David Chang’s six episode Netflix show, Ugly Delicious sees the celebrated New York chef focus on cultural appropriation in food – examining Pizza and its cultural roots as well as fried chicken in the United States and its racial ramifications – as well as looking at variations of these foods in Chinese and Japanese cuisine and how that has affected his own cooking and the cooking of many of his chef friends. He’s an affable guy – very funny and laid back – so this makes for very easy viewing – it’s also very hunger inducing. 

Thomas McGregor (played by Domhnall Gleeson) inherits his great-uncle’s country cottage in Hobbiton or Narnia or whatever idealised country British region it’s supposed to be, leading to an escalating vegetable arms-race as he weaponizes his garden patch, fending off the local wildlife who plunder it with abandon. His artist neighbour Bea, (played by Rose Byrne) is essentially a version of Beatrix Potter herself, who lives across the way and is something of a parent to the rabbits: Peter (voiced by James Corden) and his three sisters — Flopsy (Margot Robbie), Mopsy (Elizabeth Debicki), and Cotton-Tail (Daisy Ridley). MacGregor’s efforts to exterminate the rabbits become more and more insane and bear much resemblance to the Gore Verbinski film Mousetrap where Nathan Lane and Lee Evans destroy their inherited mansion to rid it of a single, hyper intelligent mouse.

There have been a lot of critics who’ve been very sniffy at this re-telling of Beatrix Potter’s beloved stories – some would call it a bastardisation – and that’s a valid argument, it’s a result of the studio movie machine’s search for ‘brand awareness’  - which means though it bears little resemblance to ‘Peter Rabbit’ stories of our childhoods, it’s irrelevant because those squishy nostalgic feelings were still enough to get you into the cinema with your kids to watch it.

The director and co-writer is Will Gluck, who up till this point has made his name with films such as the Emma Stone vehicle Easy A and Friends with Benefits starring Justin Timberlake, flips to working in animation, tailoring his humour for kids. He’s working with Sony Pictures Animation and Australian effects company Animal Logic to bring this story to life and it should be said, the effects themselves are brilliant. The animal characters are photo real, it’s just dependent on the child watching it as to whether the slapstick violence and ‘Tom and Jerry’ style antics will appeal. Personally, I laughed quite a few times, I enjoyed it - I took my two young boys and they reviewed it as the following: The 4-year-old said: “Very Good” and my 7-year-old said “I liked it because of all the explosions”. I think that about wraps it up really.

Sally Potter is a British filmmaker who rose to prominence from a background of experimental filmmaking and theatre, she’s a writer, a choreographer and a composer and by extension of that, a director. She’s made a number of films, though the one that really saw her rise to prominence is 1992’s Orlando, loosely based on Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel. A young nobleman of Elizabeth 1st’s court - named Orlando (played by Tilda Swinton) – is commanded by the dying queen on her deathbed: "Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old." So, Orlando obeys his Queen and begins a life journey that lasts 400 years, during which, Orlando transforms into a woman. It’s a smart, intelligent film and reflects the Potter’s sense of humour and fierce intellect. 

Her latest film The Party sees a group of friends arriving at the home of Janet (Kristen Scott Thomas) who’s just been tapped to be the Government’s Shadow Minister of Health. First to arrive is the nihilistic and cynical best friend April (played by Patricia Clarkson), who congratulates her friend while denouncing democracy as ‘finished’. April’s boyfriend Gottfried (Bruno Ganz), is a life coach and healer, something April holds in deep contempt. When more guests arrive, April is not backwards in coming forwards with her caustic opinions on the lives of academic Martha (Cherry Jones) and her pregnant partner Jinny (Emily Mortimer). They themselves are having their own dispute over the pregnancy and other related issues such as how much radical feminism it’s appropriate to espouse nowadays. Another close friend is delayed, her husband Tom (Cillian Murphy) arrives alone. He’s a Banker and a hopeless coke-fiend - so he’s something of a unicorn within the group. The last member of the ensemble is Bill (played by Timothy Spall) who sits, languishing in the centre of the lounge room, drunk and loudly listening to jazz. He ultimately resurrects from his deep funk of introspection to lob several truth bombs at the group, resulting in some serious ramifications. That’s the setup, to say any more would ruin the film, suffice to say Potter gleefully exposes their sense of entitlement and their hypocrisy in a blistering 71-minute running time. Playing in real-time, the film has a heightened and theatrical feel, in fact it could well be a stage play and not lose any of its intensity, though the ability to edit and shoot closeups of performers makes for an interesting experience.

