There are glimpses of what could have been a decent film here – something charming, witty and exciting, with a cast of greats given room to soar – but whatever might have been is still stuck inside the pages of the book.
The Naked Gun isn’t big or clever and that’s just fine – silliness has been missing from comedy cinema for far too long now. It might not smell quite as ripe as the original trilogy but it’s never not wonderful to hear Frank Drebin let ‘er rip on the big screen.
A three hour and thirty minute biopic about art, history, money, sex, trauma and concrete, it’s heavyweight in every sense: a monument to its own greatness that stands a good distance from anything else you’re likely to see at the cinema this year.
The first two Deadpool films were funny and violent and original, but this one shows Marvel’s most gloriously inappropriate superhero at his very best and worst.
Three films into Ti West’s extraordinary trilogy, Goth proves yet again what a force she is to be reckoned with – and West proves that funny, dark, smart schlock horror still has a lot to say.
It might be brutally upsetting at times, but Haigh’s film disarms you with its tenderness – leaving you with something much more profound to say about the connections we make and break along the way.
Dawn Of The Nugget might have a bit too much Netflix polish in places, and the spark of the original film doesn’t ever burn as brightly here, but there’s still a lot to love about a family film pitched for the post-Christmas dinner funk that’s all about the horrors of the poultry industry.
Not just the definitive account of the man behind the atom bomb, Oppenheimer is a monumental achievement in grown-up filmmaking. For years, Nolan has been perfecting the art of the serious blockbuster – crafting smart, finely-tuned multiplex epics that demand attention; that can’t be watched anywhere other than in a cinema, uninterrupted, without distractions. But this, somehow, feels bigger.
When Momoa isn’t on screen and stuff isn’t exploding, the daft dialogue almost sinks the film into parody. Sure, no one’s ever watched a Fast film for the talking, but so much time spent between set-pieces means we only really get half of a film a here – the big final cliffhanger stopping just as it’s getting going.