superman review: James Gunn has delivered an entertaining relaunch
type: item
date: 2025-07-09T13:49:09.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Sci-fi
subject: Review
description: Some characters are left underused, but David Corenswet makes for a genial hero and his chemistry with Rachel Brosnahan bodes well.
encoded: It may seem like only yesterday that Henry Cavill was dispensing truth, justice and the American way as DC’s big-screen Man of Steel — actually, it was a cameo in 2022’s Black Adam. However, with writer/director James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, The Suicide Squad) and producer Peter Safran now the head honchos of a revamped DC Cinematic Universe, a new Superman takes his bow in the relatable shape of David Corenswet, who is more genial Boy Scout than Cavill’s brooding take on the last son of Krypton. Gunn cuts to the chase immediately – no origin story here – as we encounter our hero three years into his role as Earth’s protector, but only after crash-landing bloodied, battered and bruised in the Antarctic. Luckily for him, he’s able to get a solar top-up at his nearby Fortress of Solitude, thanks to whistling up assistance from playful, caped super-mutt Krypto (in a scene-stealing live-action debut). Soon back into the fray against the super-powerful Hammer of Boravia, who handed him his cape earlier, little does Supes know that it is billionaire Lex Luthor (a menacing Nicholas Hoult) who is pulling strings behind the scenes, so consumed is he by his seething hatred of the alien so beloved by the people of Metropolis. Along with the nanite-powered Engineer (Maria Gabriela de Faria), the masked Ultraman and a gigantic fire-breathing monster, Luthor makes Superman’s life a misery, reducing him from trusted guardian to a pariah with an identity crisis and incarceration in a seemingly inescapable secret jail. But what of the Daily Planet’s ace reporter Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan)? Her relationship with Clark Kent/Superman is close, of course, despite bringing him to book for interfering in a foreign conflict (a Russia/Ukraine allusion, perchance?) and for his poor social media presence ("Superman doesn’t have time for selfies"). However, she’s also instrumental in persuading members of super-team the Justice Gang to come to his rescue as the world teeters o…

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Karate Kid: Legends review – Reboot lacks the soul and heft of previous outings
type: item
date: 2025-05-29T13:25:19.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: The new film can't match TV spin-off Cobra Kai in terms of its treatment of legacy characters.
encoded: It is just over 40 years since the first Karate Kid film was released in 1984 to box office success. A sleeper hit, it spawned three sequels, a reboot in 2010 (starring Jackie Chan as kung fu teacher Mr Han) and hit TV series Cobra Kai, which finished after six seasons earlier this year. Credit should go to John G Avildsen, who won the 1976 best director Oscar for Rocky and transferred that film’s "underdog overcoming the odds" formula to the coming-of-age story of teenager Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) taking on his bullies by learning karate from genial teacher/mentor-cum-surrogate father Mr Miyagi (played by an Oscar-nominated Pat Morita). The character of Miyagi has now passed away (Morita died in 2005), but his link to Karate Kid: Legends is established from the outset by a flashback from The Karate Kid Part II (1986), in which Mr Miyagi reveals the connection between karate and kung fu in his style of martial arts. "Two branches, one tree" is his mantra, and that becomes the motif of this sadly underwhelming next chapter in the franchise. 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 feature debut of director Jonathan Entwhistle (best known for Netflix show The End of the F***ing World) begins in Beijing, where teenager Li Fong (Ben Wang), the star pupil of Mr Han’s kung fu school, is reluctantly about to leave for New York with his doctor mother (Ming-Na Wen). She has a hospital job…

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Final Destination Bloodlines review – A slick, ghoulishly entertaining reboot
type: item
date: 2025-05-13T16:00:42.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: The first film in the horror franchise for 14 years is suitably wince-worthy and packed with gallows humour.
encoded: When it comes to horror-movie franchises, many have lengthy success and then eventually wither, but they never really die. Right now, both the Scream and Saw series are back in their murderous groove following a hiatus, and there's even a new instalment due for release in 2025 for another gore horse, I Know What You Did Last Summer. So maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised that a new entry in the Final Destination franchise has been produced. Launched in 2000, the first in the series took teen horror away from slasher antics and made Death himself the relentless villain after being cheated of lives by a high-school student’s premonition of an air crash. The survivors then become victims of violently horrific "accidents", even after they realise what is out to get them and the order in which they will perish. The macabre methods of demise, the ominous atmosphere and a decent cast established the creepy template but over four further films, only the elaborate death-dealing carnage tended to stick in the memory, although Final Destination 5 (2011) did tie off at least one narrative loop. Now, 14 years after that fifth film comes this tension-filled reboot, only here Death is spreading his wings further than just a few frantic survivors of a crash or bridge collapse. In a dazzling opening, lovey-dovey couple Iris and Paul are attending the 1968 opening of the Skyview Restaurant Tower where the party (on a glass dance floor!) is really swinging to a storming rendition of Lulu’s Shout. Everything is wrapped in a sun-dappled glow that belies the premonition/catastrophe to come, which takes its cue from the fiery and vertiginous terror of '70s disaster epics like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Cut to the present, and student Stefani Reyes (Kaitlin Santa Juana) is plagued with visions of the Skyview incident, and returns to her parents’ home where her search for answers unearths long-buried family secrets involving her estranged mother and a reclusive grandmo…

