Bored of Superheroes

Empress Matilda Ridley Scott is already talking up Gladiator III. Not necessarily a great idea, as there's not much story left there that hasn't already been explored, and there are so many other potential historical epics waiting to be made. Sticking with the Roman period, a sports film about chariot racers could work as a Gladiator spinoff. Chariot racing was actually far more popular and widely watched than gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome and it lends itself just as well to a cinematic interpretation. There's action, rivalries, danger, some tear-jerking moments with horses and the chance for someone to take on a good old-fashioned hero role.  There's also plenty more material to be had in the Crusader period. Not necessarily a sequel to Kingdom of Heaven, which ends quite satisfactorily, but another story from this lengthy and bloody period of history. Of course, this would have to be tackled in a politically sensitive way. Ghassan Massoud's portrayal of Sala...

  No film review this week as I've already seen Gladiator II and I don't fancy Wicked. I was completely drawn in by Cillian Murphy's mesmerising performance as Bill Furlong in Tim Mielants's adaptation of Small Things Like These a couple of weeks back, and it got me thinking about other films I've seen in the past year that complement its quiet, sad little story. Both of these movies are worth a watch and pick up on ideas from Small Things. If you're interested in Ireland in the 1980s, you might like : That They May Face The Rising Sun (Pat Collins) Another novel adaptation, this time from John McGahern's final work. It's another quiet, contemplative sort of film, but much more gentle than Small Things. Ostensibly, it's about British-based couple Joe (Barry Ward) and Kate (Anna Bederke), who are deciding whether to take over Joe's family farm in rural Ireland or stay in London for Kate's art gallery business. What it's really about is eve...

Almost twenty-five years after the original, Ridley Scott has revived his Oscar-winning classic, Gladiator, with a new cast and a new story. Big sandals to fill, and does this big-ticket sequel do the business? As a rule, I'm not a fan of sequels, prequels or franchises. They encourage lazy storytelling and unsatisfying endings and there are too many of them. However, I made an exception for Gladiator, as it stars one of my favourite actors, Paul Mescal, and also because my mum wanted to come to the cinema with me for the first time since the 1990s. Both mum and I enjoyed the film and we agreed on the following. It really is best seen on a big screen; Scott's recreation of Rome is fantastically detailed, and the use of a 1:1 scale Colosseum set full of baying extras for the arena scenes really does makes it believable. It's a grand visual spectacle and the music, which includes Lisa Gerrard's classic Gladiator theme, is pretty good too. There's only so much you can ...

Last week I wasn't raving about Anora, a film from a director who likes to highlight the lives of marginalised groups.  This week, here's an example of a film about marginalised people that really, really impressed me. Matteo Garrone's Io Capitano is a story about two teenage migrants from Senegal, Seydou and Moussa, who try to travel to Europe in search of a better life. What could have been a very preachy and relentlessly grim experience is turned by Garrone into a classic adventure story, set against the terrifying beauty of the Sahara desert. It has a hero in Seydou, a teenage wannabe pop star who travels illegally with his cousin Moussa across the Sahara. Seydou is one of the most likeable characters you will meet in modern cinema, played with great skill and tremedous empathy by Seydou Sarr, in his first professional acting role. The equally inexperienced but still very talented Moustapha Fall plays his cousin, with a supporting cast of African talent including Issaka...

Sean Baker’s latest film took both Cannes and the critics by storm, but is it a real future classic, or a case of the Empress’s new clothes? Anora answers that question literally in its first moments. The Empress is pretty much naked. Opening in the strip club where its heroine Ani (Mikey Madison) works, there’s not much in the way of female clothing on show. A soundtrack of a Take That song does add an amusing counterpoint; the sensible tones of Gary Barlow were never meant to be the backdrop for dimly-lit crotch grinding and hair-flicking. There’s a good chunk of this before the film’s gritty-Pretty-Woman, postmodern Cinderella storyline kicks in: there’s a customer who wants a girl who can speak Russian, which Ani can. More grinding and a private housecall later, we discover that the Russian customer is Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), a young oligarch’s son let loose in New York. At this point, the storyline switches to a sleazy iteration of an early-2000s teen comedy, all parties, adventu...