Month: August 2026

The Monkey’s Paw

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A striking artificial head in the foreground with a narrator speaking

When William Jacobs wrote the short story The Monkey’s Paw in 1902, could he have realised what sort of afterlife it would have? It’s been adapted dozens of times, even more if you count productions that don’t use its original title. This 1948 version is a short and atmospheric rendition of Jacobs’s story, changing the names and some of the details but keeping the central idea intact – a monkey’s paw that will grant three wishes to anyone who is holding it, but which brings a belt of bad luck along with the granting of the wish. For a film that’s only just over an hour long, you might marvel at how much … Read more

Power Ballad

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Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas back to back

By the end of Power Ballad I felt like I had been emotionally manipulated all the way up a very familiar garden path. In case I’m giving the wrong impression, I also cried. On balance I’d summarise it as “John Carney does it again”, the writer/director who does other things but regularly returns to the street-musical genre that made his name with 2006’s Once (wow, 20 years ago), and then proved he wasn’t a one-trick pony with Begin Again, Sing Street and Flora and Son. Do we all like Paul Rudd? Is Rudd the everyman du jour, more handsome, funnier and nicer than we are but adjacent enough that we buy in to … Read more