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Thunderbolts* review: Florence Pugh shines bright in Marvel's thoughtful return to form
type: item
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan and David Harbour's ragtag bunch of failed heroes and jaded villains might just be the answer to turning around the critical and financial fortunes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe…
encoded: ★★★★☆ Thunderbolts* is in cinemas from Thursday 1 May 2025. Add it to your watchlist Following a lukewarm response to February’s Captain America: Brave New World, could a ragtag bunch of failed heroes and jaded villains be the answer to turning around the critical and financial fortunes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? The signs look rosier with this welcome return to the amusingly fractious action antics that made the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy so entertaining and watchable. Indeed, it is the absence of the Avengers that continues to loom over the world, much to the glee of Machiavellian new CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis Dreyfus), who has been gathering power in the shadows since the character’s debut in 2021’s Black Widow. Her pawns in these off-the-books schemes include spy (and sister of Black Widow) Yelena Belova (a delightfully deadpan Florence Pugh, last seen in the Hawkeye Disney+ TV show), disgraced Captain America replacement John Walker (Wyatt Russell), intangible assassin Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and the ability-mimicking Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko). View oEmbed on the source website However, the first meeting of the querulous quartet at a secret vault out in the desert is nearly their last as their energetic attempts to kill each other are stalled by their battleground turning into a death trap. Fortunately for them, Yelena’s surrogate father the Red Guardian – a slobbish Russian super-soldier, played with infectious gusto by David Harbour – is on hand for a quick-ish getaway in his ramshackle limo, although it is the timely and thunderous intervention of brooding, bionic-armed Bucky Barnes that forces these “defective losers” to team up or die. Fresh from his Oscar nomination for playing Donald Trump in The Apprentice, Sebastian Stan returns as super-soldier Bucky (aka the Winter Soldier), who knows a thing or two about redemption after decades as a brainwashed Soviet assassin. A veteran MCU character, who made his…

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Thunderbolts* review: Florence Pugh shines in Marvel's emotional return to form
type: item
date: 2025-04-29T16:00:50.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Sci-fi
subject: Review
description: Welcome back, MCU!
encoded: Following a lukewarm response to February’s Captain America: Brave New World, could a ragtag bunch of failed heroes and jaded villains be the answer to turning around the critical and financial fortunes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? The signs look rosier with this welcome return to the amusingly fractious action antics that made the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy so entertaining and watchable. Indeed, it is the absence of the Avengers that continues to loom over the world, much to the glee of Machiavellian new CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis Dreyfus), who has been gathering power in the shadows since the character’s debut in 2021’s Black Widow. Her pawns in these off-the-books schemes include spy (and sister of Black Widow) Yelena Belova (a delightfully deadpan Florence Pugh, last seen in the Hawkeye Disney+ TV show), disgraced Captain America replacement John Walker (Wyatt Russell), intangible assassin Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and the ability-mimicking Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko). 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 However, the first meeting of the querulous quartet at a secret vault out in the desert is nearly their last as their energetic attempts to kill each other are stalled by their battleground turning into a death trap. Fortunately for them, Yelena’s surrogate father the Red Guardian – a slobbish Russian super-soldier, played with infectiou…

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Black Bag review: A taut and tidy spy thriller with 007 vibes
type: item
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: App
subject: App features
description: This spy flick from prolific director Steven Soderbergh is a fun and absorbing ride with cracking cast chemistry.
encoded: ★★★★☆ Black Bag is in cinemas now. Add it to your watchlist With audiences increasingly drawn to series like Slow Horses, Black Doves and The Agency, which are immersed in the shadowy world of espionage where suspicion and betrayal are constant companions, director Steven Soderbergh’s stylish spy yarn will be right up their (dark) alley. Soderbergh wastes little time with preamble as we follow dapper operative George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) into a night club, where he’s informed of a traitor at Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre, the place he works alongside elegant wife Kathryn (a languid Cate Blanchett). View oEmbed on the source website The dilemma for George, a renowned mole hunter and walking lie detector, is that she’s one of the five listed suspects and he only has a week to catch the culprit. Shades of wartime romantic thriller Allied, in which Brad Pitt has to determine if his French Resistance wife (played by Marion Cotillard) is really a German spy. However, George is fastidious, meticulous and seemingly unfazed by the notion his beloved could be guilty and proceeds to invite the unsuspecting other four to a dinner party at the power couple’s luxury London townhouse. As it happens, these colleagues are paired up, too, with Tom Burke’s dissolute Freddie in a relationship with young surveillance expert Clarissa (Industry star Marisa Abela), and company psychiatrist Zoe (Naomie Harris) dating hotshot agent James (Regé-Jean Page). The subsequent gathering is thoroughly entertaining as George spikes the meal with a truth serum, denuding his guests of their inhibitions, exposing their weaknesses and romantic deceptions, and unleashing plenty of tart interplay. He then cajoles his guests into a table game where each person has to suggest a resolution for the individual on their right. In this moment, David Koepp’s erudite and witty script recalls the acerbic drama of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, only instead of playing "get the guest" as Elizabet…

