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 ...

Fortunately NOT living up to its title... After Judd Apatow's last directorial effort, the narcissistic, whinging, unrelatable and thoroughly unlikable This is 40, you'll excuse me for not expecting very much from his latest slice of R-rated comedy-drama. And, to be honest, for the first fifteen minutes of Trainwreck, I became more and more worried that my low expectations were going to be met. Fortunately though, once the film finds its rhythm - interestingly, precisely the point at which Bill Hader first appears on screen - it settles into becoming a genuinely funny and heartfelt romantic comedy, with two particularly great characters at its centre. Mind you, it's pretty surprising that Apatow actually directed Trainwreck, as its the only film of his that he hasn't had an active hand in writing. Either way though, this certainly explains why it is such a departure from This is 40 and seems to pick up right where Bridesmaid's (and, oddly enough, Celeste and ...

Cult classic or just a bit flawed... you decide. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about After a disastrous climate change experiment wipes out nearly all life on earth, the last few remaining humans spend their lives in Snowpiercer, a highly advanced, self-powered train, on its endless journeys around the world. Within Snowpiercer, however, tensions between the classes are about to reach boiling point and it's up to Curtis (Chris Evans) and his ragtag group of lower-class revolutionaries to bring class equality to the train – or die trying. What we thought An instant cult classic on release, Snowpiercer's curious mix of allegorical science fiction and Asian-cinema-inflected, heightened action sequences has also fallen victim to a fair amount of backlash. Interestingly, it's one of those rare genre films that has had a noticeably warmer reception by critics than by general audiences, as it scored a very respectable 8.4 on Metacritic an...