In 1845, the crew of the Royal Navy vessels HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, venture on an expedition to chart the Northwest Passage through the Arctic. Thinking they can beat the winter, both vessels find themselves frozen amidst the remote tundra. The crew and their officers must band together to survive the horrendous cold and wait out the winter, until the thaw arrives. Unfortunately for them, they are being stalked by a powerful, unfeeling predator. An animal of such size and strength, it violently dispatches crew members apace. It'll take all the ingenuity they can muster to survive, if they just don't end up killing each other first.

Based on the novel by celebrated fantasy and genre author Dan Simmons, The Terror is a top notch, tense and tightly scripted drama owing much to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes adventure The Hound of the Baskerville's as well as to John Carpenter's The Thing. The cast are uniformly terrific, particularly Jared Harris as Crozier, Captain of the HMS Erebus and the ever-reliable Ciaran Hinds as Sir John Franklin, Captain of the HMS Terror. Tobias Menzies (soon to be seen in The Crown as Prince Philip) is terrific as First Officer Fitzjames. The drama on board the vessels is just as riveting as the tense moments of horror off it. The crew below decks are a mix of dutiful sailors and self serving scam artists. The violence, when it occurs, is deeply graphic and not for the faint of heart. This story embraces its gothic horror - and dread - with abandon. No doubt AMC are looking to repeat the success of The Walking Dead (which is definitely waning, in terms of the fan support and ratings) and re-capture that same audience. That said, this is a well scripted show, there's a good deal of beautifully written drama to rivet the viewer, in between the scenes of baroque horror and chair-squirming naval surgery.

Broadly aiming this space epic at a larger family audience, Netflix has thrown some considerable cashola behind it. Irwin Allen (who created the original series) is credited as 'Creator' here though the writer/executive producers behind the show (Matt Sazana and Burk Sharpless) have a frankly terrifying CV as screenwriting partners, with a litany of awful genre flicks stinking up their resume (Gods of Egypt, The Last Witch Hunter, Power Rangers and Dracula Untold) though here they seem to know what they're doing. The show-runner is Zack Estrin, who performed the same duties for the series Prison Break. So, it's a mixed bag behind the camera  - though Neil Marshall (The Descent, Centurion, the upcoming Hellboy reboot) directed the first few episodes and they tread a really satisfying line between family friendly adventure and serious sci-fi that feels more adult-aimed.

Essentially, its reminiscent of The Martian with a Star Trek tone and style. It's nicely plotted and adheres petty closely to the original show. Most of the original elements remain intact. The Robinson family: patriarch John (Toby Stephens from Black Sails  - and son of Maggie Smith), his smart and pragmatic wife Maureen (Molly Parker -  from House of Cards & Deadwood) accompanied by their children Will (Maxwell Jenkins), Judy (Taylor Russell) and Penny (Mina Sundwall), find their ship, Jupiter II, marooned on an Earth-like alien planet, when the interplanetary colonisation convoy they are a part of is involved in an accident. Escaping the extreme temperatures and fixing their broken vessel will require serious ingenuity and smarts. Luckily they're a family of geniuses and they have each other - and a robot.

Stephen Hopkin’s 1997 reboot saw recent Oscar winner Gary Oldman chowing down on the scenery as Doctor Zachary Smith, though here the character is played by Parker Posey and she's very much the same simpering, opportunistic sociopath from the original show. Argentinian actor Ignacio Serricchio plays Don West, the dashing pilot who joins the family on their quest to get 'un-lost'. The production values are great, it's nicely written and it's undemanding sci fi adventure that won't freak out your kids.

It's a fairly high concept setup – predatory alien creatures, with supernaturally good hearing, are instantly attracted to even the slightest sound  - and they have decimated the human population of earth.