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Black Bag review: There are some 007 vibes in this taut and tidy thriller
type: item
date: 2025-03-13T16:26:58.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Comment
subject: Review
description: This spy flick from prolific director Steven Soderbergh is a fun and absorbing ride with cracking cast chemistry.
encoded: With audiences increasingly drawn to series like Slow Horses, Black Doves and The Agency, which are immersed in the shadowy world of espionage where suspicion and betrayal are constant companions, director Steven Soderbergh’s stylish spy yarn will be right up their (dark) alley. Soderbergh wastes little time with preamble as we follow dapper operative George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) into a night club, where he’s informed of a traitor at Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre, the place he works alongside elegant wife Kathryn (a languid Cate Blanchett). The dilemma for George, a renowned mole hunter and walking lie detector, is that she’s one of the five listed suspects and he only has a week to catch the culprit. Shades of wartime romantic thriller Allied, in which Brad Pitt has to determine if his French Resistance wife (played by Marion Cotillard) is really a German spy. However, George is fastidious, meticulous and seemingly unfazed by the notion his beloved could be guilty and proceeds to invite the unsuspecting other four to a dinner party at the power couple’s luxury London townhouse. As it happens, these colleagues are paired up, too, with Tom Burke’s dissolute Freddie in a relationship with young surveillance expert Clarissa (Industry star Marisa Abela), and company psychiatrist Zoe (Naomie Harris) dating hotshot agent James (Regé-Jean Page). 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…

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Oscar predictions 2025: Who will win and should win Best Supporting Actress?
type: item
date: 2025-02-26T12:31:58.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Oscars
description: Zoe Saldaña and Ariana Grande are two contenders in a field dominated by first-time nominees, but are they guilty of 'category fraud'?
encoded: Only one of this year’s best supporting actress nominees has received a prior nomination, leaving four newbies to the nominee merry-go-round that will end when the coveted statuette is awarded this Sunday. And just like Kieran Culkin in the supporting actor category, it looks like there will be only one winner here, too. Flying the flag for Britain is Felicity Jones, who was previously nominated as best actress for playing the wife of Eddie Redmayne’s Stephen Hawking in Oscar winner The Theory of Everything (2014). In The Brutalist, she plays wife to another creative genius, the tormented architect and Holocaust survivor László Tóth (Adrien Brody). Like her husband, Erzsébet was sent to a concentration camp and survived, albeit with ailing health, but is unable to join him in America until years after the War. Indeed, her first appearance is halfway through in the film, and yet she is the beating heart of the 215-minute epic. All the other actresses shortlisted are first-timers, although it is hard to believe in the case of Isabella Rossellini ̶ the daughter of screen icon Ingrid Bergman (herself a three-time winner for Gaslight (1944), Anastasia (1956) and the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express) ̶ whose nearly 50-year career includes terrific turns in Blue Velvet (1986) and Beethoven biopic Immortal Beloved (1994). Her role in papal political thriller Conclave is as a housekeeping nun whose observations could change the outcome of the election of a new pope – and at under eight minutes, it may be brief, but it is a scene-stealing gem, nevertheless. 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, No…

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Oscar predictions 2025: Who will win and should win Best Supporting Actor?
type: item
date: 2025-02-26T12:24:09.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Oscars
description: After winning numerous prizes for Succession, Kieran Culkin looks set to continue his film awards season streak for A Real Pain.
encoded: Unlike some of this year’s major Academy Award categories, the hot favourite for the best supporting actor Oscar has been the frontrunner since December last year, when Kieran Culkin's puckish performance in buddy road movie A Real Pain garnered prize-winning attention from the critics' circles. As the mercurial slacker to Jesse Eisenberg’s more down-to-earth cousin, Culkin has a ball with his co-star’s sardonic yet sobering Oscar-nominated script that takes the chalk-and-cheese duo on an illuminating trip to Poland, the birthplace of their recently passed Jewish grandmother. Winner of a Golden Globe and a BAFTA, the coronation of the first-time nominee looks assured. But what of the competition? The likes of Jonathan Bailey (Wicked), Clarence Maclin (Sing Sing) and two-time winner Denzel Washington (Gladiator II) did show up in other lists, but not when it came to the Oscar nominations, leaving a quartet of three other first-time nominees and a relative veteran in Edward Norton earning his fourth. Norton was previously nominated as best supporting actor for Primal Fear (1997) and Birdman (2015), and best actor for American History X (1999). This year, the 55-year-old actor has been shortlisted for playing Pete Seeger in the music biopic A Complete Unknown, in which the folk pioneer witnesses Timothée Chalamet’s young Bob Dylan embarking on a journey from folk-music sensation in 1961 to almost pariah status for going electric in 1965. Norton is possibly second favourite. 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…

