Review: The Prestige (2006) (Christopher Nolan’s Greatest Film?)

Are you watching closely?

Is The Prestige Christopher Nolan’s greatest film? Of course, it has strong competition from The Dark Knight and Memento (of course, readers will also point to Inception, Interstellar and Dunkirk). But in my humble opinion, it’s comparable to Coppola’s The Conversation. He squeezed that in between Godfather Part I and II and I reckon it beats both of them. For Nolan, he squeezed The Prestige in between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight…and again, I reckon it beats both of them…and every other Nolan film.

Review: The Greatest Showman (2017) (Is This The Musical You’ve Been Waiting For?)

“Ladies and gents, this is the moment you’ve waited for…”

I don’t know about you, but I hate most film musicals. Try as I might, but I can’t watch them. The mere hint of a musical sends me running away in fear. Last year, La La Land made itself the first musical I ever went to the cinema to watch. And…I enjoyed it! It shouldn’t have been anywhere near the Oscars, but it did the job. A year later, I found myself at the cinema waiting to watch The Greatest Showman. Why? The trailer suckered me in, and my fiancée wanted to see it. And…I bloody loved it! The Greatest Showman stands as the only musical I could watch over and over again…and it also gave me a duet between Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron, something I never knew I needed until I saw it (and I need more!).

Review: Logan (2017) (A Great Comic Book Film? Or Just A Great Film?)

“I’m a fan, by the way”

Since ‘Logan’ was released last week, there’s been a vast amount of praise for it. Some have proclaimed it to be the greatest comic book film ever. Of course, I watched it as soon as it came out, but wanted time for the hype to die down and for my own thoughts to percolate through the critical acclaim. Often, when a film is given endless praise, it sets alarm bells off in my head. I always think: “can it be that good?” The hype train soon runs off course and the critically acclaimed film enters a phase of harsh criticism (the latest example I can think of is ‘La La Land’). However, after a week of thinking long and hard about ‘Logan,’ I can almost agree that it’s one of the greatest comic book films ever (whether or not it’s the greatest one is something I’ll have to think about further). It’s dark, gritty and reaches a level of maturity that few comic book films have done.

Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) (Give Me A Break, Bub!)

“Welcome to the war”

The upcoming ‘Deadpool’ won’t be the first time that Ryan Reynolds has played Wade Wilson and his alter ego, Deadpool. We first saw Reynolds as Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. After X-Men : The Last Stand, 20^th Century Fox wanted a series of ‘Origin’ films for the X-Men. Following ‘Wolverine,’ there would be one about Magneto. Wolverine was meant to be a new beginning for the X-Men films, which has fallen in quality with the terrible ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’ (why is the third film of a super-hero trilogy always terrible?!?!). However, ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ made ‘The Last Stand’ look like ‘X-Men 2.’