BY ROGER WATSON I cannot see many mothers being proud of this film. Mother’s Pride is a film which, given the cast, simply could not fail…yet it does. Heavily, and very misleadingly, trailered on television and promising so much, the film was a cross between cinematic fireworks – with too much going on – and a damp squib, with none of the fireworks exploding. The … Continue reading Mother’s Pride
BY ROGER WATSON This apocalyptic film is entirely about the journey and most certainly not about the ending; there isn’t one. That isn’t a spoiler, but established common knowledge from existing reviews. A House of Dynamite (2025) adopts a familiar theme: an ‘incoming’ threat. An unidentified aggressor—presumed to be North Korea, though China and Russia are considered and dismissed—launches a suspected nuclear missile from somewhere in the … Continue reading A House of Dynamite
BY ROGER WATSON Scoring a well-deserved 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, The Long Walk (2025) is the most dystopian of dystopian films. Written by Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King) the title describes the content of the film perfectly. Set in the 1970s and following a major war, the United States has become a military dictatorship. Morale in the country is poor and, to bolster it and … Continue reading The Long Walk
BY ROGER WATSON With a cast including Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, Michael Shannon and Richard E Grant you would expect Nuremberg (2025) to be good. And it is. The score of 70% on Rotten Tomatoes is less generous than it should be but that is from the panjandrums of the film critic industry. The score of 96% on the Popcornmeter of registered viewers seems nearer … Continue reading Nuremberg
BY ROGER WATSON Attracted to this film by the fact that Julia Roberts was playing the lead role, my wife and I snuggled down for two hours and eighteen minutes of entertainment. In the end all we got were two hours and eighteen minutes of our lives that we will never get back. Even if we did get them back, we would not relive them … Continue reading After the Hunt
BY ROGER WATSON If ever there was a film that deserved the subtitle ‘Or what the Hell is going on?’ it’s The Unholy Trinity (released in 2025 in the United States) which only scores 40% on Rotten Tomatoes. Starring Pierce Brosnan as the sheriff of Trinity in 1870s Montana and the ubiquitous Samuel L Jackson as a gun-toting preacher, it should have done better. The … Continue reading The Unholy Trinity
BY ROGER WATSON Based on the 1981 novel of the same name by Robert Littell, The Amateur (2025) tells the improbable story of a geek turned gunman in pursuit of his wife’s killers. It is an action, suspense thriller and, as such, is diverting enough, but is probably scored accurately at 61% on Rotten Tomatoes. At times it is a bit lacking in action, and you must … Continue reading The Amateur
BY ROGER WATSON So many things were impossible about Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning. I found it impossible to stay awake for the first hour, resulting in many digs in the rib from my wife. But, as if to prove my point, she nodded off too. Even when I was awake, I found it impossible to work out what was going on or why. … Continue reading Mission Impossible, Impossible
BY ROGER WATSON I briefly owned a copy of The Book of Mormon which reached me in extraordinary circumstances a few years ago while checking into the Hamilton hotel in Washington DC. “There’s a parcel for you Mr Watson”, I was told and a package containing a copy of The Book of Mormon was handed to me. A Facebook friend, and Mormon, had asked where … Continue reading Heretic
BY ROGER WATSON I came to Bob Dylan relatively late. It wasn’t until university that a girlfriend introduced me to Nashville Skyline (1969)—his most country-influenced album, and my belated introduction to Johnny Cash, who duets with Dylan on Girl from the North Country. I wasn’t exactly hooked, but I liked a few songs. Everything changed the following year when I moved in with my cousin, … Continue reading A Complete Unknown
BY ROGER WATSON Fast car chases, energetic sexual encounters, and bloodthirsty violence—none of these feature in Small Things Like These (2024), set in County Wexford, Ireland. Also devoid of humour, the film carries dark undertones, focusing on coal merchant Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) and his growing suspicion that something untoward is happening at the local convent. Indeed, something untoward and evil is taking place. The … Continue reading Small Things Like These
BY MAX WALLER If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” – Tancredi Pleasantly surprised by the quality of the new television series The Leopard (Netflix), which has had to contend with comparisons to the aristocratic perfection of the original Visconti movie starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and Claudia Cardinale, I am currently musing on 19th-century Italy—specifically the Risorgimento movement … Continue reading Risorgimento
BY ROGER WATSON I have never ‘retoured’ to Alexandria. I went once and will never forget it. Fuelled with images from Lawrence Durrell’s masterpiece about post World War II stories in The Alexandria Quartet, I envisaged a bohemian city of bars and clubs, licentious and gay (in the modern sense of the word). Instead, I found a dusty, chaotic dump in the grip of Islamic … Continue reading Retour en Alexandre
BY ROGER WATSON Canary Black (2024) is a right load of old nonsense. But when your Gulf Air flight to Bahrain, already delayed by three hours, sits at the stand with you on board for a further three hours, this is the perfect kind of nonsense to pass the time. For a start there is Kate Beckinsale, looking good in a jump suit and knocking … Continue reading Canary Black
BY ROGER WATSON Number 24 (2024) is a Norwegian production directed by John Andreas Andersen. The film, available on Netflix this year with English dubbing, tells the true story of Norwegian World War II hero Gunnar Sønsteby. Sjur Vatne Brean and Erik Hivju portray Sønsteby in his youth and later years, respectively. The narrative shifts between two timelines: Sønsteby’s wartime resistance efforts and a lecture … Continue reading Number 24
BY ROGER WATSON Why anyone would go to see Conclave, a film about the secretive proceedings behind locked doors at the Vatican – thus ‘conclave’ – in the election of a new Pope, is unclear. But they have, in their droves. It is a box office success netting $75 million worldwide and scoring 93% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and 86% on their Popcornmeter of … Continue reading Conclave
BY ROGER WATSON If you have a tendency towards depression, your lifelong marriage is on the rocks or if there are family skeletons that have long been locked up in a cupboard, this is not the film for you. Like most of the films in which he stars these days, this is another ‘Jim Broadbent and some other people’ film, such is the extent to … Continue reading The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
BY ANDREW MOODY “Ernest Hemingway once wrote: ‘the world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the second part.” I first saw David Fincher’s Se7en when I was a precocious teenager, addicted to movies, very aware of the indie revolution bolstered by Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute and Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax that was ongoing in the 1990s, instantly proclaiming it a masterpiece. … Continue reading Se7en
BY ANDREW MOODY “Made it ma! TOP OF THE WORLD!” Most media critics falsely claim that we are living in the “Golden age of TV”, based on Hollywood’s constant production of TV boxsets for streaming services like Netflix. We are actually, in a media sense, living in the Golden age of consumer choice. Nowadays, technology far in excess of that which sent the Apollo 11 … Continue reading The Public Enemy
BY ANDREW MOODY “We are all the children of DW Griffith and Stanley Kubrick.” –Martin Scorsese * On the Saturday before Christmas, I decided to do something I’d always wanted to do but had never gotten round to: I sat down and watched all of Stanley Kubrick’s final six movies in a row, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon … Continue reading The Kubrick Variations