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Who's going to win Best Supporting Actress?
type: item
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: App
subject: App features
subject: The Oscars
description: Zoe Saldaña and Ariana Grande are two contenders in a field dominated by first-time nominees, but are they guilty of 'category fraud'?
encoded: Only one of this year’s best supporting actress nominees has received a prior nomination, leaving four newbies to the nominee merry-go-round that will end when the coveted statuette is awarded this Sunday. And just like Kieran Culkin in the supporting actor category, it looks like there will be only one winner here, too. Flying the flag for Britain is Felicity Jones, who was previously nominated as best actress for playing the wife of Eddie Redmayne’s Stephen Hawking in Oscar winner The Theory of Everything (2014). In The Brutalist, she plays wife to another creative genius, the tormented architect and Holocaust survivor László Tóth (Adrien Brody). Like her husband, Erzsébet was sent to a concentration camp and survived, albeit with ailing health, but is unable to join him in America until years after the War. Indeed, her first appearance is halfway through in the film, and yet she is the beating heart of the 215-minute epic. All the other actresses shortlisted are first-timers, although it is hard to believe in the case of Isabella Rossellini ̶ the daughter of screen icon Ingrid Bergman (herself a three-time winner for Gaslight (1944), Anastasia (1956) and the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express) ̶ whose nearly 50-year career includes terrific turns in Blue Velvet (1986) and Beethoven biopic Immortal Beloved (1994). Her role in papal political thriller Conclave is as a housekeeping nun whose observations could change the outcome of the election of a new Pope – and at under eight minutes it may be brief, but it is a scene-stealing gem, nevertheless. Of the five actresses nominated, Monica Barbaro is probably the rogue selection. One of Tom Cruise’s pilot protégés in Top Gun: Maverick, the 34-year-old plays Joan Baez to Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. Maybe it’s Academy members’ love of a real-life musical icon being brought to cinematic life that swung the vote, although the likes of Danielle Deadwyler (The Piano Lesson), Selena Gomez (…

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Who's going to win Best Supporting Actor?
type: item
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: App
subject: App features
subject: The Oscars
description: After winning numerous prizes for Succession, Kieran Culkin looks set to continue his film-awards-season streak for A Real Pain
encoded: Unlike some of this year’s major Academy Award categories, the hot favourite for the best supporting actor Oscar has been the frontrunner since December last year, when Kieran Culkin’s puckish performance in buddy road movie A Real Pain garnered prize-winning attention from the critics’ circles. As the mercurial slacker to Jesse Eisenberg’s more down-to-earth cousin, Culkin has a ball with his co-star’s sardonic yet sobering Oscar-nominated script that takes the chalk-and-cheese duo on an illuminating trip to Poland, the birthplace of their recently passed Jewish grandmother. Winner of a Golden Globe and now a BAFTA, the coronation of the first-time nominee looks assured. But what of the competition? The likes of Jonathan Bailey (Wicked), Clarence Maclin (Sing Sing) and two-time winner Denzel Washington (Gladiator II) did show up in other lists, but not when it came to the Oscar nominations, leaving a quartet of three other first-time nominees and a relative veteran in Edward Norton earning his fourth. Norton was previously nominated as best supporting actor for Primal Fear (1997) and Birdman (2015), and best actor for American History X (1999). This year, the 55-year-old actor has been shortlisted for playing Pete Seeger in the music biopic A Complete Unknown, in which the folk pioneer witnesses Timothée Chalamet’s young Bob Dylan embarking on a journey from folk-music sensation in 1961 to almost pariah status for going electric in 1965. Norton is possibly second favourite. Guy Pearce’s first nomination is for The Brutalist and his pivotal role as Harrison Lee Van Buren, the enigmatic and monied industrialist whose offer of the American Dream to Adrien Brody’s Hungarian Holocaust survivor and visionary architect masks a darker reality. It is probably the Aussie star’s best work since Memento in 2000. A first-timer, too, is Kieran Culkin’s Succession co-star Jeremy Strong, going deep in The Apprentice to play fearsome lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn, whose mento…

