Film Shapes

For all Sam Raimi's standing in the industry and the adulation in which he's held, by my reckoning, his last good film was 1995's The Quick and the Dead . I haven't forgotten his Spider-Man  films (really disliked those) and there are a couple I've missed, sure, but Marvel took a risk signing him on for this. The good news for Feige and co is that it works. It's more inventive than recent MCU films, what with the multiverse angle that was road-tested by the Loki  (and WandaVision to a lesser extent) TV series, and its smattering of Raimi touches. It's arguably the best of the phase 4 films so far. Brief rundown - a demon is hunting a girl, America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez, and you're on your own pronouncing that first name) to steal her power of traversing the multiverse (multi-traversing?). Our Strange (Universe 616) is co-opted into helping her avoid said nasty. Cumberbatch is supreme (though not Sorcerer Supreme) as Strange, and he's well supported ...

Nerd disclaimer. I quite like the whole Star Trek world/universe, specifically The Next Generation and DS9 , even Voyager had its moments. With that in mind, I didn't take much convincing about the quality and punch of the first 'rebooted' Star Trek back in 2009. The second film in the new series continues the style of its predecessor, probably because it comes from the same writers and director (Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and J.J. Abrams, with Damon Lindelof also getting a writing and producing credit for this new film). Most of the Enterprise crew get something to do here, Kirk and Spock hogging possession, of course, but Scotty, Bones and Uhura all have important scenes. Once again though, the villain comes away with the film (I was reminded of Iron Man 3 in this regard) as Benedict Cumberbatch was bloody top notch. Trekkies (Trekkers?) will have already guessed the name of his character and also noticed one scene - possibly more - lifted...

Released in September last year in the UK and it takes SIX MONTHS to get to Japan, yet Battleship  arrives seemingly everywhere at once! Just one of the many injustices Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy must endure. Another would be the notion that films like The Artist and Hugo are better than it (according to assorted Awards ceremonies recently past). Piffle and tommy-rot! After reading the book years ago and watching the BBC series with Alec Guiness as Smiley, and enjoying both, I approached this new film with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. And I think it needs to be stated that the book, the TV show and the film are like kids with the same father but different mothers. They all come from the same seed but have quite noticeable differences. Le Carre himself apparently told Tomas Alfredson to do what he liked with the film, saying something along the lines of, "If you fuck up the film, the book will still be good". Well, Alfredson certainly di...