It’s produced by Michael Bay's company Platinum Dunes - up till this point they have focused on fairly dreadful horror remakes (Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, The Hitcher). Though it seems they’ve seen the success of Jason Blumhouse and his filmmaking model of ‘low budget/high returns’ (Get Out, Split, The Purge, Sinister, Insidious, The Conjuring, Paranormal Activity) and decided to try it themselves. Taking a risk on original material can seriously pay off – rather than rehashing old brands.

The film opens with Lee Abbott (John Krasinski), his wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt) with their children, hunkering down at their remote farmhouse and attempting to evade the predators and survive. The farmhouse is soundproofed - sand covers walking tracks, basements are wallpapered in newspaper and converted into soundproofed living quarters, ultimately establishing from the outset that this family have a well thought-out efficiency to their ‘silent living’. Into this environment is added the complication of Evelyn being pregnant. A baby and total silence are obviously not great bedfellows.

The eldest daughter Regan (which is a slight name check to Linda Blair’s character of the same name from The Exorcist) is played by a real life hearing impaired actress named Millicent Simmons – and she is terrific. Her presence in the film is very much key to the ‘silent living’ because most family communication is conducted using signing - which is then subtitled. Likewise Noah Jupe is also great as the sensitive youngest son Marcus.

Krasinski sets up the rules of this world rather well, ratcheting up tension from the first scene and ensures the audience is gripped for the films full running time. High concept ideas such as these can easily go off the rails - if a film’s internal logic isn’t adequately established at the outset. A filmmaker has to lay out the rules that the characters inhabiting the story have to follow – and Krasinski does an absurdly brilliant job. The smart workarounds that the family use to avoid making sound are clever and thoughtful, which only adds to making the concept work better.

Krasinski’s an actor that most people would know from the US version of The Office and from various ensemble comedy’s. Here though, he’s brilliant. I saw him last in 13 Hours, Michael Bay’s rather action-focused telling of the Benghazi Consulate siege – he proved his dramatic action chops in that. He’s also next going to be seen in Amazon’s new Jack Ryan TV show, where he’ll take on the CIA Analyst role that Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Chris Pine had a crack at. Judging by his performance here, I think he’ll do a great job.

There are some bloody scenes, but they’re mainly quick and efficient and the film never lingers longer than it needs to. What the film does have, is sharp tension. This is held, quite successfully, for the entire film. In fact it’s probably the most suspenseful film I’ve seen in a long time. It’s lean and its muscular, running 90 minutes in length, which is well-judged as it never outstays its welcome. Highly recommended, though rustling popcorn and loudly crunching chips in the theater may not be a good idea as a 'sssshh' is guaranteed.

Based on Ernest Cline's 2011 fanboy-tastic book, Ready Player One tells the story of a virtual utopia called The Oasis, created by a Steve Jobs-type visionary named James Halliday (Mark Rylance from The BFG and Bridge of Spies). The Oasis is made up of many different worlds and in it, your avatar can accumulate wealth and weapons and if/when your avatar dies, you then have to restart the game with nothing - it's called 'cashing out'.  Halliday dies a few years before the film starts and our story opens with the fervent masses searching his online world for three hidden keys that Halliday has hidden there, and will, in Wonka-esque fashion,  earn the winner ownership of The Oasis  - and half a trillion dollars. Individuals forming a 'tribe' or syndicate, play the game to find the keys but corporate interests exist in The Oasis as well and a company called Innovative Online Industries, headed by a greasy corporate villain named Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) will stop at nothing to find the keys and hand the control of The Oasis to evil corporate overlords. One game player, Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) and his group of online friends - who he's never actually met in reality - decide to find the keys themselves, leading to their successes making them targets for the corporate interests seeking to discover Halliday's trillion dollar fortune. So the race is on, in what is essentially 'Geek Fan versus corporate schill'.

The book is unashamedly geeky and features characters who are obsessed with their own pop culture trivia prowess. This is focused on quite a lot in the film, including one scene where Wade tries to catch Sorrento out in a trivia error - as if to signal that the villain isn't REALLY a good person because he doesn't know his Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Breakfast Club trivia. He isn't ONE OF US. It's this condescending tone that makes trivia quoting geeks so frustrating to be around (being one myself). There are so many visual references to other franchises it's overwhelming. including a breathtaking race through one of the great horror movie masterworks of the 20th century - there's also visual checks to Star Trek, 2001, The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Chucky, Activision/Blizzard gaming characters, Japanese anime characters - it's really a world that ONLY Spielberg's clout with IP rights and legal wrangling, could have pulled together. Composer Alan Silvestri even cannibalises his own soundtracks for Back to the Future and Spielberg's collaborations with John Williams (in other films) for the musical cues that feature throughout the film.

