Because Everybody Else Has One

Doctor Strange is Marvel's most visually arresting movie to date but is it any more than that? Does it need to be? This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about When Stephen Strange, an arrogant but brilliant neurosurgeon, has his life and career brought to a screeching halt after having his hands mangled in a bad car accident, his search for a cure brings him to the doorstep of the Ancient One, an ageless sorceress who may be the one person able to do what the most advanced medicine could not. What starts off as a desperate last resort for a man who has always lived his life with no time for anything beyond a materialistic (in both senses of the word) view of the world is soon confronted with both a reality that challenges everything he knows to be true and something that may well give him a purpose far, far greater and far more selfless than just healing his hand. What we thought Created by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee in 1963, Doctor Strange wasn't ...

And... we're back. Sorry for the lack of updates recently but this particular film is a particularly great way to get back into the swing of things. I do fully intend to have a roundup of all the major Oscar films and a full review of the achingly beautiful Room (spoiler: it gets a 10/10 from me) at the very least. Watch this space, as they say... This review is also up at Channel 24 .    What it's about The true story of a team of investigative journalists from the Boston Globe who, in the early 2000s, uncovered a conspiracy to hide a widespread epidemic of child molestation at the hands of Catholic priests throughout the city. What we thought By turns a glowing tribute to the power of a dying breed of investigative journalism, an exploration of institutionalized evil and an examination of how a city's power structure affects an individual with lifelong ties to said city, Spotlight may not exactly be big on high-octane thrills but it's a highly ...

Or will it? This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about After being involved in a tragic car accident that resulted in the death of a young child, author Tomas Eldan is forced to come to grips with what happened, even as his writing career starts to take off. What we thought It's been a long time since a Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas; Wings of Desire) film has seen a cinematic release in this country but the extremely clumsily titled Every Thing Will Be Fine is far from his best work - even if it is, in some respects, quite representative of his enormous talents as a filmmaker. Wenders has always made glacially-paced, elegiac films that are as much about simmering emotions and overall mood as they are about traditional plot mechanics so it's hardly the case that Every Thing Will Be Fine is a major departure for him. It's also every bit as gorgeously shot and evocatively scored as his very best work and even if his experiment with 3D effect...