Joseph Quinn

The Fantastic Four: First Steps

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The Thing, Mr Fantastic, Invisible Woman and the Human Torch

The Fantastic Four: First Steps. The title is a joke, a reference to Marvel history and also an announcement – this, fanfare please, is the opening film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s glorious Phase Six. The joke. The Fantastic Four has taken many first steps before. It’s the failed-to-launch superhero franchise par excellence, with three damp squibs – two with Ioan Gruffudd and Jessica Alba and one with Miles Teller and Kate Mara plus assorted unremarkable FF walk-ons in other MCU movies. “Damp” may be overdoing it, but those three movies did not sweep all before them, let’s say. And then there was Roger Corman’s run at the material, with a movie in … Read more

Gladiator II

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Paul Mescal looking thoughtful

As if made by the “if you like that you’ll like this” algorithm, Gladiator II takes all the bits you liked in the first film and does them all over again, with a bit more blood, a touch less swagger and far better CGI than Ridley Scott could muster in 2000. Scott is again at the helm, with quite a few members of the same technical team from the first film – DP John Mathieson most notably – a couple of the same actors in the shape of Derek Jacobi and Connie Nielsen, and pretty much the same storyline. The original Gladiator opened with a spectacular battle sequence, and so does this film – flaming fireballs … Read more

A Quiet Place: Day One

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Eric and Samira in the dark with a torch

Hang on, A Quiet Place: Day One is the origin story, about how Earth is invaded by creatures who track humans using sound alone? Wasn’t that already covered in A Quiet Place Part II? Indeed it was, but if you are generous of spirit and reject the idea that A Quiet Place: Day One is just a reheat of old hash, you’ll be pointing out right now that A Quiet Place Part II did the whole “how the apocalypse arrived” thing in its first ten minutes, then zipped forwards in time about a year and a half to catch up with the Abbott family (Emily Blunt, John Krasinski and co) as they came … Read more