YES - there are plot holes in the story, big enough for a T-Rex to fit through. YES - there has been a lot of online discussion about some of the stereotypes and clunky script decisions that seem less than advisable in this post-gamergate world. YES - there's saccharine character moments and the plot is really just a combination of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World . Here's the thing: I LOVED this film. I was swept up in the sheer popcorn, over-the-top craziness of it. It's SO overwhelmingly Spielberg, it wove its spell and carried me away with it. It's the first really popcorn escapist movie that he's made in at least a decade that seems to directly connect with the Spielberg films of my youth. Fun, flawed but insanely good fun.

Based on the French graphic novel La mort de Staline by Fabien Nury, this film depicts the Soviet power struggles following the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. Directed and co-written by Armando Iannucci, it marks his first directorial outing since he left showrunner duties on the HBO series Veep, which he created. Armando has been a fixture amidst British comedy for the last 30 years, primarily in co-creating Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge & I'm Alan Partridge, working with Steve Coogan. He also worked with Chris Morris, creating the news satires The Day Today & Brass Eye (which were a clear inspiration for The Chaser's CNNNN comedy program) - he also created the UK TV show The Thick of it and directed the subsequent film of that series, In The Loop. Though what introduced him to US audiences was his HBO series, Veep. 

The Death of Stalin showcases a disparate cast of English-speaking actors (all with diverse accents, nicely reflecting the Soviet melting pot of mixed cultures and languages) to play the senior brass of the Communist Party who were scrambling to maintain a semblance of order after the death of their leader. Stalin’s underlings include Jeffrey Tambor as interim boss Malenkov, Steve Buscemi as acting general secretary (and future premier) Nikita Khrushchev, Monty Python's Michael Palin as foreign affairs minister Molotov and  UK theatre actor Simon Russell Beale as security chief Beria.

Depicted as bumbling and ridiculous, the group are at once motivated by paranoia and self-preservation as much as power-hungry ambition and find themselves paralysed by the awful truth that anyone who puts their head above the parapet to act upon a desire to seize power, could find themselves being shot at dawn against a courtyard wall. In Stalin’s presence, the group are just wombling suck-up's, but now that he's dead, each would gladly crawl over their dead compatriots in order to take his place. Stylistically speaking, Iannucci introduces this motley array of political creatures during walk and talks and fast paced commentary, so at times, it can require keeping track of the plot mechanics - which is no bad thing, it's always gratifying to see filmmaker who assumes his audience is as smart as they are.

Treading a fascinating line between historical truth and near farcical comedy, the darkly comic real world sandbox is similar to the one Kubrick played in for Dr. Strangelove (or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the bomb). Viewed in that light, it's admirable that Iannucci doesn't shy away from the historical horrors committed by Stalin's regime yet still mines the situation for laughs. This climate of fear and paranoia in Moscow is wonderfully demonstrated in the opening segment, where the Moscow Symphony Orchestra perform a concert and at its conclusion, Stalin's 'people' call and request a recording - except it wasn't recorded. So, terrified of being taken away in the night for 'enhanced interrogation',  the fearful musicians repeat and record the whole performance, including finding another conductor (in reality, they had to ask THREE different conductors because the first fainted under the stress and the second was too drunk) and forcing the audience to re-watch and re-applaud accordingly.

Given the buffoonery on display, it's no surprise that The Death of Stalin was banned in Russia by their Culture ministry - though why it was initially approved for exhibition and then pulled at the eleventh hour, suggests top brass in Russia had their attention drawn to an upstart film that addressed a dark passage in their country's history - and was a comedy. Caustic, dark and very funny, there's an exhilaration in seeing political comedy this barbed and this daring.