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Kraven the Hunter review: Better than Morbius and Madame Web at least
type: item
date: 2024-12-12T11:52:23.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Sci-fi
subject: Review
description: Aaron Taylor-Johnson is in muscular form but a leaden script keeps things underwhelming.
encoded: The first live-action appearance of the longtime Spider-Man foe, who made his comic-book bow in 1964, marks the sixth film in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe franchise following Morbius (2022), Madame Web (2024) and the recently completed Venom trilogy (2018-2024). In his original Marvel Comics iteration, Sergei Kravinoff is a formidable, potion-powered big-game hunter sporting a jet-black moustache and beard, who’s determined to make Peter Parker’s webslinger the ultimate trophy on his wall. This globe-trotting origin tale from director JC Chandor, better known for more grounded dramatic fare like A Most Violent Year, Margin Call and All Is Lost, begins with Kraven (played by a physically imposing Aaron Taylor-Johnson) taking no prisoners in a remote Russian penitentiary before flashbacking to his teenage past as Sergei, the eldest son of ruthless Russian gangster Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe, complete with ripe accent and no little menace). But when an African lion hunt goes awry and Sergei suffers a Revenant-style ravaging, it is only the timely administration of a powerful herbal pick-me-up that saves his life, bestowing the super-strength, speed, agility and heightened senses to transform him into The Hunter. Fast-forward 16 years to the present and Kraven has achieved mythic status as the scourge of the criminal underworld, working out of a secret Siberian base – the Dacha-cave, perchance? – and estranged from his cruel dad and callow but beloved half-brother Dimitri (Gladiator II’s Fred Hechinger). However, after teaming up with his potion-providing saviour-turned-crusading lawyer, Calypso (Ariana DeBose), the predator finds himself the prey of Alessandro Nivola’s up-and-coming crime boss, who has his own hardcore chemical enhancement with which to even the super-powered odds, and an eerily lethal assassin called The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott). Taylor-Johnson taps into the swagger and muscular charisma that made his Quicksilver so impressive in Avengers: A…

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Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story review – a life-affirming portrait of a real-life hero
type: item
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s moving documentary charts the iconic actor's rise to global recognition.
encoded: ★★★★☆ Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is in cinemas from Friday. Add it to your watchlist. Blockbuster superhero movies are ten a penny these days, but it was not until Christopher Reeve took on the role of comic-book icon Superman in 1978 and made you believe a man could fly that such films began to be taken seriously, both critically and at the box office. Director Richard Donner (The Omen, Lethal Weapon) may have had an all-star cast headed by Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman, a suitably soaring John Williams score and state-of-the-art special effects, but without a charismatic and capable actor in the title role, it could have been a disaster. View oEmbed on the source website Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s excellent, immensely moving documentary charts the rise to global recognition of the affable New Yorker, who was performing on stage with William Hurt when he found out he had got the role that had been offered to the likes of Robert Redford. Hurt advised him to turn it down and stick with serious acting. Reeve emerges as an articulate and personable individual, passionate about theatre and keen on outdoor activities like sailing, flying and horse riding. Tragically, though, it was a fall while riding in 1995 that changed everything. As Reeve admits, an inch or so either way and he would have been either dead or just nursing bruises. As it was, he was left paralysed from the neck down and needing a ventilator to breathe. The fact he was allergic to horses is just one of the tragic ironies emerging from his story. However, instead of taking the chronological approach to Reeve’s life, the directors continually switch between his journey to star-making Man of Steeldom, fame and his subsequent career, and the aftermath of the accident, his determination not to let disability define him and his move into advocacy for better-funded spinal injury treatment like stem-cell research. Aided by home movies, archive footage and interviews with his family and friend…

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Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story review – Life-affirming portrait of a real-life hero
type: item
date: 2024-10-29T10:34:47.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s moving documentary charts the iconic actor's rise to global recognition.
encoded: Blockbuster superhero movies are 10 a penny these days, but it was not until Christopher Reeve took on the role of comic-book icon Superman in 1978 and made you believe a man could fly that such films began to be taken seriously, both critically and at the box office. Director Richard Donner (The Omen, Lethal Weapon) may have had an all-star cast headed by Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman, a suitably soaring John Williams score and state-of-the-art special effects, but without a charismatic and capable actor in the title role, it could have been a disaster. Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s excellent, immensely moving documentary charts the rise to global recognition of the affable New Yorker, who was performing on stage with William Hurt when he found out he had got the role that had been offered to the likes of Robert Redford. Hurt advised him to turn it down and stick with serious acting. Reeve emerges as an articulate and personable individual, passionate about theatre and keen on outdoor activities like sailing, flying and horse riding. Tragically, though, it was a fall while riding in 1995 that changed everything. As Reeve admits, an inch or so either way and he would have been either dead or just nursing bruises. As it was, he was left paralysed from the neck down and needing a ventilator to breathe. The fact he was allergic to horses is just one of the tragic ironies emerging from his story. View oEmbed on the source website However, instead of taking the chronological approach to Reeve’s life, the directors continually switch between his journey to star-making Man of Steeldom, fame and his subsequent career, and the aftermath of the accident, his determination not to let disability define him and his move into advocacy for better-funded spinal injury treatment like stem cell research. Aided by home movies, archive footage and interviews with his family and friends (Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg), you never lose sight of the vital man he was and …

