Florence Pugh

Don’t Worry Darling

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Jack and Alice in bed

Talking about films that crashed on the rocks of high expectations, here’s Don’t Worry Darling, a Stepford Wives/Total Recall hybrid hotly anticipated because it was a) the directorial follow-up to Booksmart for Olivia Wilde, b) because it starred Florence Pugh, whose career since debuting in Carol Morley’s Falling in 2014 has been a series of triumphs and c) because it gave a meaty role to Harry Styles, he of swoonsome pop-starriness. It’s the film that crashed twice, in fact, the second calamity coming as stories started to circulate about bad blood on set – over Shia Labeouf (fired), between Wilde and Pugh (over Styles), and most notoriously over Chris Pine and Styles and … Read more

Black Widow

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Black Widow and Yelena on a bike

“Three’s a trend,” as the saying goes, and with the success of Black Widow, after Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman, it looks like the jinx on female superhero movies (Supergirl, Elektra, Catwoman) can finally be declared broken. It was about time that Black Widow got her own standalone movie in any case, the character having been a bit neglected by the Marvel Cinematic Universe in one Avengers film after another, to the point where it was looking like there was a sexism/patriarchy thing going on. Smartly heading that sort of criticism off at the pass, that’s the plot too, pretty much, with Black Widow swinging into action to neutralise a drug that turns … Read more