Tag Archives: Reviews

Power Rangers | Review

★★

The arrival of a Power Rangers reboot in the present era of superhero overload was so inevitable that the most surprising facet of its 2017 debut is the fact that it’s taken quite so long to morph from the ether. Those able to remember the 1990s Mighty Morphin TV series may have in the intervening years forgotten just how joyfully awful it was, a prime example as it is of the ability of campy nonsense to transcend its own awfulness and achieve a nostalgic status of adoration. There is something admittedly iconic about badass Teletubbies in onesies vocally karate kicking there way through innumerable bad guys.

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The Lost City of Z | Review

★★★★

Humanity has long endured a difficult relationship with nature. It’s a coexistence that has oft been tackled by literature and film alike: that desire for conquest and struggle for omnipotent domination, so perfectly epitomised by Caspar David Friedrich’s romanticist painting: The Wander Above a Sea of Fog, that has driven many an explorer to madness, their sanity a sacrifice to their ambition. From Livingstone to Scott, all have found the natural world to be a fearsome opponent.

Less well known than those Boys’ Own heroes is Lt. Col. Percival Harrison Fawcett, the subject of David Grann’s article, and later published biography, The Lost City of Z, now brought to the big screen by director James Grey. Between 1906 and 1925, Fawcett, portrayed in 2017 by Charlie Hunnam, undertook seven expeditions to South America, spending the most of those years in search of an ancient civilisation, proposed to have been long since lost within the jungles of Bolivia, akin to Hiram Bingham’s 1911 rediscovery of Machu Picchu in Peru.

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Logan | Review

★★★★

The X-Men franchise is like a box of melted chocolates, you never know what mutation you’re going to get. It is indeed a series that’s provided some serious ups and downs. For every popping candy/caramel barrel combination (Days of Future Past – deliriously good) they’ve pulled out a chocolate blob that’s lost its raisin (Apocalypse – you know, fine but it’s kind of missing the point). Therefore, it’s with an air of caution that one approaches Logan, Hugh Jackman’s last stand as the Wolverine after an impressive seventeen years. Jackman’s been an ever-solid presence since his first appearance in Bryan Singer’s X-Men, but up to now his standalone spin-offs have, frankly, been a bit of let down. Thankfully, Logan finally hits the mark. X marks the spot, if you will…

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