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height: 2388

Salem's Lot review: Stephen King adaptation lacks bite
type: item
date: 2024-10-09T13:59:42.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: The new film based on King's iconic vampire novel spends little time developing the characters or building tension – rendering it an anaemic offering.
encoded: Can the vampire really be rising from the dead again as cinema’s go-to monster following years of zombie domination? 2024 has already seen the release of Abigail, in which a band of mercenaries come a cropper after kidnapping a tweenage heiress for ransom, while the upcoming remake of 1922 silent classic Nosferatu from The Witch director Robert Eggers (and featuring It star Bill Skarsgård in the title role) is due out in the UK on New Year’s Day. Into this mini-revival of big-screen vampirism comes the first celluloid version of Stephen King’s second published novel, Salem’s Lot, directed and adapted by Gary Dauberman, who has credit in the bank for scripting the hit films based on King’s It. The 1975 page-turner was adapted as a three-hour TV miniseries in 1979 and directed by Tobe Hooper of Texas Chain Saw Massacre fame. Genuinely creepy and scary with arguably David Soul’s finest performance as the novel’s haunted hero Ben Mears, it was later edited for cinema release, influencing the likes of Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass on Netflix. A 2004 TV series starring Rob Lowe and Rutger Hauer was set in contemporary times. King labelled his story as "Peyton Place meets Dracula", setting his tale in a sleepy rural town in Maine where the arrival of antiques traders Richard Straker and unseen partner Kurt Barlow coincides with the return of writer Ben Mears (played here by Top Gun: Maverick’s Lewis Pullman) to the home town where he was orphaned as a child. Dauberman retains the 1970s milieu – fashions, hairdos, drive-in as social hotspot – but then spends little time on developing the characters or building tension before revealing the identity of the evil about to suck the life from the community. The demise and disappearance of the Glick brothers sets the ghoulish train of events in motion, but that iconic scene where a floating and fanged Danny Glick is scraping on windows to get at his victim (seminal in the 1979 version and emulated later in a 2000 League of Gentlem…

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Deadpool & Wolverine review: Could Ryan Reynolds's crude antihero actually be Marvel’s messiah?
type: item
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: App
subject: App features
description: With the help of Hugh Jackman, this irreverent romp shows that the titular Merc with a Mouth might just be Disney-Marvel’s unlikely saviour
encoded: ★★★★☆ Deadpool & Wolverine is in cinemas now. Add it to your watchlist. To say there is a lot riding on Deadpool & Wolverine, the third Deadpool adventure, both critically and financially, may seem like an odd assertion, considering both of his previous escapades made a healthy $780 million at the worldwide box office and went down well with audiences, critics and fans alike. But much has changed since Deadpool 2 was released in 2018, with Disney completing its acquisition of 21st Century Fox a year later and having the lucrative opportunity to add that studio’s X-Men characters, Deadpool included, to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, the MCU’s fortunes have faltered since 2019 and the $2 billion heyday of Avengers: Endgame. Audiences and takings are down, with last year’s The Marvels barely making $200 million and already announced titles delayed by years. Deadpool & Wolverine is the only MCU film out this year, so the notion that Ryan Reynolds’s lewd, rude Merc with a Mouth will be Disney-Marvel’s saviour is not a ludicrous one. Indeed, Reynolds spells it out with typical fourth-wall-smashing gusto from the start, when he declares himself the "Marvel Jesus" after being enlisted to help the Time Variance Authority with their multiversal problems. Followers of the Loki TV series will already know about the TVA and its mission to protect the Multiverse by trimming failing alternate realities. But when Wade Wilson (aka Deadpool) realises TVA agent Mr Paradox (played by Succession star Matthew Macfadyen) is threatening the lives of his friends and his lover (Morena Baccarin), he decides he will need muscular assistance from iconic X-Man the Wolverine (a welcome return for Hugh Jackman). But, hold on. Wasn’t Logan in 2017 the final chapter for Jackman’s ageing mutant mauler? Well, yes and no, as we see from the bloody, all-action opening when Wade revisits Logan’s final resting place in the hope his healing factor might have kicked in. Let’s just say Wade must loo…

