It’s no mean feat to earn an 18 certificate in 2025. Sadism and hard sex will usually do it but audiences today are far too well immunised for drugs and swearing to cut the mustard. As for the 18s of yesteryear, they’ve all been downgraded to Us and PGs. You can catch them on the kids zone on Netflix. With this in mind, there’s something oddly endearing in Nick Love’s efforts to push the boat out for the solidly 18-rated Marching Powder. Somewhere amidst Love’s liberal approach to cocaine snorting, c-words and underage porn watching, all the wrong buttons have been pressed at the BBFC. It’s casually, half-arsedly shocking. A little like finding a condom in your dad’s wash bag when all you were looking for was dental floss. It’ll take more minty nylon to expunge that memory.
A bit player in the Chris Evans era, Anthony Mackie never really found definition as Falcon. Marvel gave him the wings (literally) but none of the personality and individuality he needed to fly. Not that standing out was ever easy among such charismatic company as was the original Avengers. And yet, this is an age of second gos for the MCU. Soon enough, Robert Downey Jr. will return, albeit in a different guise. In the here and now, Brave New World gifts Mackie the spotlight and shield-wielding mantle of Captain America. Boy, does he take to it well. This feels a promising new direction, even if the vehicle itself couldn’t really be justifiably termed ‘brave’.
Oh my, how time flies. Nine years have passed since our last dip into the ongoing diary of Bridget Jones. Said film saw the beloved Brit – invention of Helen Fielding, masterpiece of Renée Zellweger – give birth to a son of two potential fathers. That neither remain a feature of Bridget’s life, despite co-parenting promise, speaks something to the inconsequentiality of film three. The same cannot be said of four, an altogether more consequential – dare we say weighty? – entry. Mad About the Boy pairs Bridget’s jolly brand of japery with a greater ear for sentiment and the nuances of time. Certainly, it mediates rather nicely on what it means to navigate the world as a woman of a certain age…whatever that means in the twenty-first century.
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