There was a distinct demarcation between Paul Thomas Anderson's early films like Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia & Punch Drunk Love and the seismic shift in style and tone that presented itself with There Will Be Blood. As if made by a different filmmaker, that film showed a tone and style that seemed to belong to another era of filmmaking. 

Daniel Day Lewis transformed himself for There Will Be Blood, creating a performance that would win him the Academy Award for Best Actor that year. Anderson's follow-up to that film was The Master, showcasing the last truly great performance by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, that film took a nuanced look at the formation of a new religion (based on Scientology) and its psychological and philosophical treatments offered to its followers. When a PTSD suffering WW2 veteran Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) happens across Hoffman's Lancaster Dodd, he becomes a test subject of sorts, for the deluded and self-aggrandising Dodd to implement his treatments upon and 'cure'.

Again, with his collaborator Daniel Day Lewis in the lead, Anderson's new film explores the world of Haute couture in 1950's London. Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day Lewis) and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) maintain the rigid daily rituals and fetishistic detailing required for the preparation and construction of expensive fashion for the love of demanding and high-paying clientele. Into this world of immaculately starched collars, cravats, silent breakfasts and laser-focused obsession, comes Alma (Vicky Krieps) a waitress that Reynolds deigns to direct his white-hot light of obsession at. She eventually starts to worm her way into his life, his heart at which point he then struggles to find a niche she can occupy within his life that won't upset the rigorous balance he maintains. 

Some reviewers have been referring to this films portrayal of 'toxic masculinity' however that's a poor reading of exactly what makes Woodcock tick. He's decidedly un-masculine and abdicates his emotional responsibilities. He's a man-child: indulged, placated and tolerated by his sister Cyril who ensures that those surrounding Reynolds - and those involved in his daily routine - never pierce the bubble of infantalising tolerance that Cyril bestows upon her brother, largely to make it easier for her to control him.

Ultimately, Anderson's follow-up to his hilarious & enjoyable (though largely audience-alienating) Inherent Vice is possibly one of his most focused and crystalline works yet. A singular 'three-hander' that pin-points the collateral damage affecting those who love the 'obsessed artist', who pander to their whims and struggle to earn priority and sustain a place within their world. Johnny Greenwood's rich, evocative score signals Woodcock's romantic infatuation with Alma (because that's what he believes it to be) though the film itself never feels swept away by anything other than the sheer dominating obsessiveness of Woodcock. It's a tightly wound, stayed, constricted - and stunning - masterpiece.

In what could possibly be one the best performances Robert De Niro has given in this new century, he headlines veteran filmmaker Barry Levinson’s (Rain Man, Good Morning Vietnam) dramatic reconstruction of the fall of Bernie Madoff, one of the most respected and highly regarded market traders that Wall Street has ever seen.

Bernie (De Niro) holds his family in high esteem, yet keeps them at arm’s length. His two sons Mark (Alessandro Nivola) and Andrew (House of Cards’  Nathan Darrow) beg him to reveal the inner workings of his business to them, Bernie insists they’re ‘not ready’. His wife Ruth (an excellent Michelle Pfeiffer) asks him to retire, but Bernie is adamant that the company needs his guidance. So as the film opens, the awful truth is revealed: Madoff has lost more than $65 billion dollars of his investors’ money and faces impending arrest: thousands of people’s life savings, pensions, retirement funds and company earnings, have all been vaporised. His decades long ‘Ponzi’ scheme fraud had grown to such extremes, he was incapable of reversing the damage. When clients requested several billion in returns so they can cash out, Bernie and his accountant Frank (Hank Azaria) only had $200 million in funds. When Bernie reveals the truth to his unsuspecting family, it has a cataclysmic effect. His sons’ promising careers disintegrate, Ruth becomes a social pariah. Family rifts develop as the media scrutiny becomes unbearable. The soul searching starts and so do the questions.

Madoff helped launch the Nasdaq stock market, he sat on the board of the National Association of Securities Dealers as well as advising the Securities and Exchange Commission on trading securities. For these reasons, his fraud went unnoticed.