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height: 1164

Deadpool & Wolverine review: Could Wade Wilson actually be Marvel's messiah?
type: item
date: 2024-07-25T09:22:20.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Sci-fi
subject: Marvel
subject: Review
description: The notion that Ryan Reynolds's lewd, rude Merc with a Mouth will be Disney-Marvel's saviour is not a ludicrous one.
encoded: To say there is a lot riding on Deadpool & Wolverine, the third Deadpool adventure, both critically and financially, may seem like an odd assertion, considering both of his previous escapades made a healthy $780 million at the worldwide box office and went down well with audiences, critics and fans alike. But much has changed since Deadpool 2 was released in 2018, with Disney completing its acquisition of 21st Century Fox a year later and having the lucrative opportunity to add that studio’s X-Men characters, Deadpool included, to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, the MCU’s fortunes have faltered since 2019 and the $2 billion heyday of Avengers: Endgame. Audiences and takings are down, with last year’s The Marvels barely making $200 million and already announced titles delayed by years. Deadpool & Wolverine is the only MCU film out this year, so the notion that Ryan Reynolds’s lewd, rude Merc with a Mouth will be Disney-Marvel’s saviour is not a ludicrous one. Indeed, Reynolds spells it out with typical fourth-wall-smashing gusto from the start, when he declares himself the 'Marvel Jesus' after being enlisted to help the Time Variance Authority with their multiversal problems. Followers of the Loki TV series will already know about the TVA and its mission to protect the Multiverse by trimming failing alternate realities. But when Wade Wilson (aka Deadpool) realises TVA agent Mr Paradox (played by Succession star Matthew Macfadyen) is threatening the lives of his friends and his lover (Morena Baccarin), he decides he will need muscular assistance from iconic X-Man the Wolverine (a welcome return for Hugh Jackman). But, hold on. Wasn’t Logan in 2017 the final chapter for Jackman’s ageing mutant mauler? Well, yes and no, as we see from the bloody, all-action opening when Wade revisits Logan’s final resting place in the hope his healing factor might have kicked in. Let’s just say Wade must look elsewhere in the multiverse, so we get the chance to check out a range…

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width: 2414
height: 1609

Road House review: Jake Gyllenhaal is a class act in slick remake
type: item
date: 2024-03-13T13:57:21.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Amazon Prime Video
subject: On demand
subject: Review
description: There's a 'new sheriff in town' feel to director Doug Liman's reimagining of the 1980s flick.
encoded: After debuting in 1989, the original Road House about a buff bouncer ridding a small-town nightspot of its undesirables was just the ticket for a boozy night in with a six-pack and fans of bare-knuckle baloney for company, but has generated a cult following since, not least because of star Patrick Swayze. Fresh from his eye-catching turn in Dirty Dancing, Swayze oozed cool as Dalton ('80s mullet, notwithstanding) and confirmed he had action chops as well as dance moves in an entertaining modern riff on the Western from the aptly named director, Rowdy Herrington. There's a 'new sheriff in town' feel to director Doug Liman's slick reimagining, too, only here Dalton (played with nonchalant charm by Jake Gyllenhaal) is a disgraced UFC fighter haunted by his past (think John Wayne's The Quiet Man), who uses his pugilistic skills to pulverise the thugs menacing a beachfront club in the Florida Keys. Unlike the Swayze version, Gyllenhaal’s Dalton is depressed, down at heel and sleeping in his car before a desperate club owner offers him an alternative to eking out a living in grimy underground fights where his tarnished reputation precedes him. On arriving in sunny Glass Key, the genial Gyllenhaal is soon befriended by the locals – young bouncer Billy (Lukas Gage, The White Lotus), precocious teenager Charlie (Hannah Lanier) – and warning off a biker gang (led by Mayans MC star JD Pardo) with wry lines like, "Do you have insurance?" before "dispatching" them to the nearest hospital where he piques the interest of night nurse Ellie (The Suicide Squad’s Daniela Melchior). Of course, there is more to the plot than bone-crunching bar-room brawls, as Dalton’s muscular intervention is also upsetting the get-richer schemes of twitchy land developer Brandt (an OTT Billy Magnussen), who resorts to calling in an equaliser. Read more: Damsel review: Millie Bobby Brown elevates tonally confused fantasy Dune: Part Two review – A spectacular return to Arrakis Cue the introduction of Kno…

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Dune: Part Two review – A spectacular return to Arrakis
type: item
date: 2024-02-22T11:16:16.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Sci-fi
subject: Review
description: Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya stun in Denis Villeneuve's new instalment.
encoded: Dune: Part Two, much-anticipated follow-up to director Denis Villeneuve’s first instalment, is well worth waiting for, especially as only half of Frank Herbert’s landmark sci-fi novel had been adapted with no guarantee of a sequel until four days after the release of Part One. Picking up moments after the conclusion of the 2021 blockbuster which left young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and widowed mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) stranded in a desert wasteland where humongous sandworms lurk beneath the surface, Part Two finds the bedraggled pair still unsure if their indigenous Fremen rescuers will protect them or kill them. The 2021 epic established how Paul’s noble father (Oscar Isaac) and his people were set up to fail in their stewardship of the spice-rich planet of Arrakis by the murderous machinations of the (unseen) Emperor and his sadistic Harkonnen allies. Here, the story centres on Paul’s odyssey from vengeful youth-turned-eager guerrilla fighter driven to destroy the Harkonnens’ spice-collecting operation to a reluctant if prophesied messiah, plagued by fractured dreams of a destiny that could ignite a holy war as much as bring salvation. No prizes for guessing where George Lucas found inspiration for his Star Wars saga. Once again, Chalamet impresses and demonstrates he is one of the most versatile young actors around, subtly moving from romantic hero via a tentative courtship with feisty Fremen warrior Chani (Zendaya) to a steely leader ready to wreak vengeance on Stellan Skarsgard’s grotesque, bloated Baron and his brutish nephew, the Beast Rabban (Dave Bautista). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2024/01/rev-1-DUN2-06002rHighResJPEG-770565a.jpeg" width="6000" height="4000" alt="Austin Butler as the hairless Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen and Léa Seydoux as Lady Margot Fenring dressed in a blue headscarf and dress in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures r…

