I suffer from Avengernesia: I’m a bit hazy on which Marvel films I’ve seen and the order they’re supposed to be in. You don’t need to have seen all the earlier films to enjoy this, but some backstory on its gazillion superheroes certainly helps. We begin with Thor getting his mighty hammer caressed by… wait,… Read More Avengers: Infinity War
Queen Anne was the first ruler of the newly united Great Britain in the early 1700s; the last Stuart monarch before the Hanoverian dynasty that’s still with us (God save the Queen!). So, there’s your history. Here, the widowed, childless, semi-invalid Anne is a lonely, eccentric figure, stuck in the gilded cage of her palace,… Read More The Favourite
Marlo is overstretched – and not just by the baby she’s about to deliver. She already has two other kids, one of whom is “quirky” – nobody wants to call it “autism spectrum”, especially not his school, which wants to kick him out. Marlo loves her husband but he’s flat out at work – and… Read More Tully
Others have failed, but now John Krasinski tries to make Tom Clancy’s white-bread action hero three-dimensional. After he’s mastered that tough-guy tic of flexing your jaw muscles to signal repressed rage. Jack Ryan is an ex-Marine who’s now a CIA finance analyst. (From action man to desk job: could there be a background story there?)… Read More Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan
Miriam “Midge” Maisel is living the 1950s housewife dream: successful corporate husband, two kids, Upper West Side apartment, hostess with the mostess, calisthenics, cold cream. Her husband Joel has comedy ambitions and she’s always in the crowd to support his late-night gigs at downtown dive The Gaslight Café. But then a) Miriam discovers Joel’s act… Read More The Marvelous Mrs Maisel
Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani), a Pakistani-born stand-up and Uber driver (ooh, tough gig), meets Emily (Zoe Kazan) at a Chicago comedy night and they hit it off. But she’s white and hence won’t make it past his parents’ bridal selection committee – they’re trying to line him up with a Pakistani-American girl. Any Pakistani-American girl.… Read More The Big Sick
MI5 desk jockey Eve has a bit of an obsession with studying female killers. Which helps her land a job at an MI6* shoestring department trying to track down an international assassin known as Villanelle. She’s a witty, creative and highly proficient psychopath who works for a powerful mystery organisation (SPECTRE? The Illuminati? Sports Direct?… Read More Killing Eve
Peter is some kind of unspecified engineer whose job seems to involve plugging cables into things. He lacks imagination in the wardrobe department, but my does he have vivid dreams about alien invasions. Peter lives in quite a nice city apartment with his wife Alice and their two girls Hannah and Lucy, aka Sulky and… Read More Extinction
This is The Punisher meets Toy Story 3. OK, I suppose that doesn’t really help. Nick Sax is a washed-up ex-cop who now works as a hitman. Fortunately for his line of work – and despite a heart that stops beating at inconvenient times – he seems indestructible. Stab wounds, car crashes, gunshots, crowbar blows:… Read More Happy!
Ethan Hunt and his slightly creaky IMF crew are on the trail of some plutonium before it finds its way into the hands of terrorists called The Apostles. They’re an offshoot of a group formed by Ethan’s old adversary Solomon Lane. No, I couldn’t remember their history either: it might be worth renting the last… Read More Mission: Impossible – Fallout
Mercifully Short Reviews 