Feature Essays
Walt Disney and the Dumbo problem
On 12 November 2019, Walt Disney will launch its online streaming service Disney+ in the USA, with other markets scheduled to follow soon afterwards. The ...
REVIEW: Aladdin (2019)
Homeless thief Aladdin (Mena Massoud) lives on the streets of Agrabah, until a chance encounter with Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott) throws him into a fantastical adventure involving an evil vizier (Marwan Kenzari), a magical cave, a flying carpet, and an all-powerful genie (Will Smith) charged with granting him three wishes. Disney are really going hell-for-leather ...
REVIEW: Red Road (2006)
Jackie Morrison (Kate Dickie) lives in Glasgow, and monitors CCTV cameras for a living. One night she recognises a man on one of the monitors, Clyde Henderson (Tony Curran), and tracks his movements to the notorious Red Road apartments in Balornock. Then she deliberately manufactures a 'chance' meeting with him, and ingratiates herself into his ...
REVIEW: All is True (2018)
England, 1613. After his iconic Globe Theatre burns to the ground - the result of a misfired cannon effect - playwright William Shakespeare (Kenneth Branagh) returns home to Stratford-Upon-Avon and a family he barely knows. To an extent you can see the hubris from orbit: actor/director Kenneth Branagh, widely regarded as his generation's finest Shakespearean ...
REVIEW: Assassination Classroom (2015)
A bright yellow tentacled alien with an eerie smiling, spherical head blows a hole through the moon. He then happily announces it's going to do the same to the Earth in one year, unless a classroom of 15 year-old Japanese high schoolers can assassinate him first. That's the premise of Assassination Classroom, a serialised manga by ...
REVIEW: John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum (2019)
Professional assassin John Wick (Keanu Reeves) has murdered a member of the 'high table' - the aristocratic powerbrokers who rule a secret world of killers. Now he is alone, targeted by all thanks to a $14 million dollar price on his head, and unable to call on any of his former allies. The 2017 sequel John ...
REVIEW: The Falcons (2018)
Every year, a group of talented children's football teams assemble on the Westman Islands, off the Icelandic coast. There they play out a tournament in the shadow of a looming volcano. When 10-year-old Jón comes along with his team the Falcons, he expects some difficult football games - but finds something much more troubling. The ...
REVIEW: mother! (2017)
"Mother" (Jennifer Lawrence) wakes up in an isolated house in the country, where she lives with "Him" (Javier Bardem) her poet husband who suffers terribly from writer's block. When a stranger (Ed Harris) unexpectedly arrives with a not-entirely-truthful story, closely followed by his wife (Michelle Pfieffer) it propels mother onto an increasingly threatening emotional journey. ...