As the stoic, virtually inert Madoff, De Niro is a picture of tightly wound conflict and constriction, his performance being more about what he doesn’t do, rather than what he does do. Pfeiffer lends solid support as his fragile wife Ruth (though this won't be passing the Bechdel Test anytime soon) who begins to fragment, as the lifestyle to which she's become accustomed begins to unravel. Darrow and Nivola are particularly fine as his doomed sons, whose own journey's mirror their mother's, though they themselves are suspected of masterminding the fraud by the media and by the SEC. The bubble of ignorance that their father kept them in serves to make them appear as culpable as their father. 

The scale of this family tragedy is staggering, how a man living in a bubble of obfuscation and denial, claims to love and care for them yet leaves them to shoulder the burden of media scrutiny and the harsh judgement of a public who believe them to be complicit in the fraud.

Like other notable ‘low-budget, big concept’ filmmakers such as Shane Carruth (Primer) and Darren Aronofsky (with his maiden feature Pi), Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s latest feature fleshes out the concepts behind their previous short film Resolution as a jumping off point for this latest feature.

It’s no mean feat to tackle science fiction elements as well as Lovecraftian cosmic horror and familial dramatic tension. So, wearing as many hats as possible, (Aaron Moorhead also serves as Director of Photography) the two co-directors also star as brothers, bonded by the experience of growing up in a cult.

They now make new lives for themselves out in the world yet younger sibling Justin (Justin Benson) longs for the simplicity and structure that the commune had offered, while his older brother Aaron (Aaron Moorhead) is motivated to move on with his life and put the cult behind them. Aaron constantly reminds his younger brother of the weird rituals and bizarre beliefs of what he calls the ‘UFO suicide cult’. Eventually though, after much discussion, Aaron decides to accompany his brother for a one-day visit, with the hope that it’ll provide some closure, maybe for both of them.

At first, the camp compound set in the Southern Californian hills, appears placid and easy-going. Group leader Hal (Tate Ellington) re-introduces the brothers to the group; he shows them the craft beer the group manufactures for sale to the outside world and reintroduces Justin to his teen crush, Anna (Callie Hernandez). While the complicated relationship dynamics unwind, the cryptic utterances of the group spark Aaron’s paranoia: allusions to an entity that watches them from above, that controls the environment and its image-based communication with them, in the form of photos and the references to an ultimate ‘ascension’ that awaits them all in a few days time.

The growing sense of anxiety intensifies as Aaron attempts to discover the cause of apparent ‘time loops’ and mirrored pockets of reality scattered around the region that obscure areas in the hills, areas where other people seem to be similarly trapped.

Brimming with science fiction concepts, cosmic horror and brooding dread, The Endless excels at creating something akin to a ‘blockbuster of the mind’. The budgetary restraint ensures that there’s little reliance on digital effects but what effects there are, sell this gripping tale and show that Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead could do serious damage with a decent budget.

This is the kind of film that inspires young filmmakers, showing how a smart script and a camera lens’s gaze relying more on suggestion and misdirection, can create horror and science fiction as impactful and engaging as anything out there.

Scottish Filmmaker Paul McGuigan’s helmed a broad variety of genre films, a favourite of mine is Push, which features Captain America aka Chris Evans’ and a band of superpowered misfits, he’s also directed several of the early seasons of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock – establishing that shows look and style – and of course his debut, Gangster Number One  - which launched the career of Paul Bettany.

His latest feature tells the story of the final years of Hollywood screen siren Gloria Grahame and her affair with 26-year-old struggling actor and Liverpudlian Pete Turner, played by Jamie Bell. Grahame was a big star in the 40’s and 50’s, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in the The Bad and the Beautiful - she starred in several hit films, most notably: It’s a Wonderful Life, The Big Heat with Bogart and Oklahoma!

By the time Gloria met Pete Turner in London in 1979, she’d been through four marriages, including one to Nicholas Ray, director of Rebel Without a Cause. She’d endured some seriously salacious scandals during those marriages – most notably an affair with Nick Ray’s 13-year-old son, who eventually became her fourth husband. So - Gloria is something of a pariah in a lot of Hollywood circles and in the film, she appears to be running from that sordid past, running from her family in the US and in the opening of the film, which is told in a combination of flashbacks – she calls the young Pete Turner at home, after not speaking to him for some time following their initial affair – and tells him she’s sick – and she begs him to allow her to come to his family’s home in Liverpool and recuperate there. Pete complies, though his mother, Bella (played by Julie Walters) - believes Gloria to be a lot more ill than what she’s letting on.

