★★★
Less action is more ambition in the case of Triple Frontier. Once attached to the likes of Tom Hanks, Mahershala Ali and Johnny Depp, the film has retained some degree of its star power in the casting of Ben Affleck and Oscar Isaac. It benefits too from a muscular but sage approach by director J. C. Chandor and soundtrack that plays heavy on heightening the fun. If the film lacks in many regards – tension, pacing and Charlie Hunnam’s accent – it succeeds in as many more.
★★★
It’s embarrassing how long it has taken the MCU to embrace meaningful equality. Twenty films. No female-led films. How come Chief Feige? Hot on the heels of last year’s revelation that leading heroes don’t have to be white, Captain Marvel now seeks to prove that they don’t have to be women either. Who knew? Whilst this isn’t the sickly romcom Scarlet Johansson once forecast in a bitingly brilliant spoof – ‘Marvel knows women!’ – neither is it the groundbreaking triumph that was Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman two years ago. When push comes to shove, Captain Marvel is actually very average.
★★★★
Relentless and crushingly unpredictable, sexism has long since been a devastating iceberg in the ocean of gender equality. Seas of change, however, brew in this gripping film by seasoned sports documentarian Alex Holmes. Maiden tells the tale of yachting legend Tracy Edwards and her quest to skipper the first ever all-female crew to enter the 1989 Whitbread Round the World Race. It is a story driven by intense passion and endurance, captured with an immediacy not so dissimilar from the likes of Maidentrip and Deep Water.
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