(courtesy IMP Awards) Sequels are tricky things to pull off. Not only are you battling against the fearsomely rose-tinted power of nostalgia, but you are trying to engender the same emotional response and devotion that the original garnered but without the full force of novelty and with a need to Continue Reading
Movies
Birthday movie review: Spellbound
(courtesy IMP Awards) We all want a happy ever after. But what about if that happy ever after doesn’t quite work as you think it will; what do you do then, when expectations are dashed, even if it’s in a good but different way? That’s the great dilemma facing Princess Continue Reading
Movie review: Wicked
(courtesy IMP Awards) Having the loftiest of your hopes and dreams fulfilled in life is a very rare thing. Oh, we are very good at going big and large when it comes to how good things can be or how they might play out – unless you’re a glass half-empty Continue Reading
Fun animation movie trailers x 4: Elio, The Bad Guys 2, Night of the Zoopocalypse + Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Please stop thinking animated films are just for kids. Yes, they are a perfect way to entertain, amuse and inform children and thank goodness for them during school holidays, long car trips and inordinate waits anywhere. But these gems of cinema also beautifully entertain adults too, and not just the Continue Reading
Movie review: And Mrs
(courtesy IMP Awards) When my parent died within 3 1/2 years of each other, the grief that enveloped me was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. It felt as if all the old certainties had been swept away and that all the things I knew and could count on were Continue Reading
Festive movie review: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
(courtesy IMP Awards) As a child of the Church (thought failed, ultimately, to stick in childhood), it’s always fascinated this reviewer how something as pure as belief in the goodness of a higher power, which should always elevate and enliven can somehow become a tool for oppressive, punitive religious expression. Continue Reading
Festive movie review: Hot Frosty
Having your festive viewing expectations subverted is a rare and precious thing indeed. Much of the time in Christmas viewing land, what you see is what you get, and that is usually a good thing since you want fun, escapist entertainment with a heartwarming moral core, and that is precisely Continue Reading
Movie review: Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point
(courtesy IMDb) In popular culture at large, Christmas is often seen in very distinct, sharply-realised ways. It is variously a season of miracles or healing or wondrous discovery, and there is always some sort of point to proceedings whether it’s saving Christmas itself by helping Santa or doing a life-changing Continue Reading
This is the end, my globe-trotting, spy drama loving friend, the end: Mission Impossible – Final Dropping drops a trailer
(courtesy IMP Awards) SNAPSHOTA continuation of the iconic Mission: Impossible series following Ethan Hunt formerly of the IMF, and the conclusion following Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023). Paramount Pictures and Skydance Present, A Tom Cruise Production. “Our lives are the sum of our choices.” Tom Cruise is Continue Reading
Festive movie review: Meet Me Next Christmas
(courtesy IMP Awards) Have you ever fired up a promising movie on a streaming platform, especially a festive one, only to find that it disappoints at every turn? Of course you have – it’s what watching most Netflix movies feels like alas, and while hope springs to eternal and all Continue Reading