Performances are great - Vanessa Redgrave features in a lovely cameo as Gloria Grahame’s mother, and Bening’s character of this aging golden age bombshell is actually quite complicated – she’s brash and arrogant yet prone to emotional implosions because of her intense fragility – Jamie Bell and Bening have great chemistry and he’s really great here – but there’s also something of a strange balancing act where you’re aware of his deep feelings for her but also that she is a very broken individual with some serious predatory issues where young men are concerned. Oddly though, I felt like it crept up on me – the ending felt inevitable, but it was incredibly moving and sweet. Definitely worth checking out.

Bruce Willis is notorious for having two modes of performance – one, he phones it in and is barely reactive – the other, he’s terrific, delivering indelible characters with charisma and verve. Usually it depends on what kind of director he’s working with as to what you’re going to get. Why he chose to headline a remake of Michael Winner’s Death Wish is anyone’s guess – it’s been remade recently by James Wan and Leigh Whannell (the pair behind the ‘Saw’ franchise) with Kevin Bacon as the everyman seeking restitution for his loved ones demise. Here, Eli Roth is at the helm – he made the infamous Hostel 1 & 2 – which was essentially a torture laden, xenophobic travelogue, The Green Inferno where a group of leftie university students protesting logging in the amazon crash land and are taken prisoner by a village of cannibals and Knock Knock where Keanu Reeves’ lothario plays host to a one night stand with two women who turn the tables on him and dismantle his life -  so Eli Roth is no stranger to dodgy politics and cheap exploitation. In this remake, Paul Kersy (Willis) is a surgeon at a Chicago hospital whose life is torn apart when home invaders rob his family, leaving his wife (played by Elisabeth Shue) dead and his daughter in a coma.

At first he’s numbed by the experience but he slowly begins to be drawn towards guns and the feeling of control they provide. There’s some very funny satire when he goes to a gun shop to purchase a weapon and there’s some sly humour about the lack of paperwork and the perfunctory safety process required to possess a gun. At first it feels like this may start to play out as an out-and-out satire but once the revenge killing kicks in, Roth’s tendency towards gore, splatter and exploitative violence takes over. It’s not entirely unenjoyable, Breaking Bad’s Dean Norris plays the cop on the trail of Willis's hooded vigilante and the action is well-staged – though that’s not helped by some rather ham-fisted commentary on the proceedings provided by Sirius FM DJ’s discussing whether killing bad guys is a detrimental thing for society or something that is helpful. I’ve no idea why it’s even broached as a discussion. The film isn’t concerned with answering that – it’s not interested – it simply wants to entertain and indulge in the fantasy that self-actualisation through violent vengeance is somehow even possible.

There’s nods to Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs in the final act and Roth is absolutely on his game technically – it’s just Willis who’s barely there emotionally – so any emotional justification for the revenge killing is squandered, because Willis couldn’t even sell that he’s mildly upset let alone traumatised.

Paul Kersy’s character wears a grey hoodie to obscure his face, which felt to me like a nod to Jodie Foster in Neil Jordan’s The Brave One, a film which had an identical plot but flipped it into something more interesting by having a woman be the main character, feeling empowered through vigilante slaying, triggered by the killing of her husband. Similarly, Michael Caine’s turn in Harry Brown took an identical plot yet made it about a pensioner in a London tower block taking revenge when his pensioner friend is killed by local drug dealers. It’s not a story everyone can find interesting but there’s certainly something to explore if the filmmaker finds an entry point that’s worth exploring - a good example of that is Sean Penn’s film The Crossing Guard which starred Jack Nicholson as a grieving father whose son is killed by a hit and run driver and Nicholson’s character counts down to the day the killer is released from prison – that film also showed the struggle of the killer, dealing with his crime. It lent an added dimension to the film. If the audience genuinely does not feel manipulated by the filmmaker, it's a rewarding experience – but by doing a straight cover of the Bronson original -– thankfully without the leeringly awful rape scene (that featured a young Jeff Goldblum) – it does ultimately feel a little empty and by the numbers – if not a little tone-deaf given the current social climate around guns in the US. Still, its enjoyable enough if all you’re looking for is a pro-NRA fantasy about guns bringing emotional healing.

