Reviewed by GREG KING Director: Jeff Fowler Stars: Jim Carrey, James Marsden, Tika Sumpter, Natasha Rothwell, Shemar Moore, Lee Majdoub, Adam Pally, Tom Butler, voices of Ben Schwartz, Idris Elba, Colleen O'Shaughnessy. The first Sonic The Hedgehog real life action spinoff proved to be popular at the box office, so we get this sequel, which is uneven and overly long but is admittedly a slight improvement on the first film. More money and more thought has obviously been put into this sequel which will certainly please fans of the Sega video game about the …
MARY POPPINS RETURNS
Reviewed by GREG KING Director: Rob Marshall Stars: Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Colin Firth, Meryle Streep, Julie Walters, Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh, Joel Dawson, Angela Lansbury, Dick Van Dyke, Jeremy Swift, Kobna Holbrook-Smith, David Warner, Jim Norton, voices of Chris O'Dowd, Mark Addy. It's been fifty years since Disney released their endearing and enduring live action musical adaptation of P L Travers' Mary Poppins, fantastical tale of the magical nanny who arrived to heal the Banks family in their time of trouble. …
CREED II
Reviewed by GREG KING Director: Steven Caple jr Stars: Michael B Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Dolph Lundgren, Florian Munteanu, Brigette Nielsen, Phylicia Rashid, Milo Ventigmilia, Russell Hornsby, Wood Harris, Patrice Harris. In 2015 director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Black Panther, etc) reinvigorated the Rocky franchise which had grown tired and stale and gave it a necessary injection of youthful energy. The last couple of Rocky films had been little more than vanity projects for its writer/director and star Sylvester Stallone. With Creed …
THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB
Reviewed by GREG KING Director: Fede Alvarez Stars: Claire Foy, Sverrir Gudnason, Sylvie Hoeks, Stephen Merchant, Lakeith Stanfield, Claes Bang, Vicky Krieps, Mikael Persbrandt, Christopher Convery. The Girl In The Spider’s Web is the fourth installment in the Millennium series of dark and misogynistic Scandinavian crime thrillers created by the late Stieg Larsson, who died of a heart attack in 2004. The novels centred around Lisbeth Salander, an unlikely anti-heroine for the twentieth century – a tattooed and heavily pierced computer hacker who had survived …
HALLOWEEN
Reviewed by GREG KING Director: David Gordon Green Stars: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Will Patton, Andi Matichak, Haluk Bilginer, Nick Castle, Rhian Rees, Jeffereson Hall, Toby Huss, Dylan Arnold, Drew Scheid, Virginia Gardner. Set forty years after the events of the original, David Gordon Green’s take on John Carpenter’s classic genre defining slasher film from 1978 works effectively as a direct sequel. This new Halloween pretends that those other nine or so increasingly crappy and ridiculous sequels and Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake didn’t exist, and is all the more …
THE PREDATOR
Reviewed by GREG KING Director: Shane Black Stars: Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Jacob Tremblay, Yvonne Strahovski, Trevante Rhodes, Sterling K Brown, Thomas Jane, Keegan Michael Kay, Augusto Aquilera, Alfie Allen, Jake Busey. Is this new take on the dreadlocked extra-terrestrial trackers who travel across the universe hunting and killing for sport a remake, a reboot or a sequel? According to writer/director Shane Black it is a sequel to the first three Predator movies and reinvigorates the alien predator first created by writers Jim and John Thomas in 1987. The …
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT
Reviewed by GREG KING Director: Christopher McQuarrie Stars: Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Henry Cavill, Rebecca Ferguson, Alec Baldwin, Sean Harris, Vanessa Kirby, Angela Bassett, Michelle Monaghan, Wes Bentley. Most film franchises seem to run out of inspiration before too long, but the Mission Impossible series seems to have gone from strength to strength, with the Brad Bird helmed Ghost Protocol being arguably the strongest film to date. Rogue Nation (2015) took the series in a slightly different direction under the direction of Christopher McQuarrie …
MAMMA MIA! HERE WE GO AGAIN
Reviewed by GREG KING Director: Ol Parker Stars: Amanda Seyfried, Lily James, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Andy Garcia, Cher, Hugh Skinner, Josh Dylan, Jeremy Irvine, Dominic Cooper, Cher, Meryl Streep, Jessica Kennan Wynn, Alexa Davies, Celia Imrie. Mamma Mia! (2008) was a film adaptation of the successful stage juke box musical featuring many of the catchiest hit songs from popular Swedish pop quartet ABBA, and it grossed $600 million at the box office. It’s not surprising that the producers have a second …