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Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom review: A serviceable slice of comic book nonsense
type: item
date: 2023-12-21T15:00:43.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Sci-fi
subject: DC Comics
subject: Review
description: A more rousing and resonant sign-off to the DCEU would have been welcome before James Gunn's impending reboot of the franchise.
encoded: Jason Momoa’s first solo outing as the underwater superhero-turned-king of Atlantis was a well-received billion-dollar hit in 2018. Indeed, it remains the highest-grossing adventure in the DC Extended Universe, launched by Man of Steel 10 years ago, so it was no surprise that executives at Warner Bros were keen to greenlight a sequel. However, a combination of a pandemic, studio changes and other off-screen challenges delayed production and led to rewrites and reshoots. In the meantime, Momoa made a couple of Aquaman cameos (The Flash, the Peacemaker TV show) while keeping up a blockbuster presence in the likes of Dune and Fast X. Suffice to say, expectations were lowered, although original director James Wan returns for the belated sequel that finds Arthur Curry, aka Aquaman, hanging out at his dad’s lighthouse and adjusting to being a father to a baby son. However, the juggling of family life and child-rearing with the mundane demands of running a kingdom and maintaining peace with other realms leaves him snoozing on the throne. But that calm is destroyed when old foe Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and craven scientist sidekick Dr Stephen Shin (Randall Park) discover the fabled Black Trident under a polar ice cap, bestowing the villain with enough power to avenge the death of his father and cause a climate catastrophe in the process. Emboldened by the trident, Manta steals an essential element for his schemes from Atlantis, injuring our hero's love interest Mera (and sidelining Amber Heard from much of the picture, or saddling her with banal dialogue like "I sense something in the water"), and leaving Arthur with no alternative but to seek help from angry half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson), who was overthrown as king at the end of the first film and is now incarcerated in a remote desert stronghold. The ensuing action-packed prison break is the cue for a chalk and cheese "road movie" out of the Midnight Run playbook, which sees the bickering siblings having to…

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Rebel Moon review: Zack Snyder's space opera is meandering and derivative
type: item
date: 2023-12-15T14:00:13.000Z
creator: Jeremy Aspinall
subject: Movies
subject: Sci-fi
subject: Netflix
subject: On demand
subject: Review
description: An abundance of sombre exposition and FX-heavy, slo-mo action only overshadows the efforts of the film's ensemble cast.
encoded: Now that Zack Snyder is no longer the driving force behind the DC Extended Universe that he helped launch in 2013 with Man of Steel, the director has set his sights on a galaxy far, far away for his latest action epic. No, not a Star Wars adventure, but the first instalment of a planned franchise (with Part Two due out next April) that bears more than a passing resemblance to George Lucas’s seminal 1977 space opera. After all, the story is set in a universe where a rapacious empire (here called the Motherworld) has turned increasingly tyrannical following the murder of its beloved ruler and his family. So, even a settlement of simple farming folk on a distant moon called Veldt cannot remain immune from imperial occupation, as demonstrated when their rustic idyll is shattered by the arrival of Ed Skrein’s gleefully lethal Admiral Atticus Noble, who orders his thuggish forces to hoover up the fruits of the villagers’ labours and not to spare the rod. So far, so repressive, but then Noble’s brutal minions fail to reckon on the presence in the community of enigmatic stranger Kora (Sofia Boutella), whose attempt to live the quiet life belies the fact she has an axe to grind with the empire – quite literally – and redemption to find. Once Kora has been provoked into action, the plot heads into Magnificent Seven territory, as she and lovelorn farmer Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) embark on a galactic search for warriors to take a stand against the nefarious Noble and his ominously powerful master, the Regent Balisarius (Fra Fee). This meandering quest to assemble a team with a particular set of skills also opens the way for Snyder to pay homage to the sort of movies that captured his youthful imagination in the 1970s and '80s. So, there’s a buff Beastmaster type (Staz Nair) who can talk to the animals - Conan the Veterinarian, if you like; a cyborg swordswoman (Doona Bae) who hails from a city out of Blade Runner; Titus, a disillusioned genius general-turned-drunken gladiator (p…

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