Based on Jeff VanderMeer's first book of the Southern Reach Trilogy. A team of four women set out into a region known as Area X. After Lena's (Natalie Portman) soldier husband vanished a year ago, he resurfaces, afflicted with unexplained memory loss, resembling little of the man he used to be. Determined to find answers, she puts her name forward for an expedition into the ‘environmental disaster zone’ from which her husband recently returned. Located somewhere along the New England coastline, it's under Army quarantine following a meteorite hit. Surrounded by a kaleidoscopic protective bubble known as 'The Shimmer', the world within the blast zone is regressing genetically and mutating. Plants, inanimate objects and human organic material is genetically re-sequencing into some seriously creepy animal-human hybrids and bizarre structures.

Portman is reliably intense and lends a solid emotional base to the drama. She's helped along on her mission by a team of soldiers and scientists featuring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson and Tuva Novotny. All turn in terrific performances. There are some seriously astonishing effects as well as profoundly creepy moments of horror - so while not for everyone, it’s a solidly written and engagingly intelligent rendering of VanderMeer's book. Science fiction this good does not come along often, usually it takes a filmmaker with fixed resolve and a strong vision, Garland has shown himself to be such a filmmaker and his talent is undeniable.

Due to 'test screenings', producer David Ellison lost faith in the film and became concerned that the it was "too intellectual" and "too complicated". He demanded changes to make it appeal to a wider audience, including making Portman's character more sympathetic and changing the ending. Producer Scott Rudin sided with Garland in his desire to not alter the film. Rudin had final cut.

Due to these clashes between Rudin and Ellison, and thanks to a shift in Paramount's leadership, a deal was struck with Netflix - where they would handle international distribution. According to this deal, Paramount will release theatrically in the US and China, while Netflix will stream the film in other territories, three weeks later. 

This kind of deal does sound a shift in the way studios treat 'risky' ventures. If the top brass doubt a films ability to open wide and conquer box office, the can offload it to Netflix where it still finds an audience and is a value add for the streaming giant because their audience perceives it as just more content grist for the mill. Either way, it's a shame Australian audiences won't get to see this stunning film in a cinema.

JARROD WALKER

Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander), heir to her missing father Richard Croft's (Dominic West) fortune, resists the attempts of his corporation's boss Anna (Kristen Scott Thomas) to declare her father dead. Instead, hell bent on finding her father alive, she decides to use information she's gleaned from her father's research to traverse the globe so she can discover his last known location. She comes up against the rather-dodgy-from-the-outset Vogel (Walton Goggins), who's looking for the same lost tomb of evil is-she-a-supernatural-creature-or-not Queen Himiko that her father was looking for. Given the heavy reliance on Father and child themes, the screenwriters dusted off the 'Indiana Jones and The last Crusade' script and incorporated many of the tropes from that films third act. Notably a 'puzzle temple' - and solving riddles deciphered from ancient script. There's even a partially comic scene where her father scolds her for not destroying the diaries lest they fall into the wrong hands. I was waiting for "I should have mailed it to the Marx bros.".

Is there a problem with being derivative of a much better film? No, not exactly - but if the execution is as doggedly roughshod and ill-thought out, as it is here, it's a BIG problem mainly because the audience will spend the whole time thinking "yeah - i LOVED 'Last Crusade' but THIS is nowhere near as good". 

In this age of 'woke-ness' and diversity of sexes in cinema, you'd think it was an ample opportunity to reclaim a teen masturbatory gaming icon and reboot her into a fleshed-out, fully-realised and heroic female adventurer. Instead, Vikander's Croft IS given a physicality makeover and her chops in MMA and ass-kicking are proven at the films beginning, it just never bothers to reboot her character - an Academy Award Winning actress is essentially left to twist in the wind as a hackneyed-when-it-was-a-2013-game-plot storyline plays out with leaden predictability. A shame for Vikander, who deserves better and for the rest of the cast who do their utmost under the circumstances. Still, Vikander establishes the character in fine form, so hopefully - maybe - she'll get another crack at proving Croft has some adventuring in her yet.

JARROD WALKER