Because Everybody Else Has One

For once Pixar's recent sequel trend doesn't just feel like a cash-grab to sell more toys. Here's hoping Toy Story 4 can continue the trend... The superhero film landscape is now rather different to what it was when the first Incredibles came out - unbelievably, some fourteen years ago. We had a couple of good Spider-man and X-Men films back in 2004 but Batman Begins was still a year away and the juggernaut that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe wasn't even a pipedream. More than just a fabulous entry into Pixar's ever-expanding canon, the Incredibles was a major step forward for superheroes on the big screen. Not that there weren't great superhero films before it - there had been plenty of damn fine superhero films since Christopher Reeve first brought Superman to vivid, cinematic life way back in 1978 - but more even than Spider-Man 2, which came out earlier that same year, the Incredibles captured comic book superheroics in a way that no film before it h...

We may just be looking at the best horror film of the 21st century - of course, I wasn't going to let it go by without talking about it. And, as always, no spoilers here - I barely even discuss the general plot for fear of giving anything away - but it's never a bad idea to go into films like this with no real expectations so feel free to come back to this review after seeing the film... With some rather good horror films having come out over the last couple of years (including, but not limited to, IT and a Quiet Place), calling Hereditary a strong contender for the best horror film of the century so far is no longer to damn it with faint praise, as it would have been back when most of its competition was so-called "torture porn" and found-footage Blair-Witch-knockoffs. Even without having yet seen such acclaimed 21st-century horror flicks like the Witch and the Babbadook - neither of which hit South African cinemas, for reasons that utterly escape me - it'...

It's not just the mega-expensive Hollywood blockbusters that let the side down this week... This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about Delphine Deyrieux is a highly successful novelist but after the major success of her more recent work, she finds herself suffering from writer's block and unable to come up with a new idea for her next novel. Enter Elle or “Her”, a young fan of Delphine's work who quickly befriends the older woman and convinces her to start writing something more autobiographical. Who is Elle, though? Is she just a passionate fan or something more sinister? What we thought Adapting the acclaimed French novel by Delphine de Vigan, Roman Polanski and his co-writer, Olivier Assayas, have crafted a film that is, at very best, an interesting misfire and, at worst, something that had no business leaving the page in the first place. Films about writing are quite common and Polanski draws on many of them here – from Mercy to ...

Hey, we're getting this a full two weeks before the US! Too bad it's such a dud... As always, I will try my best to avoid spoilers, especially as the trailer actually didn't give very much away, but there is a section in this review that deals lightly with what happens from the beginning of the second act on that you may want to skip until you've seen the film. It is clearly indicated, though, and, fairly vague but proceed with some caution for that paragraph.  Plot: Two years after the Jurassic World theme park was destroyed by dinosaurs, the island on which it resides, Isla Nublar, faces total annihilation as its volcano roars to deadly life. In a last-ditch effort to save the dinosaurs, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) once again joins forces with former dinosaur-trainer and current ex-boyfriend, Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), to return to the Island at the behest of the co-creator of the original Jurassic Park and John Hammond's former partner, Benjamin Loc...

Something like a year after the pretty great Jackie, we have this look into a crucial period in the life of another Kennedy that is... less great. This review is also up on Channel 24 What it's about Based on a true story, it is July 1969 and Ted Kennedy finds himself in the shadow of his two more famous, murdered brothers, John and Robert, but just as his own political career is about to take off and the road the White House is finally in view, tragedy strikes that threatens to undermine everything he worked for. Driving drunk after a party in the family's summer home on Chappaquiddick Island with Mary Jo Kapechne, one of the Kennedy clan's “Boiler Room Girls”, he drives his car off a bridge into a deep pond: he gets out alive, she does not. With an overbearing father on one side and his cousin and voice of moral conscience, Joe Gargan, on the other, Kennedy is stuck between doing the right thing and confessing to his crime or saving his burgeoning political ca...